So, who are we really? Where do we come
from? It boggles me how little we know about our past and the history
of our ancestors. How short our memories are to the point that we
might know absolutely nothing about our great-grandparents. That is
at least my case on either side of my family, I do not know who they
were and where in Colombia they were from. Finally, today I started
figuring out the surprising journey of my ancestors in the book of human evolution!
The results of my DNA sequencing are
partially in! At the moment I only have information on my father's line through the Y chromosome, which is inherited only from men to sons; and from my mother's
line through the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited only from
women to their daughters and sons. I have added links to relevant wikipedia pages where you can read more about things that may be hard to understand.
Y chromosome (paternal line)
On my paternal line, I am haplogroup E1b1b1c1a, which is a subgroup of
haplogroup E1b1b1c. Most people who are E1b1b1c can trace their
ancestry to the Near East (Iraq, Iran, Palestina, Jordan, Lebanon,
Turkey) where it originated around 15000 years ago... that is about
500 generations ago, give or take. Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews carry
this haplogroup. However, people carrying this haplogroup are also
found in North Africa (Egyptians, Algerians, Tunisians), where it
entered in the 7th century AD with the Arab conquest.
E1b1b1c1 is rare in Europe but can be also found among populations
bordering the Mediterranean Sea. According to the site around 5% of
people in Sicily and Sardinia have it. It is also found at low levels
on Corsica. It is also found in low levels in people from Portugal
and Galicia, around 4% of the population. And it says in the website
it could have gotten there from an early migration from the Near East
immediately after the Ice Age or arrived with Sephardic Jews before
the Spanish inquisition.
A few months ago I asked my father if he knew anything about the
origin of his parents, he said that her mother had relatives who were
of Jewish ancestry. According to the legend a group of about ten
brothers, the ancestors of my grandmother, arrived at the Caribbean cost of Colombia sometime at the end
of the XIX or beginning of the XX century. However, these results are from
the Y chromosome, which does not originate from my dad's mother, but on his
father side, which is then a bit mysterious.
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| This image shows the distribution of people with the haplogroup E1b1b1c1. The scale bar and colors are the percentage of people that in that region have that particular haplogroup. So in this case is no more than 20% of the population in any region of the world. |
Mitochondrial DNA (maternal line)
In a previous post I had told you, dear
reader, that about 90% of
Colombian mestizos in certain regions of the country had
mitochondrial DNA originating from Native American populations, according to some research, suggesting that some of the first Spanish settlers, mostly men, mated with the only women they could fine:
Native American women. My results confirmed this, after sequencing 14%
of my mitochondrial DNA I know for certain now that I had an ancestral
Native American mother at some point (within the last 500 years), carrying the haplogroup A2.
Haplogroup A2 is common in Asia,
Siberia, and the Americas. It originated 50000 years ago somewhere in
China perhaps. It is found among 10% of Tibetans and other Chinese
ethnic groups like the Dong and Yi people, and about in the same
proportions in the Koreas and Japan. This might be why I like ramen
and manga so much. About 90% of Eskimos have this haplogroup and this
might explain why I felt so at home living in Sweden. It might also explain
my extraordinary snowboarding talents.
It is also very widespread in Native
American populations all the way from Canada to Perú and Brazil, but
it is not found in the southernmost part of the continent, like
Argentina or Chile. You find it in Mohawk, Navajos, Aztecs, Incas,
and in about 50% of most Colombian Native American groups.
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| Map for the distribution of people with haplogroup A2. Black means that 100% of the native people in that region have that particular mtDNA. |
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| Ice Maiden, an Inca mummy, also has haplogroup A2. |
As I was saying, the results are not yet complete. I look forward to see the results from
the other parts of the genome, so that I can check out the percentages of the different
ethnic groups I am made from. The funny thing is that I never
imagined one day I would create a folder in my computer named “My
Genome” to store all my DNA sequences. That makes me happy.
In my next blog-post I will write about
the health section of the results, so that you can see the kind of
information this technology could give you. I found some extremely
unexpected results, such as an absurdly high risk for Coronary Heart Disease. On the good side, I also found that I have a
much lower risk of getting Alzheimer’s compared to the average
person. It's a very detailed report so I may take a while before my
next post.
See you next time!
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