This page was begun 21 December 2004 -- rak.
There is a bit of DNA which only passes from mother to child with no influence from the father. Thus it is DNA which follows your mom's mom's mom and so on back into prehistory. It is Mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA for short. We all have it, but it is only passed on to the next generation by mothers.
Unlike the male-only DNA which usually does not last very long after death, mtDNA is very, very strong and can still be found in bones or other preserved tissue thousands of years after death. It is the DNA which has been used to identify Egyptian mummies, the famous Ice Man found in the Alps, and many others.
When my mtDNA was first tested, the lab gave me results which were not matched anyplace else on earth. Mom's DNA appeared to be awesomely unique. In 2004 one of mom's sister's daughter's daughter (my first cousin once removed) agreed to provide some DNA to be tested. When her results came in they were completely different from mine, when they should have been virtually identical. When confronted with this reality, the lab agreed to retest my sample. The results came out very much closer to that of my female cousin who had been tested -- and indicated that we were of the same Haplogroup. My first results must have been the DNA for some lab assistant's coffee! That's my wild guess, not that of the lab ... they say they are doing a thorough search to find out what went wrong. They have been looking thoroughly for months.
Like the male yDNA, mtDNA is classed into Haplogroups identified by letters of the alphabet. The largest mtDNA Haplogroup in Europe is H, accounting for some 40% of the population. H is derived from HV. And HV, it turns out is mom's Haplogroup. These people were early hunters in Europe and were their to meet my dad's people when dad's ancestors brought agriculture to Europe.
mtDNA test results come in two groups. In the first group, HVR1, mom's mtDNA has twp mutations: 16172C and 16311C. In the second group, HVR2, her mtDNA shows four mutations:263G, 309.1C, 309.2C and 309.3C. My cousin shows the same mutations except for the last one. Instead of 309.3C she has 315.1C. That may sound close but it is not. This is two mutations from the norm ... one for me and one for her. This type of mutation occurs about once every 20,000 years -- we should be identical, or at most one mutation different. Something is still amiss. I am going to pester the lab again.
Apparently the testing labs have never before seen this particular set of mutations! So there is dispute as to how to class mom's mtDNA.
The woman from whom we are all descended lived about 150,000 years ago in Africa. Her direct descendants populated Africa and are classed as Haplogroup L, sub-group L1. Probably due to harsh ice-age climate and the fact that the areas north of Africa were already populated by Neanderthals, the L1 people never left Africa. This population shrank. Then sometime before 75,000 years ago, new mutations occurred creating two new sub-groups, L2 and L3 -- they repopulated Africa.
About 65,000 years ago, two new mutations occurred among the L3 women creating Haplogroups M and N in northeastern Africa. Some of these migrated out of Africa, most of the M moved east into Asia and most of the N people moved north into the middle-east and then on into Europe and central Asia. The R people quickly emerged from the N folk about 60,000 years ago. The HV people emerged from the R people about 28,000 years ago. The H people emerged from the HV about 19,000 years ago, and the V people evidently about the same time. Mom's DNA evidently does not fit conveniently into either H in its many variations or into the tiny V group. So we are just generally classified as HV. As more data is collected they may define a classification into which we fit.
Before the testing lab rechecked my mtDNA it seemed possible that we might fall within the tiny I Haplogroup. While exploring that, it turned out that I helped name that group. You might be interested in seeing something of that at http://www.ancientrootsresearch.com/Hap-I/News.html.
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