LEVI'S GENES

Haplotype R1b (M343)

Part of my family history research has taken on a genetic twist over the past year. The "deep history" in our genes fits us into the larger migration waves of the settling of Europe and the planet in general. The field is called "population genetics" - comparing genetic mutations in different ethnicities' DNA - and PBS has had a few specials on the topic you might have seen.

National Geographic has even begun a huge global research project called the Genographic Project, with thousands of people submitting cheek swab samples of DNA to fit them into larger genetically-based population groups called "haplotypes":

https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/

I first did this exercise with Aunt Helen, getting her (reluctantly) to swab the inside of her cheeks for 60 seconds to get cheek cells (they flake off very easily) for a DNA analysis of her mitochondrial DNA (the DNA found outside the cell nucleus and passed down from mothers only). Helen is the last living American relative to carry Carlson DNA on the female side, from my grandmother Selma born in Sweden, and from her mother Sissa, from her mother, and so on - so I felt it was important to test her while she was still around to contribute.

RESULTS: The female side in Sweden (my dad's mother's side) belongs to haplotype K, a fairly common female European haplotype dating back millennia to, they think, the Balkan area during the last ice age, when northern and central Europe were covered by sheets of ice and largely uninhabitable. The Balkans were still ice free and liveable. Over time, K's daughters (the genetic mutation occurred in one individual woman first) migrated north as the ice thawed and northern Europe became more friendly to humans. The K haplotype is found mainly on the east side of Europe, north to south: (the former) Yugoslavia, Austria, German, Eastern Europe.

This June, I mailed off my own DNA sample (cheek cells again) to the Genographic Project, and today I finally looked up my special code on the Project website to see my results. Males are tested for the sequence of their Y chromosome, passed down from father to son only. (Women are always XX, never XY.) So the results would point a genetic laser back millennia into the direct line of my Swedish forebears in northern Sweden (Uppland province) and places and forefathers before that.

RESULTS: The male Sundberg's descend from one of Europe's two oldest male haplotypes, R1b, carried by men who migrated during the ice ages from Central Asia all the way west to Spain and the British Isles. We were the big game hunters of the Aurignacian culture who followed the herds all the way to southern France and Spain, where our cave paintings may still be seen. Agriculture was still many millennia off, brought to Europe from the Middle East only about 10 thousand years ago. During the height of the ice age, they survived in "refugia", habitable regions in the Iberian Peninsula, awaiting warmer weather and the retreat of the ice. Eventually, as the ice retreated, they moved north again, repopulating France, England, Ireland, the Low Countries and Germany, arriving - sometime in our past - in Scandinavia. They were probably the first human habitants of Sweden before later groups came bringing the early proto-Germanic dialects that later turned into Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. The original inhabitants likely spoke something far different, perhaps something related to Basque. (The majority of Basques are haplotype R1b, too.)

Not all Scandinavians bear my same male DNA. 25-30% apparently do, but other patriarchs settled the rising Scandinavian land mass, as well, including another haplotype (M17), that likely came from the Caspian area carried by men speaking some Indo-European tongue. Other Scandanavian men's forefathers had worked their way north from the Balkans over thousands of years as the ice retreated, bearing the mutations that make up haplotype M170, the other old European haplotype. Racial miscegenation mesolithic style!

My haplotype is surprisingly most common in SW and NW Europe: Spain, Italy, France, and the British Isles. It's common in Holland, too, more so than in Germany.

In case you're interested in checking out your own haplotype(s), you can go to the National Geographic website above and click "How to Participate".