Y Haplogroup

One way to explore Luceno origins is by examining the Y haplogroup our family belongs to.

What is a Y haplogroup?

In order to understand what a Y haplogroup is, it is necessary to understand a little bit about the Y chromosome.

Along with the X chromosome, the Y chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes in the human genome. While female humans have two X chromosomes, males have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome.

When a couple has a female child, that child gets an X chromosome from the mother and an X chromosome from the father. But when that same couple has a male child, the child gets one of the mother’s X chromosomes and the Y chromosome of the father.

Every child’s genome is made up of roughly 50% of the mother’s nuclear DNA and 50% of the father’s nuclear DNA. But since a male child can only get his Y chromosome from his father, the child’s Y chromosome is a near identical copy of the father’s Y chromosome.

It is a near identical copy and not an exact copy because sometimes small copying errors occur when the Y chromosome is passed down from father to son. These are called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs. The child will then pass those SNPs on to his progeny.

The Y chromosome is a genetic legacy passed down through the generations, father to son, but as time passes, the Y chromosome accumulates SNPs. Since these SNPs occur randomly, the progeny of any two brothers will have subtly but significantly different Y chromosomes after many generations. The descendants of these two brothers with their unique sets of SNPs will form distinct Y haplogroups.

But by comparing the SNPs on the Y chromosomes of those descendants, it is possible to see the last time they shared a common ancestor. This is true of any two male individuals on the planet. This makes Y DNA analysis a powerful tool for the anthropologist but also for the genealogist, since it is possible to tell when two or more people, families, or even cultures shared a common ancestor, even in the absence of historical records.

Y-MRCA and the Phylogenetic Tree

Examination of the Y chromosomes of male humans alive today reveals they all last shared a common male ancestor around 275,000 years ago. This individual is referred to as the Y-chromosomal most recent common ancestor Adam (Y-MRCA or Y-Adam). He would have been a hunter-gatherer somewhere in Africa.

Y-Adam is not the same as the first male human. He was merely the only male human alive 275,000 years ago whose progeny have survived down to the present day.

We know from above that Y-Adam passed a near-identical copy of his Y chromosome to his sons, but over the generations, the Y chromosomes of the progeny of those sons would start to look subtly different from one another.

We also know that humans tend to drift apart and move across the surface of the Earth. Just as you may not be aware of who your 3rd and 4th cousins are, the progeny of Y-Adam would eventually drift apart, no longer recognize one another as blood relatives, and perhaps even form rival groups.

One group of descendants would have gone north, another west, another east, and another south. They would have populated different parts of the African continent, taking their families and their Y chromosomes with them. Different Y haplogroups would then become associated with different geographical regions and eventually different cultures.

People 200,000 years ago did not have maps or global positioning systems. They were hunter-gatherers and probably went where they thought food was available. While some of the descendants of Y-Adam remained in Africa, many of them followed game and other food supplies out of Africa and into the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia. There were many waves of migration out of Africa. We know about this from fossils, artefacts, and genetic evidence.

Since humans were always on the move, one of the results of these waves of migrations is that Y haplogroups became distributed spatially over the Earth as they developed in time, producing a phylogenetic tree spread out over the globe.

World map of Y-DNA haplogroups (Source and License)

So by analyzing the Y chromosome, it is possible not only to see when any two people last shared a common male ancestor. It is also possible to tell where that person’s ancestors moved over the face of the Earth and when.

And by cross-referencing this genetic information with what we know from archaeology, it is possible to make educated guesses about which cultures and civilizations our male ancestors belonged to, how they made their living, even what religious beliefs they had and what their relationships with one another may have been like.

(The same thing can be done on the matrilineal line by analyzing a person’s mitochondrial genome.)

Deep history of the Luceno line

A few years back, I had a rudimentary analysis done of my Y chromosome. From that it is possible to reconstruct some of the deep history of the Luceno line.

The story of the Luceno line begins where every other man’s story begins: a quarter of a million years ago with Y-Adam.

Of course the story could start long before that, with the common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals; with their ancestors, the Australopithecines; with the common ancestor of humans and apes; with the first mammals; or all the way back to the first living organisms on Earth four billion years ago. Every person carries the genetic legacy of the whole of evolution within every cell of their bodies.

But for the purposes of our story, we will look just at what is told to us by the Y chromosome, which is that, like every other male on the planet, the ancestor of the Lucenos was a son of Y-Adam, a hunter-gatherer in Africa.

As already mentioned the progeny of the sons of Y-Adam did not remain in one place but drifted across the African continent, bringing their SNPs with them. But by about 70,000 years ago, the male ancestor of the Lucenos was part of a community of hunter-gatherers in the Rift Valley, near present-day Ethiopia and Kenya. We know this because every Luceno has the M168 SNP, which belonged to the common ancestor of every non-African on the planet today.

By 50,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Lucenos had left Africa in one of the last great waves of migration. They traveled by boat or along the coast of the Middle East in search of food, and eventually they arrived in present-day India. These people had the M89 SNP and belonged to Y haplogroup F.

While this was happening, the distant cousins of the Lucenos were also spreading into the Mediterranean, as far as Ice Age glaciers would allow them to expand into Northern Europe and the British Isles, and all across Asia and even into the Pacific. Here they encountered even more distant cousins, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, archaic humans with whom they interbred and had children. (I am about 1.2% Neanderthal, which would be like having a fourth great-grandparent who is full-blooded Neanderthal.)

By about 30,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic, the male ancestors of the Lucenos would likely have been hunter-gatherers somewhere in central Asia. It’s possible they were part of the Mal’ta-Buret’ culture in present-day Siberia: mammoth hunters whose art reflects complex religious beliefs. Their genes have survived in contemporary Siberians, Native Americans, and Europeans.

Example of Mal’ta-Buret’ art from the Upper Paleolithic (Source)

Farming and Towns

About 10,000 years ago, a revolution occurred in the way some humans fed themselves. For millions of years, humans had sustained themselves largely through the practice of hunting and gathering food. But around 10,000 years ago, some people in the Eastern Mediterranean began to grow food and domesticate animals.

The practice either spread or arose independently in the Jordan Valley in Israel, in the Nile Valley in Egypt, and in Mesopotamia. It certainly arose independently at a later date in China, in the Sahel region of West Africa, and in the New World.

Gradually the practice spread east into what is today Iran and India and west into what is today Turkey, Greece, the Mediterranean, and along the major waterways into the center of the European continent.

These farmers who spread into Europe largely belonged to Y haplogroups G2a, C1a2, E1b1b, H2, J1, J2, and T1a—all distant cousins of the ancestors of the Lucenos. It’s possible they spoke a language related to Proto-Afro-Asiatic, the linguistic ancestor of Hebrew and ancient Egyptian. Across the continent they traded jewelry made from spondylus shells harvested from the Aegean Sea along the coast of present-day Greece.

map of the spread of farming into Anatolia from the Levant — Map of the spread of farming into Europe.
Source: Anthony, p. 139

As farmers entered Europe, they encountered another group of people geneticists and archaeologists identify as Western Hunter Gatherers (or WHGs). These were the descendants of people who had wandered into Western Europe with the waves of migration out of Africa. Their counterparts in Eastern Europe and West Asia, the Eastern Hunter Gatherers (or EHGs), probably belonged to Y haplogroup R1.

The ancestors of the Lucenos were likely EHGs.

While the genetic differences between these three groups was arguably small, the differences between their ways of living were not. While WHGs and EHGs wandered over wide terrains in search of food, the farmers of Neolithic Europe tended to remain in one place. It is during this period that we find evidence of the first towns in Europe.

The effect the arrival of farmers in Europe had on existing populations of WHGs is still not fully understood. While some WHGs probably adopted the farming lifestyle, and while some farmers may have adopted the hunting and gathering lifestyle of the WHGs, the influx of farming into Europe seems to have had the effect of pushing WHGs into marginal northern areas as farming and town living spread from present day Turkey up into the British Isles.

Meanwhile a different situation was developing in the southern parts of present day Ukraine and Russia among the people ancestral to the Lucenos.

The Yamnaya and the Bronze Age

While farmers farmed and WHGs hunted and gathered in Western Europe, the ancestors of the Lucenos were likely EHGs, hunters and gatherers in the valleys formed by the Bug, Dnieper, and Donets Rivers in the area north of the Black Sea.

map of farming sites north of the Black Sea — Map of Neolithic sites north of the Black Sea
Source: Anthony, p.165

But during this period of time—about 7,000 years ago—they were starting to come into contact with farmers from the Middle East who had been gradually making their way along the Danube River and over the Carpathian Mountains to the west. With this contact came technological, cultural, and genetic exchange. This was largely felt in the adoption by some EHGs of the raising of livestock, particularly cattle.

Around the time this exchange was taking place, there developed to the south the first militaristic Bronze Age culture, the Maykop. This would have led to the influx into the region not only of a new metalworking technology, but also the wheel and the wagon.

Meanwhile to the east, horses were being domesticated for the first time in what is today Kazakhstan.

These three influences—wagons, horses, and cattle domestication—combined to create a unique culture in the region. We don’t know what these people called themselves, but they are known today to anthropologists as the Yamnaya.

About 6,000 years ago, the male ancestor of the Lucenos was very likely Yamnaya.

Bronze Age Riders

Initially the ancestors of the Yamnaya had to restrict their activities to the river valleys leading into the Black Sea. The area was surrounded by grassland—a great steppe that extended all the way from Europe into the heart of Asia—but it was relatively devoid of resources, making it as a good as a desert.

But with the invention of the wagon and with the harnessing of the horse to the wagon, it became possible to bring supplies long distances into the heart of the steppe. The Yamnaya no longer had to graze their cattle only in the river valleys. The grasslands opened to them.

The Yamnaya had up to this point practiced a mixture of agriculture and stockbreeding, practices acquired from their farming neighbors to the west in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. And while they continued to practice some settled agriculture, access to the grass on the steppe allowed unprecedented exploitation of the resources inherent in livestock. This gave rise to the “Secondary Products Revolution,” a reference to the importance placed upon the “secondary” products of domesticated animals: dairy products, textiles, and the harnessing of animals (for riding or hitching to vehicles).

The source of calories alone must have given the Yamnaya an advantage. Their descendants who invaded the Greek peninsula and islands stood on average three inches taller than the people they displaced.

But while the impact of the Secondary Products Revolution was felt not only on the Yamnaya diet and physique but on their culture as well.

While it is somewhat difficult to steal a person’s orchard or farm from them, it is relatively easy to steal cattle from them one by one. This led to the development of a culture of raiding neighbors’ cattle. The rise of raiding led to a culture of defending against raids. Thus arose a culture a chieftains—male patriarchs—in command of bands of warriors.

With the hitching of the horse to the wagon, the wagon was now able to travel at much greater speeds than it could travel with just a human pulling it. This made it necessary to improve the design of the wagon so it would not disintegrate while traveling at high speeds over uneven terrain. This necessity likely gave rise to the chariot. The importance of these vehicles is reflected in their inclusion in many chieftain burials all across Europe.

map showing expansion of Yamnaya from their steppe homeland into Europe and southeast Asia — Scheme of Indo-European migrations from c. 4000 to 1000 BCE according to the Kurgan hypothesis.
Source and license

With their decentralized social organization, their abundant and mobile food supply, and with their vehicles capable of traveling at high speeds, the Yamnaya and their descendants spread in every direction across the steppe of West Asia. Over a period of about two millennia, the descendants of the Yamnaya spread east into northern India, Afghanistan and Persia, into the Middle East, and west all the way to the Mediterranean and the British Isles.

This was without doubt a rapid, male-dominated expansion into these regions, with one study estimating anywhere from 5 to 14 migrating males for every migrating female. Genetically these individuals belonged largely to the R1a and R1b haplogroups. The result is that R1a and R1b are dominant haplogroups in Europe today.

The Lucenos belong to the R1b branch.

But the Yamnaya influence was felt in another way: language.

The Indo-European Languages

It’s been known since the late-18th century that Vedic Sanskrit (the language of the Vedas, holy texts composed in Northern India over 2,000 years ago), Persian (spoken in Iran), the Romance languages (languages like Spanish and French that are derived from Latin), the Slavic languages (languages like Polish and Russian), and the Germanic languages (German, English, Norwegian) have a common ancestor.

There have been arguments for a long time as to where this ancestor of the Indo-European languages—called Proto-Indo-European—was spoken, but evidence has accumulated over the last decade that strongly suggests it was spoken by the Yamnaya.

As the Yamnaya spread out from their original homeland north of the Black Sea, these languages would have subtly changed to form different dialects, eventually becoming different languages all together, but they would have retained traces of their origins making it possible for a linguist to tell they shared a common ancestor.

While some of the Yamnaya spread south and east into India and Persia, the ancestors of the Lucenos spread west into central Europe. There they would have spoken the language ancestral to Latin and the Celtic languages, which linguists today call Proto-Italo-Celtic.

Some of that group traveled north and became speakers of Germanic languages, some remained in central Europe and became speakers of Celtic languages, and some went over the Alps into the Italian peninsula where they became speakers of Italic languages.

The Luceno line contains the U152 and the L2 SNPs which seem to be associated with the Iron Age culture of northern Italy around this time. These are the material cultures which eventually gave rise to Roman Culture.

So were the Lucenos Romans?

They may have been. It’s hard to say.

The “resolution” of Y-DNA testing I’ve had only takes me up to about 3,000 years ago when Iron Age people arrived on the Italian peninsula. There have been many large population movements between then and now making it possible to tell many different stories about Luceno origins.

One possibility is that the ancestors of the Lucenos arrived on the Italian peninsula with the migration of Iron Age people and have been there since then.

Another possibility is that they arrived on the Italian peninsula but left for another part of Europe before during, or after the Roman Empire and emigrated back at some point.

Given the fact that most Lucenos in the world today are Spanish Lucenos, not Italian Lucenos, it’s possible our ancestors left the Italian peninsula, spent time somewhere in Spain (perhaps near the Lucena River?), and returned to Italy (perhaps with the Spanish conquest of Calabria?).

The Romans settled extensive plantations in Spain, and these families traveled back and forth from Spain and Italy during the Imperial period. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his family belonged to this group, and his ancestral town is less than 30 miles from Lucena.

But there’s no way to differentiate between these scenarios just by looking at the Y-DNA results we have so far. We could differentiate between the two versions by having higher resolution Y tests done on male Luceno descendants with the last name “Luceno,” though.

For more information and to see if you’re eligible to help with this research, please read more here.

The Luceno Origins Project