auaI had an email today from FTDNA notifying me that I have a new maternal mtDNA Haplogroup. This was welcome news, and ahead of what I was expecting.
I was H5’36 and now have the unwieldy Haplgroup of H5’388’449’450+4092. I am interested in the Match Tree:
There are now Haplogroups on either side of me which explains all the apostrophes in my Haplogroup. I believe the apostrophe is meant to account for an earlier Haplogroup being found after a later branch has been found. So previously, there was a very large Haplogroup called H5. When my Haplogroup was found upstream of H5, they named it H5’36 so H5 through H36 would not have to be renamed. Now above me (though apparently parallel to me – not upstream) are H450 and H388. The confusing part is that I do not see H449 in this screen shot.
More on the Match Time Tree
These are the people in my group. Notice that there are six lines. Two of those lines have a group. They are F2467090 and F8638614. I am in the first group with my first cousin Russel and Elisabeth. When I hover over the groupings, I get this message:
I think the purpose of the note is that, due to hte fast mutating markers, there can be a lot of variability in the results. This would include, I assume, back mutations. I note that these matches may not be necessarily closer, but then again, they may be. Certainly my first cousin is a closer match. I am not sure of Elisabeth. I should try to contact her. She gives her maternal line as coming from Austria, but has no information other than that on her genealogy. Austria seems to be an outlier as the most popular ancestors countries are Ireland and England. It would make sense for me to at least reach out to Elisabeth. I just wrote, but my match with her goes back to 2018, so a lot could have changed since then.
Here is a view of the Time Tree, but I do not see another H449 anwhere:
This is a good graphic showing how far my new Haplogroup moved in time from what it was previously (before 4,000 BCE).
mtDNA and YFull
In my previous Blogs, I looked at a new group I was in at Yfull along with Steve. Steve is four up from the bottom on the Match Time Tree:
Steve and I are at the end of a very long tree at YFull:
YFull has fewer tests than FTDNA. At YFull, Steve and I are simply H5’36e rather than H5’388’449’450’+4092 that FTDNA has. However, I believe that these two haplogroups are intended to represent the same thing. That holds true with the TMRCA of 1850 ybp at YFull compared with the 100 CE of FTDNA:
I would like to point out that even though the TMRCA or time to most recent common ancestor is 1850 years, obviously it is much less for my cousin and me. Our common ancestor was our maternal grandmother who was born in the hear 1900.
Summary and Conclusions
- I am glad that FTDNA decided to update thier mtDNA tree.
- This brought my branch of the tree over 4,000 years closer in time to the present.
- My particular Haplogroup is confusingly named and seems overly complicated
- I think that the new haplotrype clusters are interesting. I am in one with my first cousin and another person who has maternal ancestry from Austria. I have contacted her to see if can find out anything more about her ancestry. Austria is a long way from Sheffield, England.
- My new haplogroup has an differently named but equivalent haplogroup at YFull.