My first blog on Frazer Y DNA was called Why Test the Y? In that Blog, I introduced the concepts of STRs, SNPs and discussed some of Jonathan’s initial test results. Jonathan is the only male Frazer direct line descendant that has YDNA results so far. As such, we are assuming that his results apply to all Frazers. I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket, so I have had my second cousin, once removed, Paul, take a YDNA test also to confirm Jonathan’s results. A match should show that Jonathan from the James Line of the Frazers and Paul of the Archibald Line are most likely brothers. It would also show an unbroken line from these early 1700’s brothers to these 2 modern day male Frazers.
Joanna posted Jonathan’s results on the Fraser and Septs web page where anyone who has the remotest inkling of being a Fraser has posted their DNA results.
However, as it turns out, there are not many Frasers/Frazers with the brand of YDNA that Jonathan has. Jonathan’s brand is R1a which took a Northern European route to Scotland – perhaps via Vikings. The majority of those in the Fraser group are R1b. These people took the Southern European route out of SW Asia to get to Scotland. As the common ancestor of these 2 is probably in the 10,000 year range, you can see we are not closely related to the R1b. However, there were two other Frazers in the R1a group. They are a Frazer and a Frazier. Interestingly they both have a ‘Z’ in their names, so that was encouraging.
The R1a Project
The Frazer and Sept Group has about 1879 members. The R1a Project has 4390 members. I asked Joanna, Jonathan’s sister, to make sure that Jonathan was in the R1a Project. She did that as soon as she got back from a visit to France. R1a administrators would be able to further classify Jonathan. Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) had Jonathan as a R-M512. This is what they are sure he would test out if he had done a SNP test. This was based on the 37 STR YDNA test that Jonathan had. 37 STRs is a pretty basic level. 12 STRs and then 25 used to be the basic level. This R-M512 designation gets us up to about 6,000 years ago. It’s better than 10,000 years, but still not very helpful. At that point Jonathan’s ancestors were roaming around Asia according to the map below.
Above is the new R1a Tree which has changed since my last blog on YDNA of less than a month ago. Notice that M512 is actually 6,500 B.C. and R1a goes all the way back to 16,000 B.C.! Let’s see if we can get Jonathan out of Stone Age Asia.
So, What is Jonathan’s New Classification?
People who are skilled at looking at the STRs can determine, based on the results, a better estimate of where Jonathan should be on the SNP tree. Each SNP can have a signature STR which can be determined by spreadsheet or a skilled interpreter. This interpreter would also be able to recommend focused SNP testing to get further down the YDNA R1a Tree. Previously, when I looked at Jonathan’s results, it said something like, “Awaiting Classification”. Now it looks like this:
The note in red now says, “L664 results ready for classification”. My interpretation of this is that the administrators took Jonathan out of the unclassified bin and put him with the L664’s. They will then likely separate him into the group of L664’s where he best fits.
An Unexpected L664 – Is This Right?
First the good news. L664 is about 3,000 B.C. So that moved Jonathan up 3,500 years and got him out of the Stone Age. Not bad. The shocker is that L664 is Germanic. From the R1a Tree above, I would’ve assumed that the Frazers were more in the Z284 Branch. These are the Norsemen on the R1a Chart. Below this branch is seen the Scots. However, the Germanic L664 did migrate North to Scandinavia, so the results apparently are the same. How we got there was different than expected. Note on the map, some of the L664’s made their way to SE Britain. This could have been a less likely path to Scotland.
What’s Next?
We’ll wait to make sure the L664 designation was correct. Then we’ll see on what branch of the L664 Jonathan is. I expect in a month, we will have Paul’s YDNA results. I am eagerly awaiting those results.
I wonder if the other 2 R1a’s in the Fraser and Septs project (Frazer and Frazier) are also L664. If they had uploaded their results to the R1a project, perhaps we would know the answer to that question.