I sent Oxford Ancestors some cells from the inside of my cheek, and they did some centriguing and PCR and other geneticist voodoo and pulled out my mitochondrial DNA sequence and discovered I have a series of mutations characteristic of the T, or Tara , subgroup.
For those who haven't taken biology in a while, mitochondrial DNA is distinct from nuclear DNA, and is passed down unchanged from mother to daughter -- except every few thousand years or so when there's a mutation, and then that new sequence gets passed down identically. You can kinda track the differentiation of human populations through this stuff. Basically, I should have the exact same DNA as all my direct line maternal ancestresses going back to the most recent mutation however many thousands of years ago. So that's my mom, and her mom, and her mom, and her mom, and on and on. For the record, I only have a documented genealogical record of the mother's mothers going back to 1846 in Kent, England, United Kingdom. The approximate location of Kent is marked on the map below.
Oxford Ancestors made me a pretty map of where my Tara submutation falls in relation to the history of mutations among the seven major Indo-European mutations. My mutation code or whatever I'm supposed to call it, is: 16126[C] 16294[T] 16296[T] 16304[C]. (Woohoo!)
See -- Isn't it pretty?
Anyway, that 16126[C] 16294[T] 16296[T] 16304[C] stuff -- how do you figure that out? Well according to the nice people at the GENEALOGY-DNA list, you figure out where your mutations are along the range of 1 to 400 and then stick 16 in front and the nucleotide code at the end. So I have mutations at the 126th, 294th, 296th and 304th nucleotides, and instead of whatever's supposed to be there, I have cytosine, thyamine, thyamine and cytosine.
So, that's all fine and dandy, but do I really need another sequence of meaningless numbers in my life? Well, no, but it turns out there is an application for this litta bitta data. There's something called a mitochondrial DNA concordance , and you can look up your mutations to see where else it's been found, in what human populations, etc.
There's a damn lot of variations you have to muck through to find yours, but basically start at the beginning. Go to the table of contents, find where your first mutation fits within "Hypervariable Region 1" and open that page. Go to the section about your first mutuation, and then look for that plus a second mutation which matches your second mutation. They're listed numerically, so it's pretty easy to follow. Then do the second, third, eighth, whatever. But don't forget, it's not just the numbers that have to match but the letters. Don't disregard those or you'll leave your grandmother in Siberia when she really belongs in Zaire.
Anyway, my mutation sequence brings up this section:
Piercy,93; RC1:5;
Cauc. UK(1)
Sajantila,95; F98; Finnish
(1)
Sajantila,95; F110; Finnish
(1)
Sajantila,95; FI84; Finnish
(1)
Sajantila,95; 16; Icelandic
(1)
Sajantila,95; 268; Karelian
(1)
Côrte-Real,96; 70; [2B];
Portuguese(1)
Côrte-Real,96; 70; [2B];
Spanish (N.)(1)
Pult,94; SW34; Swiss
(1)
Sajantila,95; 3; Volga-Finnic
(1)
Sajantila,95; 12; Volga-Finnic
(1)
Sajantila,95; 20; Volga-Finnic
(1)
Well, cool. I thought my mother's mother's people were from England. But at some point in the past it looks like they were from northeastern Europe and their descendants drifted slightly southwest over time.
A little Googling reveals that Finland is one of those Scandinavian countries. (Hee. I did actually know that.) It's on the same landmass as northwestern Russian, across the Gulf of Bothnia from Sweden. It's just past St. Petersburg and below the region known as Lapland. It's right above Estonia and the other Baltic states.
Iceland is an island, populated by Vikings and their Irish captives about 1200 years ago. Vikings were Scandinavians, mostly.
Karelian? Karelian is both a culture and Finno-Ugric language of the Balto-Finnic group. (Estonia is one of those nice Baltic states, and of course that's because we're hanging out near the Baltic sea here.) Karelians are from the area immediately east of Finland in Russia, as well as the north and southeast of St. Petersburg above north of the Volga river. Again, this is all near the Baltic republics.
Volga-Finnic . Hmm. Volga River and Finland, and are apparently another broad subset of the broad category Finno-Ugric, who live(d) more or less between Norway and the Ural Mountains. The Volga-Finnics presumably hung close to the river, as did the Karelians.
The vast majority of folks with this particular gene mutation sequence are from the area marked on the map below. It only follows that the gene mutation should have originated there, or near there, and expanded most widely in that population. Later descendants could have easily migrated to far western Europe.
As a matter of fact--okay, actually, as a matter of speculation--I have read that of the groups that famously invaded the British Isles from mainland Europe (the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes), the Jutes are notable for the specificity of their invasion. According to the Venerable Bede, the Jutes in particular settled in Kent. If that's true, there might be a path from the Urals to say Denmark or Scandanavia through northwestern Europe and eventually across the English Channel. Hmmm...
I don't know when the mutation first occurred, but it's positively miraculous to even imagine that woman, and her relationship to me, and the length of time and space between us. Genetic genealogy is fascinating because it allows us to transcend the written records which go back no more than 500 years, and plug ourselves into a human family that stretches back 100,000 years. We don't know their names or their faces, but with DNA, we are at least granted the power to imagine them as real people with homelands and lives perhaps not so very different from our own.
Back to the Jennifer Godwin Family History Site