National Geographic Genographic Project, Maternal Genealogy

The National Geographic Genographic Project

Your Branch on the Human Family Tree

Your DNA results identify you as belonging to a specific branch of the human family tree called haplogroup X.

The map above shows the direction that your maternal ancestors took as they set out from their original homeland in East Africa. While humans did travel many different paths during a journey that took tens of thousands of years, the lines above represent the dominant trends in this migration.

Over time, the descendants of your ancestors spread throughout Central Asia and undertook the initial colonization of the Americas. But before we can take you back in time and tell their stories, we must first understand how modern science makes this analysis possible.

How DNA Can Help

(To follow along, click See Your DNA Analysis above to view the data produced from your cheek scraping.)

The string of 569 letters shown above is your mitochondrial sequence, with the letters A, C, T, and G representing the four nucleotides—the chemical building blocks of life—that make up your DNA. The numbers at the top of the page refer to the positions in your sequence where informative mutations have occurred in your ancestors, and tell us a great deal about the history of your genetic lineage.

Here's how it works. Every once in a while a mutation—a random, natural (and usually harmless) change—occurs in the sequence of your mitochondrial DNA. Think of it as a spelling mistake: one of the "letters" in your sequence may change from a C to a T, or from an A to a G.

(Explore the Genetics Overview to learn more about population genetics.)

After one of these mutations occurs in a particular woman, she then passes it on to her daughters, and her daughters' daughters, and so on. (Mothers also pass on their mitochondrial DNA to their sons, but the sons in turn do not pass it on.)

Geneticists use these markers from people all over the world to construct one giant mitochondrial family tree. As you can imagine, the tree is very complex, but scientists can now determine both the age and geographic spread of each branch to reconstruct the prehistoric movements of our ancestors.

By looking at the mutations that you carry, we can trace your lineage, ancestor by ancestor, to reveal the path they traveled as they moved out of Africa. Our story begins with your earliest ancestor. Who was she, where did she live, and what is her story?

(Click Explore Your Route Map on the right side of the page to return to the map showing your haplogroup's ancestral journey.)

Your Ancestral Journey: What We Know Now

We will now take you back through the stories of your distant ancestors and show how the movements of their descendants gave rise to your mitochondrial lineage.

Each segment on the map above represents the migratory path of successive groups that eventually coalesced to form your branch of the tree. We start with your oldest ancestor, "Eve," and walk forward to more recent times, showing at each step the line of your ancestors who lived up to that point.

Mitochondrial Eve: The Mother of Us All

Ancestral Line: "Mitochondrial Eve"

Our story begins in Africa sometime between 150,000 and 170,000 years ago, with a woman whom anthropologists have nicknamed "Mitochondrial Eve."

She was awarded this mythic epithet in 1987 when population geneticists discovered that all people alive on the planet today can trace their maternal lineage back to her.

But Mitochondrial Eve was not the first female human. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and the first hominids—characterized by their unique bipedal stature—appeared nearly two million years before that. Yet despite humans having been around for almost 30,000 years, Eve is exceptional because hers is the only lineage from that distant time to survive to the present day.

Which begs the question, "So why Eve?"

Simply put, Eve was a survivor. A maternal line can become extinct for a number of reasons. A woman may not have children, or she may bear only sons (who do not pass her mtDNA to the next generation). She may fall victim to a catastrophic event such as a volcanic eruption, flood, or famine, all of which have plagued humans since the dawn of our species.

None of these extinction events happened to Eve's line. It may have been simple luck, or it may have been something much more. It was around this same time that modern humans' intellectual capacity underwent what author Jared Diamond coined the Great Leap Forward. Many anthropologists believe that the emergence of language gave us a huge advantage over other early human species. Improved tools and weapons, the ability to plan ahead and cooperate with one another, and an increased capacity to exploit resources in ways we hadn't been able to earlier, all allowed modern humans to rapidly migrate to new territories, exploit new resources, and outcompete and replace other hominids, such as the Neandertals.

It is difficult to pinpoint the chain of events that led to Eve's unique success, but we can say with certainty that all of us trace our maternal lineage back to this one woman.

The L Haplogroups: The Deepest Branches

Ancestral line: "Eve" > L1/L0

Mitochondrial Eve represents the root of the human family tree. Her descendents, moving around within Africa, eventually split into two distinct groups, characterized by a different set of mutations their members carry.

These groups are referred to as L0 and L1, and these individuals have the most divergent genetic sequences of anybody alive today, meaning they represent the deepest branches of the mitochondrial tree. Importantly, current genetic data indicates that indigenous people belonging to these groups are found exclusively in Africa. This means that, because all humans have a common female ancestor, "Eve," and because the genetic data shows that Africans are the oldest groups on the planet, we know our species originated there.

Haplogroups L1 and L0 likely originated in East Africa and then spread throughout the rest of the continent. Today, these lineages are found at highest frequencies in Africa's indigenous populations, the hunter-gatherer groups who have maintained their ancestors' culture, language, and customs for thousands of years.

At some point, after these two groups had coexisted in Africa for a few thousand years, something important happened. The mitochondrial sequence of a woman in one of these groups, L1, mutated. A letter in her DNA changed, and because many of her descendants have survived to the present, this change has become a window into the past. The descendants of this woman, characterized by this signpost mutation, went on to form their own group, called L2. Because the ancestor of L2 was herself a member of L1, we can say something about the emergence of these important groups: Eve begat L1, and L1 begat L2. Now we're starting to move down your ancestral line.

Haplogroup L2: West Africa

Ancestral line: "Eve" > L1/L0 > L2

L2 individuals are found in sub-Saharan Africa, and like their L1 predecessors, they also live in Central Africa and as far south as South Africa. But whereas L1/L0 individuals remained predominantly in eastern and southern Africa, your ancestors broke off into a different direction, which you can follow on the map above.

L2 individuals are most predominant in West Africa, where they constitute the majority of female lineages. And because L2 individuals are found at high frequencies and widely distributed along western Africa, they represent one of the predominant lineages in African-Americans. Unfortunately, it is difficult to pinpoint where a specific L2 lineage might have arisen. For an African-American who is L2—the likely result of West Africans being brought to America during the slave trade—it is difficult to say with certainty exactly where in Africa that lineage arose.

Fortunately, collaborative sampling with indigenous groups is currently underway to help learn more about these types of questions and to possibly bridge the gap that was created during those transatlantic voyages hundreds of years ago.

Haplogroup L3: Out of Africa

Ancestral line: "Eve" > L1/L0 > L2 > L3

Your next signpost ancestor is the woman whose birth around 80,000 years ago began haplogroup L3. It is a similar story: an individual in L2 underwent a mutation to her mitochondrial DNA, which was passed onto her children. The children were successful, and their descendants ultimately broke away from the L2 clan, eventually separating into a new group called L3. You can see above that this has revealed another step in your ancestral line.

While L3 individuals are found all over Africa, including the southern reaches of sub-Sahara, L3 is important for its movements north. You can follow this movement of the map above, seeing first the expansions of L1/L0, then L2, and followed by the northward migration of L3.

Your L3 ancestors were significant because they are the first modern humans to have left Africa, representing the deepest branches of the tree found outside of that continent.

Why would humans have first ventured out of the familiar African hunting grounds and into unexplored lands? It is likely that a fluctuation in climate may have provided the impetus for your ancestors' exodus out of Africa.

The African Ice Age was characterized by drought rather than by cold. Around 50,000 years ago the ice sheets of northern Europe began to melt, introducing a period of warmer temperatures and moister climate in Africa. Parts of the inhospitable Sahara briefly became habitable. As the drought-ridden desert changed to savanna, the animals your ancestors hunted expanded their range and began moving through the newly emerging green corridor of grasslands. Your nomadic ancestors followed the good weather and plentiful game northward across this Saharan Gateway, although the exact route they followed remains to be determined.

Today, L3 individuals are found at high frequencies in populations across North Africa. From there, members of this group went in a few different directions. Some lineages within L3 testify to a distinct expansion event in the mid-Holocene that headed south, and are predominant in many Bantu groups found all over Africa. One group of individuals headed west and is primarily restricted to Atlantic western Africa, including the islands of Cabo Verde.

Other L3 individuals, your ancestors, kept moving northward, eventually leaving the African continent completely. These people currently make up around ten percent of the Middle Eastern population, and gave rise to two important haplogroups that went on to populate the rest of the world.

Haplogroup N: The Incubation Period

Ancestral line: "Eve" > L1/L0 > L2 > L3 > N

Your next signpost ancestor is the woman whose descendants formed haplogroup N. Haplogroup N comprises one of two groups that were created by the descendants of L3.

The first of these groups, M, was the result of the first great wave of migration of modern humans to leave Africa. These people likely left the continent across the Horn of Africa near Ethiopia, and their descendants followed a coastal route eastward, eventually making it all the way to Australia and Polynesia.

The second great wave, also of L3 individuals, moved north rather than east and left the African continent across the Sinai Peninsula, in present-day Egypt. Also faced with the harsh desert conditions of the Sahara, these people likely followed the Nile basin, which would have proved a reliable water and food supply in spite of the surrounding desert and its frequent sandstorms.

Descendants of these migrants eventually formed haplogroup N. Early members of this group lived in the eastern Mediterranean region and western Asia, where they likely coexisted for a time with other hominids such as Neandertals. Excavations in Israel's Kebara Cave (Mount Carmel) have unearthed Neandertal skeletons as recent as 60,000 years old, indicating that there was both geographic and temporal overlap of these two hominids.

Some members bearing mutations specific to haplogroup N formed many groups of their own which went on to populate much of the rest of the globe. These descendants are found throughout Asia, Europe, India, and the Americas. However, because almost all of the mitochondrial lineages found in the Near East and Europe descend from N, it is considered a western Eurasian haplogroup.

After several thousand years in the Near East, members of your group began moving into unexplored nearby territories, following large herds of migrating game across vast plains. These groups broke into several directions and made their way into territories surrounding the Near East. Today, haplogroup N individuals who headed west are prevalent in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean, they are found further east in parts of Central Asia and the Indus Valley of Pakistan and India. Descendants of these people eventually went on to populate the rest of Europe, and today comprise the most frequent mitochondrial lineages found there.

Haplogroup X: Your Branch on the Tree

Ancestral line: "Eve" > L1/L0 > L2 > L3 > N > X

One group of these early N individuals broke away in the high plains of the Central Asia steppes and set out on their own journey following herds of game across inhospitable territories. Around 30,000 years ago, the first members of your haplogroup X began moving north into Siberia, the beginnings of a journey that would not stop until finally reaching both continents of the Americas.

Haplogroup X is primarily composed of two distinct subgroups, X1 and X2, and their widespread and sporadic distribution have been the cause of much debate within the scientific community. The first of these two X subclades, X1, is largely restricted to North and East Africa. The other subgroup, X2, is spread widely throughout western Eurasia. X2 makes up around two percent of the European mtDNA lineages and is more strongly present in the Near East, Caucasus region, and Mediterranean Europe. In some western Eurasian groups, it is found at significant frequencies of 10 to 25 percent, though this is likely due to expansion events following the last glacial maximum around 15,000 years ago.

The real controversy surrounding haplogroup X is its place as one of the five haplogroups found in the indigenous peoples of the Americas, where it is found exclusively in North America at varying frequencies. In the Ojibwa from the Great Lakes region it is found around 25 percent, in the Sioux at around 15 percent, the Nuu-Chah-Nulth at over ten percent, and in the Navajo at seven percent. But the branch of haplogroup X found in these Native American groups, namely X2, is almost entirely absent from Siberia, the proposed land route of the first migrations into the New World.

Unlike the four main Native American haplogroups (A, B, C, and D), haplogroup X is entirely absent in East Asian populations, indicating that it played no role in the colonizing of those regions. However, its age estimate in the Americas, around 15,000 years old, does indicate that members of this group were among the first modern humans there. One group in southern Siberia has been found containing X lineages, but the almost identical sequences in these individuals indicate that these X-bearing individuals are the result of recent gene flow into the area during the more recent Neolithic expansions of agriculturalists.

The widespread geographic distribution of this haplogroup, and its virtual absence in Siberia despite a prevalence among some Native American groups, promises to remain the focus of much scientific interest as anthropologists look to recreate the migrations that first brought humans to all corners of the globe.

Anthropology vs. Genealogy

DNA markers require a long time to become informative. While mutations occur in every generation, it requires at least hundreds—normally thousands—of years for these markers to become windows back into the past, signposts on the human tree.

Still, our own genetic sequences often reveal that we fall within a particular sub-branch, a smaller, more recent branch on the tree.

While it may be difficult to say anything about the history of these sub-groups, they do reveal other people who are more closely related to us. It is a useful way to help bridge the anthropology of population genetics with the genealogy to which we are all accustomed.

One of the ways you can bridge this gap is to compare your own genetic lineage to those of people living all over the world. Mitosearch.org is a database that allows you to compare both your genetic sequence as well as your surname to those of thousands of people who have already joined the database. This type of search is a valuable way of inferring population events that have occurred in more recent times (i.e., the past few hundred years).

Looking Forward (Into the Past): Where Do We Go From Here?

Although the arrow of your haplogroup currently ends in North America, this isn't the end of the journey for haplogroup X. This is where the genetic clues get murky and your DNA trail goes cold. Your initial results shown here are based upon the best information available today—but this is just the beginning.

A fundamental goal of the Genographic Project is to extend these arrows further toward the present day. To do this, Genographic has brought together ten renowned scientists and their teams from all over the world to study questions vital to our understanding of human history. By working together with indigenous peoples around the globe, we are learning more about these ancient migrations.

Help Us Find More Clues!

But there is another way that we will learn more about the past. By contributing your own results to the project, you will be allowed to participate anonymously in this ongoing research effort. This is important because it may contribute a great deal to our understanding of more recent human migrations. Click the yellow button below in the "Help Us Tell the Story" section of your results profile to learn more about this. It's quick, easy, and anonymous, but will help us further refine our analyses.

Don't Be a Stranger

Finally, keep checking these pages to follow along with the project and our latest findings; your results profile will be automatically updated to reflect any new information that may come to light based on the research.

National Geographic Genographic Project, Paternal Genealogy

The National Geographic Genographic Project

Your Y-chromosome results identify you as a member of haplogroup R1b.

The genetic markers that define your ancestral history reach back roughly 60,000 years to the first common marker of all non-African men, M168, and follow your lineage to present day ending with M343, the defining marker of haplogroup R1b, and also the markers P25 (R1b1), M73 (R1b1b), M269 (R1b1c), M153 (R1b1c4), M167 (R1b1c6), and M222 (R1b1c7).

If you look at the map highlighting your ancestors' route, you will see that members of haplogroup R1b carry the following Y-chromosome markers:

M168 > M89 > M9 > M45 > M207 > M173 > M343

Today, roughly 70 percent of the men in southern England belong to haplogroup R1b. In parts of Spain and Ireland, that number exceeds 90 percent.

What's a haplogroup, and why do geneticists concentrate on the Y chromosome in their search for markers? For that matter, what's a marker?

Each of us carries DNA that is a combination of genes passed from both our mother and father, giving us traits that range from eye color and height to athleticism and disease susceptibility. One exception is the Y chromosome, which is passed directly from father to son, unchanged, from generation to generation.

Unchanged, that is unless a mutation—a random, naturally occurring, usually harmless change—occurs. The mutation, known as a marker, acts as a beacon; it can be mapped through generations because it will be passed down from the man in whom it occurred to his sons, their sons, and every male in his family for thousands of years.

In some instances there may be more than one mutational event that defines a particular branch on the tree. This means that any of these markers can be used to determine your particular haplogroup, since every individual who has one of these markers also has the others.

When geneticists identify such a marker, they try to figure out when it first occurred, and in which geographic region of the world. Each marker is essentially the beginning of a new lineage on the family tree of the human race. Tracking the lineages provides a picture of how small tribes of modern humans in Africa tens of thousands of years ago diversified and spread to populate the world.

A haplogroup is defined by a series of markers that are shared by other men who carry the same random mutations. The markers trace the path your ancestors took as they moved out of Africa. It's difficult to know how many men worldwide belong to any particular haplogroup, or even how many haplogroups there are, because scientists simply don't have enough data yet.

One of the goals of the five-year Genographic Project is to build a large enough database of anthropological genetic data to answer some of these questions. To achieve this, project team members are traveling to all corners of the world to collect more than 100,000 DNA samples from indigenous populations. In addition, we encourage you to contribute your anonymous results to the project database, helping our geneticists reveal more of the answers to our ancient past.

Keep checking these pages; as more information is received, more may be learned about your own genetic history.

Your Ancestral Journey: What We Know Now

M168: Your Earliest Ancestor

Fast Facts

Time of Emergence: Roughly 50,000 years ago

Place of Origin: Africa

Climate: Temporary retreat of Ice Age; Africa moves from drought to warmer temperatures and moister conditions

Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Approximately 10,000

Tools and Skills: Stone tools; earliest evidence of art and advanced conceptual skills

Skeletal and archaeological evidence suggest that anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and began moving out of Africa to colonize the rest of the world around 60,000 years ago.

The man who gave rise to the first genetic marker in your lineage probably lived in northeast Africa in the region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania, some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago. Scientists put the most likely date for when he lived at around 50,000 years ago. His descendants became the only lineage to survive outside of Africa, making him the common ancestor of every non-African man living today.

But why would man have first ventured out of the familiar African hunting grounds and into unexplored lands? It is likely that a fluctuation in climate may have provided the impetus for your ancestors' exodus out of Africa.

The African ice age was characterized by drought rather than by cold. It was around 50,000 years ago that the ice sheets of northern Europe began to melt, introducing a period of warmer temperatures and moister climate in Africa. Parts of the inhospitable Sahara briefly became habitable. As the drought-ridden desert changed to a savanna, the animals hunted by your ancestors expanded their range and began moving through the newly emerging green corridor of grasslands. Your nomadic ancestors followed the good weather and the animals they hunted, although the exact route they followed remains to be determined.

In addition to a favorable change in climate, around this same time there was a great leap forward in modern humans' intellectual capacity. Many scientists believe that the emergence of language gave us a huge advantage over other early human species. Improved tools and weapons, the ability to plan ahead and cooperate with one another, and an increased capacity to exploit resources in ways we hadn't been able to earlier, all allowed modern humans to rapidly migrate to new territories, exploit new resources, and replace other hominids.

M89: Moving Through the Middle East

Fast Facts

Time of Emergence: 45,000 years ago

Place: Northern Africa or the Middle East

Climate: Middle East: Semiarid grass plains

Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Tens of thousands

Tools and Skills: Stone, ivory, wood tools

The next male ancestor in your ancestral lineage is the man who gave rise to M89, a marker found in 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans. This man was born around 45,000 years ago in northern Africa or the Middle East.

The first people to leave Africa likely followed a coastal route that eventually ended in Australia. Your ancestors followed the expanding grasslands and plentiful game to the Middle East and beyond, and were part of the second great wave of migration out of Africa.

Beginning about 40,000 years ago, the climate shifted once again and became colder and more arid. Drought hit Africa and the grasslands reverted to desert, and for the next 20,000 years, the Saharan Gateway was effectively closed. With the desert impassable, your ancestors had two options: remain in the Middle East, or move on. Retreat back to the home continent was not an option.

While many of the descendants of M89 remained in the Middle East, others continued to follow the great herds of buffalo, antelope, woolly mammoths, and other game through what is now modern-day Iran to the vast steppes of Central Asia.

These semiarid grass-covered plains formed an ancient "superhighway" stretching from eastern France to Korea. Your ancestors, having migrated north out of Africa into the Middle East, then traveled both east and west along this Central Asian superhighway. A smaller group continued moving north from the Middle East to Anatolia and the Balkans, trading familiar grasslands for forests and high country.

M9: The Eurasian Clan Spreads Wide and Far

Fast Facts

Time of Emergence: 40,000 years ago

Place: Iran or southern Central Asia

Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Tens of thousands

Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic

Your next ancestor, a man born around 40,000 years ago in Iran or southern Central Asia, gave rise to a genetic marker known as M9, which marked a new lineage diverging from the M89 Middle Eastern Clan. His descendants, of which you are one, spent the next 30,000 years populating much of the planet.

This large lineage, known as the Eurasian Clan, dispersed gradually over thousands of years. Seasoned hunters followed the herds ever eastward, along the vast super highway of Eurasian steppe. Eventually their path was blocked by the massive mountain ranges of south Central Asia—the Hindu Kush, the Tian Shan, and the Himalayas.

The three mountain ranges meet in a region known as the "Pamir Knot," located in present-day Tajikistan. Here the tribes of hunters split into two groups. Some moved north into Central Asia, others moved south into what is now Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent.

These different migration routes through the Pamir Knot region gave rise to separate lineages.

Most people native to the Northern Hemisphere trace their roots to the Eurasian Clan. Nearly all North Americans and East Asians are descended from the man described above, as are most Europeans and many Indians.

M45: The Journey Through Central Asia

Fast Facts

Time of Emergence: 35,000

Place of Origin: Central Asia

Climate: Glaciers expanding over much of Europe

Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Approximately 100,000

Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic

The next marker of your genetic heritage, M45, arose around 35,000 years ago, in a man born in Central Asia. He was part of the M9 Eurasian Clan that had moved to the north of the mountainous Hindu Kush and onto the game-rich steppes of present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and southern Siberia.

Although big game was plentiful, the environment on the Eurasian steppes became increasing hostile as the glaciers of the Ice Age began to expand once again. The reduction in rainfall may have induced desertlike conditions on the southern steppes, forcing your ancestors to follow the herds of game north.

To exist in such harsh conditions, they learned to build portable animal-skin shelters and to create weaponry and hunting techniques that would prove successful against the much larger animals they encountered in the colder climates. They compensated for the lack of stone they traditionally used to make weapons by developing smaller points and blades—microliths—that could be mounted to bone or wood handles and used effectively. Their tool kit also included bone needles for sewing animal-skin clothing that would both keep them warm and allow them the range of movement needed to hunt the reindeer and mammoth that kept them fed.

Your ancestors' resourcefulness and ability to adapt was critical to survival during the last ice age in Siberia, a region where no other hominid species is known to have lived.

The M45 Central Asian Clan gave rise to many more; the man who was its source is the common ancestor of most Europeans and nearly all Native American men.

M207: Leaving Central Asia

Fast Facts

Time of Emergence: 30,000

Place of Origin: Central Asia

Climate: Glaciers expanding over much of Europe and western Eurasia

Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Approximately 100,000

Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic

After spending considerable time in Central Asia, refining skills to survive in harsh new conditions and exploit new resources, a group from the Central Asian Clan began to head west towards the European subcontinent.

An individual in this clan carried the new M207 mutation on his Y chromosome. His descendants ultimately split into two distinct groups, with one continuing onto the European subcontinent, and the other group turning south and eventually making it as far as India.

Your lineage falls within the first haplogroup, R1, and gave rise to the first modern humans to move into Europe and eventually colonize the continent.

M173: Colonizing Europe—The First Modern Europeans

Fast Facts

Time of Emergence: Around 30,000 years ago

Place: Central Asia

Climate: Ice Age

Estimated Number of Homo sapiens: Approximately 100,000

Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic

As your ancestors continued to move west, a man born around 30,000 years ago in Central Asia gave rise to a lineage defined by the genetic marker M173. His descendants were part of the first large wave of humans to reach Europe.

During this period, the Eurasian steppelands extended from present-day Germany, and possibly France, to Korea and China. The climate fostered a land rich in resources and opened a window into Europe.

Your ancestors' arrival in Europe heralded the end of the era of the Neandertals, a hominid species that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from about 29,000 to 230,000 years ago. Better communication skills, weapons, and resourcefulness probably enabled your ancestors to outcompete Neandertals for scarce resources.

This wave of migration into Western Europe marked the appearance and spread of what archaeologists call the Aurignacian culture. The culture is distinguished by significant innovations in methods of manufacturing tools, more standardization of tools, and a broader set of tool types, such as end-scrapers for preparing animal skins and tools for woodworking.

In addition to stone, the first modern humans to reach Europe used bone, ivory, antler, and shells as part of their tool kit. Bracelets and pendants made of shells, teeth, ivory, and carved bone appear at many sites. Jewelry, often an indication of status, suggests a more complex social organization was beginning to develop.

The large number of archaeological sites found in Europe from around 30,000 years ago indicates that there was an increase in population size.

Around 20,000 years ago, the climate window shut again, and expanding ice sheets forced your ancestors to move south to Spain, Italy, and the Balkans. As the ice retreated and temperatures became warmer, beginning about 12,000 years ago, many descendants of M173 moved north again to repopulate places that had become inhospitable during the Ice Age.

Not surprisingly, today the number of descendants of the man who gave rise to marker M173 remains very high in Western Europe. It is particularly concentrated in northern France and the British Isles where it was carried by ancestors who had weathered the Ice Age in Spain.

M343: Direct Descendants of Cro-Magnon

Fast Facts

Time of Emergence: Around 30,000 years ago

Place of Origin: Western Europe

Climate: Ice sheets continuing to creep down Northern Europe

Estimated Number of Homo sapiens:

Tools and Skills: Upper Paleolithic

Around 30,000 years ago, a descendant of the clan making its way into Europe gave rise to marker M343, the defining marker of your haplogroup. You are a direct descendent of the people who dominated the human expansion into Europe, the Cro-Magnon.

The Cro-Magnon are responsible for the famous cave paintings found in southern France. These spectacular paintings provide archaeological evidence that there was a sudden blossoming of artistic skills as your ancestors moved into Europe. Prior to this, artistic endeavors were mostly comprised of jewelry made of shell, bone, and ivory; primitive musical instruments; and stone carvings.

The cave paintings of the Cro-Magnon depict animals like bison, deer, rhinoceroses, and horses, and natural events important to Paleolithic life such as spring molting, hunting, and pregnancy. The paintings are far more intricate, detailed, and colorful than anything seen prior to this period.

Your ancestors knew how to make woven clothing using the natural fibers of plants, and had relatively advanced tools of stone, bone, and ivory. Their jewelry, carvings, and intricate, colorful cave paintings bear witness to the Cro-Magnons' advanced culture during the last glacial age.

This is where your genetic trail, as we know it today, ends. However, be sure to revisit these pages. As additional data are collected and analyzed, more will be learned about your place in the history of the men and women who first populated the Earth. We will be updating these stories throughout the life of the project.

Antony and Cleopatra, The Shakespeare Theatre

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

General Thoughts

It is important to be aware that this play is based on actual historical figures and historical events. The play was based on Plutarch’s history of Roman figures.

To me, however, this play is not solely about history; it is about emotional changes that occur in the lives of people, and about how history is shaped and changed by the emotional changes that occur in the lives of historical figures. This play is about Mark Antony’s letting go of his passion to be a great soldier and political figure, and becoming more enmeshed in his feelings, his emotional needs, for hedonism and for love. After Antony became focused on Cleopatra, he made numerous critical military and political errors that led to his downfall. Where he had previously been a great military general, he became ineffectual. And as in all lives, as we let go of our passion for our profession, someone else is there to fill the void. In Antony’s case, Octavius Caesar was there to fill the void left by Antony’s emotional departure.

How many times in life do we see famous and not so famous people reach a point in their lives when their mental focus changes from achievements in their profession to pleasure in one form or another. Sometimes, they become interested in drugs, or sexual pleasures, or perhaps in some other activity. And as their focus changes, their achievements in their profession diminish, often ending their professional careers. In this play and in history, Antony and Cleopatra lost their positions and their lives as their focus changed.

The Play

(This summary is based on background information from The Shakespeare Theatre website and from Isaac Asimov’s Guide To Shakespeare.)

Shakespeare was a showman, a producer of successful plays. For Shakespeare, setting five of his plays in the Roman Empire was good business. English school children read the works of the great Roman writers as the foundation of their classical education. A new translation of the historian Plutarch’s biography of the great Romans sold well, and plays about Rome filled theatres. In fact, the name of Julius Caesar appears in 17 different plays by Shakespeare, including his plays about English history.

Shakespeare’s England (itself a burgeoning empire in the 1590s) saw itself as the intellectual and historical heir to Rome. “To Shakespeare’s original audiences,” writes the scholar Marjorie Garber, “a play about ancient Rome was not an escapist document about a faraway world, but a powerful lesson in ethics and statecraft. The Elizabethan view of history suggested that the Romans provided models of conduct, that history taught, and that its lessons could—and should—be learned.”

After opening the Globe Theatre with his popular Julius Caesar in 1599 (based on Plutarch’s Roman history), William Shakespeare spent the next few years writing his great tragedies Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear. He then returned to Plutarch’s history with Antony and Cleopatra in 1607.

In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare portrayed the last days of the Roman Republic. The conspirators assassinated Julius Caesar because they believed he was destroying their way of life and ushering in a new era of one-man rule, which would replace the republican virtues with the decadence of an empire.

After the death of Caesar, Mark Antony, the great war general under Caesar, defeated Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 B.C. Then Antony, Octavius Caesar, and Lepidus formed a Triumvirate to rule the Roman Republic. Octavius was Caesar’s teenaged great-nephew; he was given Western Europe for his third of the Republic. Lepidus was awarded Africa; and Antony took the Eastern provinces.

According to Asimov, the East suited Mark Antony well; he was a soldier and a hedonist who had never gotten along well in Rome and preferred the Eastern provinces. Although Antony ruled the Eastern provinces, his passion for war and politics waned, and he became more emotionally drawn to hedonism. He made his headquarters in Tarsus, from which he summoned Cleopatra in 41 B.C. for the purpose of extorting money as a way of her retaining her position of Queen of Egypt. However, when Cleopatra arrived to meet him, Mark Antony’s life changed forever.

Plutarch described the scene of Cleopatra’s arrival in Tarsus, and Shakespeare improved the description with his poetic imagination.

"The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did."

When Cleopatra invited Mark Antony to board her barge, he went in what was almost a hypnotic trance, and was her slave from that moment.

Some scholars might object that there are fundamental inconsistencies between the two plays in the character of Mark Antony. In Julius Caesar, Antony comes across as a master politician, able to manipulate the mob in Rome and defeat Caesar’s assassins in the public forum and on the battlefield. By contrast, in Antony and Cleopatra, he appears to be militarily incompetent and politically ineffective, frittering away his share of imperial command for the sake of his sensual indulgence with Cleopatra. Which is the real Antony—the Master of the West or the Playboy of the Eastern World? He was both.

Already in Julius Caesar, Antony appears as something of a playboy, foreshadowing his role in the later play. Julius Caesar says that he prefers the fun-loving Antony to men obsessed with politics like Cassius:

“He loves no plays, as thou dost, Antony;
He hears no music.”

Indeed, Antony evidently has a reputation as a party animal in Rome. When he shows up to accompany Caesar to the Senate in the morning, Julius is surprised:

“See! Antony, that revels long a-nights,
Is notwithstanding up.”

In Antony’s bitter confrontation with the conspirators before the battle of Philippi, Cassius harks back to his reputation as “a reveller.” In fact, the conspirators fatally underestimate Antony’s political capacity precisely because of his playboy image. In deciding not to kill Antony along with Caesar, Brutus dismisses his political importance:

“He is given to sports, to wildness, and much company.”

He was generally thought of as a political lightweight, more interested in partying than ruling the city. What, then, transforms Antony into the powerful political force we see in Julius Caesar? The answer is the murder of Julius Caesar, to whom Antony felt complete loyalty. In a heroic act of self-mastery, Antony pulls himself together in the political crisis created by the assassination and devotes himself whole-heartedly to avenging his lord’s death and bringing down the conspirators. The memory of Julius Caesar gives Antony a cause worth fighting for, and, if need be, dying for. To Antony, Julius Caesar was:

“The noblest man / That ever lived in the tide of times.”

But the fact that it takes Caesar’s death to transform Antony from a playboy to a master politician has ominous implications for his future. It threatens to leave a void in his life once he accomplishes his revenge and no longer has Caesar as a cause to fight for. In Julius Caesar, his master’s death taught Antony a lesson in the vanity of ordinary political achievement:

“O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils
Shrunk to this little measure?”

Given this insight, it is no wonder that Antony does not pursue political power with the single-mindedness of his rival Octavius.

Antony’s meeting of Cleopatra and his disillusionment with the imperial political system reignite the impulses that only his devotion to Julius Caesar held in check. As Cleopatra comes to mean more and more to Antony, Rome comes to mean less and less. Cleopatra becomes the justification of his very existence.

Although he was young, Caesar’s teenaged great-nephew and heir Octavius was one of the master politicians of history. He deftly stepped into the void created by Antony’s change of focus and began his march to take control of all of the Roman Republic. First, he officially changed his name to Julius Caesar, immediately winning the loyalty of both the people and Caesar’s military legions on the historical strength of the name alone. He then embarked on a systematic propaganda campaign to depict Antony as an enemy of Rome. He made sure that all of Rome knew of Antony’s associations with the shameless foreign queen, Cleopatra. “Contemning Rome, he has done all this,” says Shakespeare’s Octavius, erasing Antony’s history as a defender of Rome and of Caesar’s memory. He read Antony’s private will in the Senate, revealing that Antony had made his children with Cleopatra his heirs and had requested to be buried in Egypt.

For his part, Antony critically underestimated Octavius’ skill. Shakespeare’s Antony sees himself as an invincible general and cannot conceive of losing a battle to Octavius, whom he remembers as a boy who “no practice had in the brave squares of war.” When he loses to Octavius’ talented lieutenants, the shame is too great to bear. Octavius portrays Antony as a hopeless case and an enemy of Rome, and Antony’s allies defect to Octavius without resistance. Dogged by his own history, by the memory of the great man he used to be, Antony would prefer death to “the inevitable prosecution of disgrace and horror.” The man who had shaped history so skillfully at Caesar’s funeral now becomes one of its victims.

Cleopatra

By all accounts, Cleopatra was no ordinary woman.

Cleopatra was not “Egyptian”; she was Greek. Egypt had become the kingdom of Cleopatra’s forebears in 323 B.C. when one of the generals of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, seized Egypt. From that time, his descendants, each named Ptolemy, ruled Egypt. All of the Ptolemys married Greeks, and all of the rulers of Egypt were completely Greek. They did not even speak Egyptian; they spoke Greek. A number of the Ptolemaic queens were named Cleopatra, meaning “glory of her father” in Greek. The Cleopatra in this play was Cleopatra VII.

When Cleopatra met Mark Antony, she was 28 years old. She was born in 69 B.C. and succeeded to the throne when she was only 17, on the death of her father. In 48 B.C., Julius Caesar landed in Alexandria in pursuit of Pompey. Cleopatra realized that the real power in the world lay in Rome, and she formed a liaison with Caesar and had a son with him. Seven years later, when she was summoned to Tarsus by Mark Antony, she again took the action that was necessary to retain her kingdom in seducing Antony.

In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare gave us the greatest description of complete feminine charm the world of literature has ever offered. He said of the possibility of Antony leaving Cleopatra:

“Never; he will not;
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.”

And by comparison, other women were like Octavia:

“Octavia is of a holy, cold and still conversation.”

Cleopatra was "an infinite variety". When other women left a man satisfied, Cleopatra only made him hungrier for more of her. And when she was wanton, the holy priests themselves blessed her.

Incidentally, I felt that this play was not well cast. Cleopatra was 28 years old when she met Marc Antony, and only 40 when she died. She had three children with him. But the woman who was cast in the role of Cleopatra in this play was Suzanne Bertish, a British actress of 55, who looked every day of her age. I felt that she was FAR too old to play Cleopatra.

Daemons

The Greeks believed that with each individual was associated a divine spirit through which the influence of the gods could make itself felt. It was when this influence was most strongly felt that a man could attain heights otherwise impossible to him. If a spirit was continually felt, a man would be of unusual power and ability. This belief was elaborated that each individual was thought to have two such spirits, one for good and one for evil, the two continually fighting for mastery.

To the Greeks, such a spirit was called a "daimon" -- meaning "divinity" -- or "guardian spirit"; the Latin spelling was "daemon". Later, the Christians cast these daemons, being pagan beliefs, as evil, and therefore we get our present "demon", meaning an evil spirit. However, the Greek idea lives on today; we still speak of "guardian angels" and sometimes we envision an individual as being influenced by his better or worse nature.

The soothsayer in the play tells Antony that Octavius Caesar's daemon is inferior to Antony's, but it can still win, so Antony should avoid Octavius.

"Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side,
Thy daemon, thy spirit which keeps thee, is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
Where Caesar's is not. But near him, thy angel
Becomes afeared, as being o'erpow'red: therefore,
Make space enough between you."

Synopsis of the play

Antony, Octavius and Lepidus rule the Roman Empire, but Antony has fallen in love with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra and disregards all news from Rome. When Antony hears that his wife, Fulvia, has died, however, he returns home.

In order to pacify Octavius, who is under attack from the late Pompey’s son, Antony agrees to marry Octavius’ sister, Octavia. Antony, Octavius and Lepidus meet with Pompey before the battle and instead sign a treaty to stave off war.

As soon as Antony and Octavia depart for Greece, Octavius immediately starts a new war on Pompey in defiance of the treaty with Antony and Lepidus. Octavia goes to Rome to patch up the quarrel, where Octavius informs her that Antony has fled to Cleopatra in Egypt.

Angry at his sister’s humiliation, Octavius sails east to fight Antony at sea. Cleopatra offers her navy to supplement Antony’s, but she retreats in the middle of the battle, and Antony follows her.

Antony returns to battle and defeats Octavius by land. But Octavius wins another sea battle, and Cleopatra’s navy surrenders, enraging Antony. Despondent at his rejection, she goes to her monument and sends word to Antony that she has died. Antony falls on his sword, only to learn too late of her ruse. He asks to be taken to Cleopatra and dies in her arms.

Learning that Octavius intends to bring her to Rome as a prisoner, Cleopatra kills herself with poisonous snakes smuggled into the monument. Finding her dead, Octavius promises to bury her with Antony.

After defeating Antony and Cleopatra in battle, Octavius finished the job his great-uncle Caesar had begun; the Senate granted him dictatorial powers, and the Roman Empire was founded. Caesar’s ghost of history could finally rest, and Octavius received the new name Augustus (“the lofty one”) – the same Augustus Caesar in the Bible.

Washington Post review.

The Miracle At Speedy Motors, Alexander McCall Smith

The Miracle At Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith has given us another gentle story about a gentle woman who is ostensibly a private detective, but who really is a loving philosopher of life. Mma Precious Ramotswe again shows by her daily life how a gentle, loving woman can influence those around her and improve their lives. Again she helps people solve the problems that arise in their daily lives, and she teaches them about love and forgiveness and the importance of enjoying the simple pleasures in life.

In Alexander McCall Smith’s mind, Mma Ramotswe lives life slowly. She does not hurry through life. She understands and accepts the weaknesses and faults in others, and she sees and accepts her own faults as well. She finds ways of dealing with the faults in others in a gentle, forgiving manner. Her intent is to find peace and happiness in life, rather than conflict, and she constantly teaches these principles to those around her.

Alexander McCall Smith’s books are character studies. This series is not about solving crimes, it is about the daily lives of the characters in the story. In reading Alexander McCall Smith’s books, I am reminded of “character actors” in Hollywood. Alexander McCall Smith’s characters are “character actors”. They are not superstars. Alexander McCall Smith develops his characters slowly, and yet with beautiful detail to ensure that we know them fully, that we understand them and appreciate them. They are not great characters; they are the people we would meet in daily life, with all their flaws and weaknesses, and also all their strengths. We see them struggle with the problems they face in life, and also their own character flaws. We see their daily failures, and also their little triumphs. And in the end, Alexander McCall Smith’s characters find a happy end of the day, knowing that another day faces them tomorrow.

The ability of Alexander McCall Smith to develop characters can be seen by the great variety of characters in his books. They range from the gentle characters in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, to the over-ambitious mother, Isabel, in the 44 Scotland Street series, to the wildly ridiculous characters in his Portuguese Irregular Verbs and The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs.

Alexander McCall Smith, Politics and Prose Bookstore

On April 17, 2008, Alexander McCall Smith visited Politics and Prose to discuss his latest book, The Miracle at Speedy Motors, the ninth installment of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Actually, he didn't discuss the book, but instead talked about the writing process.

Having read all of his books, I had formed an impression of the author as a rumpled, gentle man with a warm spirit. Instead, I found a man who was sharply dressed in a brown, pin striped suit that seemed to be from the 1920s, but might have been current in his native Scotland. And rather than being gentle, he displayed a razor sharp wit. He laughed as he constantly ridiculed and poked fun at one person or another, completely at odds with his gentle books. He told stories about readers who contacted him to correct something he had written, or to suggest to him that his story was incorrect and should be changed in some way. He gave advice about cutting of a "know it all"; he said one should always quote Proust, not because he admired Proust, but because the other person would have nothing left to say to top that.

He talked about the writing process for him. He said that he writes for several hours in the early morning, and then puts his work aside for the remainder of the day. He said that he types his books, rather than dictating them, and he described the subconscious process of writing. He said that somehow when he tried to tell a story orally, he failed completely. His stories seemed to come to him only when he typed them. He said that when he wrote the books in this series, almost no editing was needed at all. He typed the finished product. He said that he never had a story in mind when he began writing, but just let it come to him as he worked.

He said that when he wrote his first book, he had not intended to write a story about a woman detective, but about Botswana. However, as he began to type, the story of Mma Precious Ramotswe began to take shape. He said that after the success of the first book, he developed a disease that he called "serial novelist", in which a writer becomes addicted to writing books about the same character or theme. He has also written two other series, and he said that his favorite book is The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs because it is so impossibly ridiculous. His choice of that book matched his personality, which was also filled with ridicule and laughter.

He said that a movie has been made of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, and that it will be released in September 2008. He said that he had seen the film, and he loved it. He was pleased to report that the characters and the story were true to the books. He also said that a BBC/HBO series of 13 one-hour episodes has already been made, and will be shown in the Fall.