5,300 Year Old Ice Man, Our Ancestor

How cool is this?!  My husband and I have done DNA testing with multiple providers.  This is copied from his 23andme profile.

Maternal Haplogroup

You descend from a long line of women that can be traced back to eastern Africa over 150,000 years ago. These are the women of your maternal line, and your maternal haplogroup sheds light on their story.

Your maternal haplogroup is K1b1a1.

As our ancestors ventured out of eastern Africa, they branched off in diverse groups that crossed and recrossed the globe over tens of thousands of years. Some of their migrations can be traced through haplogroups, families of lineages that descend from a common ancestor. Your maternal haplogroup can reveal the path followed by the women of your maternal line.

Migrations of Your Maternal Line

Haplogroup L

180,000 Years Ago

If every person living today could trace his or her maternal line back over thousands of generations, all of our lines would meet at a single woman who lived in eastern Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. Though she was one of perhaps thousands of women alive at the time, only the diverse branches of her haplogroup have survived to today. The story of your maternal line begins with her.

K1
22,000
Years Ago

Origin and Migrations of Haplogroup K1

Haplogroup K1 is a relatively old branch of haplogroup K that traces back to a woman who lived approximately 22,000 years ago. She and her early descendants likely lived in the Middle East, where the K haplogroup traces its origins and continues to have a strong presence. Then, about 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, some women carrying K1 likely joined early migrations that moved west into Europe. The Ice Age was ending and temperate forests spread over the previously frigid continent. Human populations that had been blocked by massive ice sheets now expanded into the interior. Others came later, entering Europe with the spread of agriculture from the Middle East about 8,000 years ago.

Today, members of K1 can be found throughout Europe, the Middle East, and even in Central Asia.

K1b1a1

8,000 Years Ago

Your maternal haplogroup, K1b1a1, traces back to a woman who lived approximately 8,000 years ago.

That’s nearly 320 generations ago! What happened between then and now? As researchers and citizen scientists discover more about your haplogroup, new details may be added to the story of your maternal line.
 K1b1a1 TodayK1b1a1 is relatively uncommon among 23andMe customers.
Today, you share your haplogroup with all the maternal-line descendants of the common ancestor of K1b1a1, including other 23andMe customers.
1 in 1,200
23andMe customers share your haplogroup assignment.

Ötzi the Ice Man also belonged to haplogroup K

Ötzi was named for the Ötztal Mountains

Ötzi the Iceman was discovered in 1991, protruding from a snow-bank high in the Alps near the Austrian-Italian border. His 5,300-year-old remains turned out to be so well preserved that researchers were able to construct a detailed account of his life and death. Chemical analysis of Ötzi’s teeth indicates he came from the Italian side of the Alps. He had suffered during the year before his death with whipworm, a stomach parasite that was found in his digestive tract. Yet he was fit enough to climb 6,500 feet in elevation during the day or two before he met his end in a rocky alpine hollow. Ötzi apparently was murdered, struck by a stone arrow point that was found lodged in his left shoulder. The twisted position of his body indicates that the murderer, or one of his accomplices, pulled the arrow’s shaft out of Ötzi’s prone body.

Yet whoever killed Ötzi did not take the valuable and finely wrought copper axe that he carried with him — an indicator that at the age of 45, the Ice Man may have been a figure of some importance in his community. Recently, scientists who were able to extract DNA from Ötzi’s remains discovered that he belonged to haplogroup K, which reaches levels of 20 to 30% in present-day populations in the region. But Ötzi’s maternal line, which fell into the K1 family of haplogroup K, did not match any of the branches that are known today. His maternal line must have died out in the 5,300 years since Ötzi’s death.

The Genetics of Maternal Haplogroups

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