23andme-My Haplogroup mtDNA L2a1c1

ANTONIO FLORENTINO

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ANTONIO FLORENTINO

Maternal Haplogroup

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.

ANTONIO, your maternal haplogroup is L2a1c1.

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

180,000 Years Ago

Haplogroup L

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.

88,000 Years Ago

Haplogroup L2

Your branch of L is haplogroup L2, which arose from a woman who lived in Africa almost 90,000 years ago. More recently — in fact, only 4,000 years ago — her descendants were a part of the major Bantu migrations which carried them from central Africa to the east and south and made L2 the most common haplogroup among Africans.

24,000 Years Ago

Origin and Migrations of Haplogroup L2a1

Your maternal line stems from a branch of haplogroup L2 called L2a1. L2a1 is a widespread branch that arose approximately 24,000 years ago. At the peak of the Last Ice Age 20,000 years ago, the Sahara Desert became entirely uninhabitable and began expanding to the south. People in central Africa bearing L2a1 began journeying in two directions: east toward the cooler climate of the eastern highlands, and west towards the Atlantic coast.

Then, beginning about 4,000 years ago, two sub-branches of L2a1 — L2a1a and L2a1b — were swept up with the Bantu-speaking people of West Africa. These people, who had been practicing farming for a thousand years or more, began to expand their territory and gradually introduced both their language and their way of life to their eastern and southern neighbors. Today, both L2a1a and L2a1b are well-represented in Southeast Africa.

L2a1 is also quite common among the descendants of Africans in North and South America. Its high frequency is probably due to the concentration of L2a1 in West Africa, which was the main supply region for the Atlantic slave trade.

L2a1c1

7,000 Years Ago

Your maternal haplogroup, L2a1c1, traces back to a woman who lived approximately 7,000 years ago.

That's nearly 280 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.

Today

L2a1c1 is relatively uncommon among 23andMe customers.

Today, you share your haplogroup with all the maternal-line descendants of the common ancestor of L2a1c1, including other 23andMe customers.

1 in 5,100

23andMe customers share your haplogroup assignment.

The Bantu Expansion transformed the cultural and genetic landscape of Africa.

Paths of the Bantu Migrations

About 5,000 years ago, many people in sub-Saharan Africa still relied on hunting, gathering, and foraging as their main means of collecting food. But that was soon going to change. People in West-Central Africa began experimenting with agriculture, cultivating the yams, legumes, peppers, and gourds that would became staples of sub-Saharan African diet. These people spoke languages belonging to the Bantu language family, and about 4,000 years ago they began to move.

First, they headed east across the central rainforest. Eventually, the descendants of these migrants arrived at the farthest reaches of southern Africa. Later, other Bantu speakers who had remained in West Africa also began to travel down the western coast. As they traveled over a period of centuries, they both displaced and absorbed many other hunter-gatherer groups that were already living throughout Africa.Their agricultural and technological knowledge also diffused to other local groups. They often intermarried, sometimes adopting local cultural practices of those people they encountered. The languages that they brought with them from their ancestral homeland spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and today the majority of sub-Saharan African languages are Bantu.

The Genetics of Maternal Haplogroups

• Mitochondrial DNA

  Maternal haplogroups are determined by sets of genetic variants in a tiny, unusual loop of DNA called mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). As the name suggests, mtDNA is found in the mitochondria, small but mighty structures inside our cells that turn fuel from the food we eat into energy.

  Mitochondria evolved over billions of years from an independent bacterial cell that was engulfed by another cell. Instead of becoming lunch, the bacterium helped its new host use oxygen to produce energy. Over time it completely lost its independence and became an integrated part of the larger cell.

  

• Maternal Haplogroup Tree

  MtDNA is a powerful tool for tracing the history of maternal lines because of the way it is inherited: everyone has mtDNA, but only mothers pass it down to their children. So, you inherited a copy of your mother's mtDNA, who inherited it from her mother, who inherited it from hers, and so on through the generations along an unbroken line of women.

  The copies passed down are not always perfectly identical, however. Small typos in the mtDNA sequence occasionally occur, creating new genetic variants. Over many generations, these variants stack up in unique patterns that are carried by different maternal lines around the world.

  

• Maternal Haplogroup Tree

  By comparing the mtDNA patterns from around the world, researchers identify families of maternal lines. All the lines within each family trace back to a single common ancestor, and share a set of mtDNA variants that they inherited from her.

  In fact, when we look very far back in time, all the maternal lines around the world trace back to one woman! Along with her ancestors, she forms the root of a great tree that shows how all maternal lines are related. Each sub-family in this tree is called a "haplogroup" and named with a sequence of letters and numbers that reflect its location in the tree.

  See your line in the tree of all maternal haplogroups. 

• Tracing Female Migrations

  Next, geneticists study the relationships between haplogroups and compare them with the distribution of each group around the world. Because closely related haplogroups tend to share geographic roots, researchers can play a sophisticated version of connect-the-dots to estimate the origins and migration patterns of particular haplogroups.

  Finally, combining this genetic evidence with data from other fields of study helps researchers place the story of each maternal line within the broader context of human history.

  

Do more with your Haplogroup results.

Contribute to research and help us understand patterns of genetic variation around the world.

Visit DNA Relatives to identify relatives that may be on your maternal line.

Scientific Details

Your haplogroup is determined by your mitochondrial DNA.

Each generation, mothers pass down copies of their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to their children. While most of your genome exists in 23 pairs of chromosomes that exchange pieces between generations in a process called recombination, mtDNA is transmitted unshuffled. Because of this unusual pattern of inheritance, mtDNA contains rich information about maternal lineages.

A small number of DNA changes, called mutations, generally occur from one generation to the next. Because mtDNA does not recombine between generations, these mutations accumulate in patterns that uniquely mark individual lineages. Scientists can compare the sequence differences that result by constructing a tree. This tree shows how maternal lineages relate to one another, including the observation that they all share a most recent common ancestor approximately 150,000 to 200,000 years ago.

The term "haplogroup" refers to a family of lineages that share a common ancestor and, therefore, a particular set of mutations. We identify your haplogroup by determining which branches of the mtDNA tree correspond to your DNA. Because more closely related lineages tend to share geographic roots, your haplogroup can provide insight into the origins of some of your ancient maternal-line ancestors.

Maternal haplogroups are named with sequences of letters and numbers that reflect the structure of the tree and how the branches relate to one another.

References

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Change Log

Your report may occasionally be updated based on new information. This Change Log describes updates and revisions to this report.

Date	Change
May 8, 2017	The standalone Maternal Haplogroup report was created, featuring new design elements and content.
Oct. 21, 2015	Haplogroups report created.

ANTONIO FLORENTINO's Report, printed on 2022-04-25 UTC

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