The Long Journey of My Little Y Chromosomes: The Origins of One Viking Family

By Richard Donovan Glover

In Central West Africa over a quarter of a million year ago, mankind evolved to become the very first known genetically and anatomically modern humans - Homo Sapiens. 140,000 years ago some of these modern humans migrated to the Great Rift Valley and Ethiopia, where almost all non-African people living today originated. More than 70,000 years ago, some of their descendants moved across the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula, where 90%, of the Worlds existing non-African population originated. Many thousands of years later, some of these huntergatherers moved north. Because of climate change their black skin changed to the olive brown of the Middle East, some of them later, migrated to the Caucasus and the Southern Eurasian Steppe grasslands. A few went east to Siberia and Northern Asia and eventually to the Americas, mutations changing their bodily features as they went. Others moved east and south, to India and Australasia. 40,000 years ago, after moving further north to the vast colder Northern Eurasian Steppes, mutations again took place, with the people adapting to the climate, by changing their hair, skin and eye colour, to a lighter hue. My own paternal haplogroup eventually moved west from the Eurasian Steppes to the fjords of Norway, becoming Viking warriors who raided the British Isles. They eventually settled here in the 11th century with the family name Manningham, changing to Glover in the 17th century. My maternal ancestors moved from being some of the first farmers in Anatolia to become the Anglo-Saxons in North West Europe, who invaded and settled in South East England over 1,400 years ago. Over the centuries, some members of these families settled in the United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, helping to build these new countries to what they are today. Some towns and cities are named after them. If you are a member of one of these now very wide families, or simply interested in the early history of mankind, I hope you will find this little book of interest.
- Richard Donovan Glover

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546287582

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© 2018 Richard Donovan Glover. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/16/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8759-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8758-2 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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CONTENTS

Preface

1 Map Of The Long Journey Of My Little Y Chromosomes

2 Introduction

3 DNA And Its Workings

4 Climate Change And Adam And Eve

5 The Start Of The Long Journey

6 The Sahara And The Neanderthals

7 The Deep-Ancestry Haplogroups: A-00, A-L1085, A-P305, And M42

8 Mount Toba And Its Effects On Climate Change

9 Mutations M168 And M143

10 Maternal Haplogroup L3(N): The Nile Route

11 The Middle East Routes: Mutations M143, M89, M578, And P-M128 (K-M9)

12 South-West Asian Route: Mutation P-M45; Eurasian Routes: Mutations R-M207 (R), R-M173 (R1), R-M420 (R1a), R-M198 (R1a1), And R-M17/M512 (R1a1a)

13 Maternal Haplogroup T (T1, T2, And T2b): The First Farmers And The Linear Pottery Culture

14 The Eurasian Steppe, The Kurgans, And The Proto-Indo-European Language

15 Westward Expansions And Norway: R-L664 (R 1a1a1a) And The Early Bronze Age

16 The Viking Propensity: The British Isles And The Vikings

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Notes

Haplogroups

PREFACE

From a young age, I wanted to trace my family’s history, hoping to get back to the very beginning of modern mankind – seemingly a ridiculous and impossible task! However, inspiration came to me in the 1950s whilst serving in the Royal Air Force. I was stationed for two years at Castel Benito in Libya, which was situated on a sandy, unmetalled road leading from Tripoli into the Sahara. Many times, it intrigued me to see people passing our camp on foot – some with shoes, some without, all with differing skin colours and facial features. I realised many of them must have walked hundreds or even thousands of miles across the desert towards Tripoli, hoping for a better life. A few of them obviously came from tropical Africa, with their ebony skin; some were the Tuaregs and other tribes of the desert, with their much-weathered dark-brown skin; and others were the Arabs of North Africa, with their lighter olive-brown skin, all in comparison to the former colonial Italians, with their tanned white skin. I was determined then to learn all about human migrations and the evolution that went along with them.

In the following pages, I’ve tried to explain these and other bodily differences and why they came about. These travellers along this sandy road descended from the people who had had various mutations many thousands of years earlier.

I’ve tried to bring this fascinating story to you in an easily readable form. The male Y chromosomes and the female X mitochondria in the cells of everyone alive today have travelled a 270,000-year journey, from the time of the first known