Get to know Keith's maternal ancestors. Discover your own.

Keith's Ancestral Map

Keith is part of a maternal line that scientists have labeled haplogroup K. The map below showswhere people of haplogroup K lived around 500 years ago, before modern transportation allowedpeople to easily move from continent to continent.

K split off the more ancient haplogroup U8 about 35,000 years ago. Since then, haplogroup K hasbeen involved in migrations from the Near East into Europe, most notably the founding andexpansion of Ashkenazi Jewish populations.

Quick Facts

Haplogroup: K

Age: 35,000 years

Region: Near East, Europe, Central Asia, Northern Africa

Populations: Ashkenazi, Druze, Kurds

Highlight: One branch of haplogroup K ties about 1.7 million Ashkenazi Jews living today to asingle maternal ancestor.

Keith's Ancestral History

IntroductionK branched off haplogroup U8 about 35,000years ago. It continues to have a strongpresence in the region today, reaching levelsof 20% among Druze Muslims and about10% among Kurds, Palestinians andYemenites. It is also found among theGurage of Ethiopia, who are thought to bedescended from Arabian invaders.

K spread from the Near East into Europeabout 15,000 to 12,000 years ago, as the IceAge was ending and temperate forestsspread over the previously frigid continent. Itis still found at low levels in most European

populations, where many branches of the haplogroup match identical ones from the Near East. Thatclose similarity suggests that more recent migrations also may have carried haplogroup K from theNear East to Europe, perhaps in conjunction with the spread of agriculture about 8,000 years ago.

Haplogroup K also extends into Central Asia as far as the Altay Mountains, a range that runs alongthe western edge of Mongolia's Gobi Desert. It may have reached there with relatively ancientmigrants from the Near East, and then been spread to other parts of Asia during the medievalexpansion of the Turkic peoples to the Urals and modern-day Turkey.

Altogether there are dozens of unique branches within this haplogroup, including some of unknowndistribution. However, a few populations carry branches of haplogroup K that have been extensivelycharacterized.

The Ancient BasquesGeneticists have taken a great interest in the Basques of far northern Spain because of theirunusual language, which suggests they descend from some of the original settlers who arrived insouthwestern Europe during and after the Ice Age. Though haplogroup K is relatively rare amongthe Basques today, mitochondrial DNA extracted from prehistoric burials suggests it was much morecommon in the past. In remains excavated from three cemeteries dating to between 4,000 and5,000 years ago, haplogroup K showed up at levels of 17 to 24%. A similar sample from a medievalBasque cemetery found that by around 1,500 years ago the haplogroup's levels had fallen to its

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What is a Haplogroup?

Haplogroup is the term scientists use to describe individual branches,or closely related groups of branches, on the genetic family tree of allhumans. All members of a haplogroup trace their ancestry back to asingle individual.

Haplogroup K was involved in the introduction of Judaismto central and eastern Europe.

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present-day level of about 4%.

What could account for this near-disappearance of haplogroup K among the Basque? It could bethat female migrants to the region married into the Basque population, swamping out the K lineageswith their own haplogroups. Or it could be that the Basque population experienced a crash at sometime in the past that disproportionately eliminated haplogroup K from the gene pool.

K in the AshkenaziA few branches of haplogroup K, such as K1a9, K2a2a, and K1a1b1a, are specific to Jewishpopulations and especially to Ashkenazi Jews, whose roots lie in central and eastern Europe.These branches of haplogroup K are found at levels of 30% among Ashkenazi. But they are alsofound at lower levels in Jewish populations from the Near East and Africa, and among SephardicJews who trace their roots to medieval Spain. That indicates an origin of those K haplogroupbranches in the Near East before 70 AD, when the Roman destruction of Jerusalem scattered theJewish people around the Mediterranean and beyond.

About 1.7 million Ashkenazi living today – about 20% of the population – share a single branch ofthe K haplogroup, K1a1b1a. The diversity of that haplogroup among Ashkenazi suggests that itarose in the Near East between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago, and that everyone who shares it todaycould have shared a common ancestor as recently as 700 years ago. A similar pattern in two otherK branches that are common among the Ashkenazi, K1a9 and K2a2, as well as the N1b branch ofhaplogroup N, has led researchers to conclude that 40% of the Ashkenazi living today – about 3.4million people – could descend from as few as four women who lived within the last 2,000 years.

Historical information supports that conclusion. The Ashkenazi tradition traces back to a smallnumber of people who migrated from northern Italy to the Rhine Valley of Germany around 700 AD,then grew over the next 1,300 years to a population of more than 5 million.

Ötzi the Ice ManÖtzi the Ice Man was discovered in 1991, protruding from a snow-bank high in the Alps near theAustrian-Italian border. His 5,300-year-old remains turned out to be so well preserved thatresearchers were able to construct a detailed account of his life and death. They have alsodetermined that his maternal line was derived from haplogroup K, which remains common in Alpinepopulations today.

Chemical analysis of Ötzi's teeth indicates he came from the Italian side of the Alps. He had sufferedduring the year before his death with whipworm, a stomach parasite that was found in his digestivetract. Yet he was fit enough to climb 6,500 feet in elevation during the day or two before he met hisend in a rocky alpine hollow – pollen grains mixed in with the food in his colon, which included reddeer and Alpine ibex meat as well as wheat and barley, show that his last few meals wereconsumed at a much lower elevation than the site where he died, and that they were eaten duringthe spring.

Ötzi apparently was murdered, struck by a stone arrow point that was found lodged in his leftshoulder. 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 – perhaps to remove evidence of the killer's identityfrom the scene of the crime. Yet whoever killed Ötzi did not take the valuable and finely wroughtcopper axe that he carried with him – an indicator that at the age of 45, the Ice Man may have beena figure of some importance in his community.

Recently, scientists who were able to extract mitochondrial DNA from Ötzi's remains discovered thatit belonged to haplogroup K, which reaches levels of 20 to 30% in present-day local populations.But Ötzi's mitochondrial DNA, which fell into the K1 family of haplogroup K, did not match any of thebranches that are known today. His maternal line must have died out in the 5,300 years since Ötzi'sdeath.

Ötzi's paternal line may very well have died out as well – his mitochondrial DNA contains twomutations that are associated with low sperm motility, so he could have been infertile. We canimagine that at the age of 45, with a prominent position in his community but no heirs to support him,Ötzi might have found himself high in the Alps on a chilly spring day 5,300 years ago desperatelyfleeing his enemies.

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