GENETIC MARKERS: HAPLOGROUP R1A1 (M17)

First Appeared: 10,000 years ago

Type Y- Chromosome

This marker arose between 10,000 to 15,000 years ago when a man of European origin was born on the grassy steppes in the region of present-day Ukraine or southern Russia. His descendents became the nomadic steppe dwellers who eventually spread as far a field as India and Iceland. Descendants of the Indo-European Clan may be responsible for the birth and spread of Indo-European languages. The world‘s most widely spoken language family, Indo-European tongues include English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, several Indian languages such as Bengali and Hindi, and numerous others. Many of the Indo-European languages share similar words for animals, plants, tools, and weapons. Today a large concentration – around 40 percent – of the men living from the Czech Republic across the steppes to Siberia, and south throughout Central Asia are descendents of this clan. In India, around 35 percent of the men in Hindi-speaking population carry the M17 marker, whereas the frequency in neighbouring communities of Dravidian speakers in only about ten percent. The distribution adds weight to linguistic and archaeological evidence suggesting that a large migration from the Asian steppes into India occurred within the last 10,000 years. The M17 marker is found in only five to ten percent of Middle Eastern men. This is true even in Iranian populations where Farsi, a major Indo-European language, is spoken. Despite the low frequency, the distribution of men carrying the M17 marker in Iran provides a striking example of how climate conditions, the spread of language, and the ability to identify specific markers can combine to tell the story of the migration patterns of individual genetic lineages. In the western part of the country, descendants of the Indo-European Clan are few, encompassing perhaps five to ten percent of the men. However, on the eastern side, around 35 percent of the men carry the M17 marker. This distribution suggests that the great Iranian deserts presented a formidable barrier and prevented mush interaction between the two groups.

Reference: https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html