The First People
Our descendants will understand many things which are
hidden
from us now. —John Lubbock, 1865
Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains,
and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages
Each of us carries, in each one of our cells, the substance known as deoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA. It contains the combination of the genes we received at the time we were first conceived. The genes from both our mother and our father “recombine” as our first cell forms. This “recombinant” DNA is “autosomal,” that is, it gives us traits which define everything about us, from eye color to susceptibility to disease. But an exception to the recombining process occurs when a baby boy is conceived. The father provides the Y-chromosome, while the mother provides an X-chromosome. The father’s Y-chromosome cannot combine with the much larger X-chromosome from the mother. So this Y-chromosome is passed down from father to son, unchanged, generation after generation.
Genetic Genealogy
Unchanged, that
is, unless a very rare event occurs at the conception: a mutation — a random,
naturally occurring, harmless change at some point on the Y-chromosome. When a
mutation does occur, the son will carry it in his
Y-chromosome, and will pass the mutation down to his sons, who will pass it
down to their sons, and so on. To geneticists, these very rare mutations are
known as markers, because in the unchanging Y-chromosome they act as signposts.
They can be detected by testing in the lab, and they have been studied
extensively because they can be traced through the male generations for
thousands of years. Geneticists attempt to reason out when and where the marker
first occurred, and in so doing they make it possible for us to clarify human
migrations. Operating under the theory the founder’s descendants are bunched more
densely near the original location of the founder and thin out as they disperse
over time, the geneticists can develop a rough idea of a given lineage’s
migrations by linking markers in a sort of trail. And tracking these lineages
can give them insight into how small tribes of our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, grew into larger
tribes, how they diversified and how they spread around the world. Although the
science of genetics is still in its infancy, we have now begun to paint the
first crude pictures of the journey of mankind.
This information is also of great
value to genealogists, because it allows them to develop an understanding of a
given individual’s “deep ancestry.” That is, where his ancestors lived, what
groups they belonged to, and the routes they took in their migrations over long
periods of time. It’s an answer to the age old question, “Where did I come
from?” This is exciting time, much like the time when
I submitted my
DNA, in the form of a saliva sample, for an analysis of my own Y-chromosome,
and the results2 reveal the interesting path of the migration of my male ancestral
line stretching back through perhaps a thousand generations and tens of
thousands of years. Migrations traced in this way are still somewhat vague and
indefinite due to the relatively small numbers of donors so far, but the
geneticists are rapidly bringing things into sharper focus as testing gains
momentum. Here’s what I have learned, as of 2009, about my own “deep ancestry.”
Eurasian
Adam –
M168
Test results show that my DNA contains a very old Y-chromosome marker. It is known rather prosaically as M168, but this marker can be traced back to a single male individual, the ancestor of all living males not of African descent living on our planet today. This African man, our Eurasian Adam, lived very roughly about 55,000 years ago, at a time when the entire human species numbered only about 10,000 but was proving to be quite successful. “Modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) lived alongside other hominids for many generations, but gradually the others disappeared, possibly as a result of human aggression but more likely because new highly mobile, versatile, fast-talking quick-thinking hominids out-competed the old ones.”3
Eurasian Adam
probably lived in the region of the Rift Valley in northeast Africa, perhaps in
present-day 
The
An estimated 90
to 95 percent of all non-African males are descendants of one or another of
those great migrations out of
At this time much of the Earth’s
water was frozen in massive ice sheets, which had gradually increased in size.
Vast grasslands, called steppes, stretched from present-day France to present-day Korea. Many of
the grassland hunters of the M89 lineage traveled east along this steppe
highway and eventually peopled much of Asia. Others set a
different course. They went west, moving into Europe,
trading their familiar grasslands for forests and high country. Though their
numbers were small, genetic traces of their journey are still found today. Archaelogical data indicates they dispersed on two routes: a northern route along the Danube, and a southern route along the coast of the Mediterranean.6 “In
the key period for the emergence of modern humans in
“This period saw
modern humans develop a much more sophisticated culture than any of their
predecessors: new forms of stone tools, 
standardization and improved knapping
technology, which themselves reflected greater use of animal bone, wood and
hides; a huge increase in the use of jewelry and bodily decoration….
“Across Europe evidence appears of musical instruments…formal burials, portable art, such as the Venus figurines…animal carvings and, above all, the cave art best known from the spectacular animal paintings in northern Spain, southern and central France, in caves such as Altamira, Chauvet and Lascaux…. Most likely the hunter-artist was highly mobile and familiar with both the art and the animals of the south….
“These new humans seem to have thought differently from the old: in symbols, stories and metaphors, placing great emphasis on art, bodily decoration and the ritual treatment of the dead. For the first time people could speak prose and poetry, convey emotion through music and imagine powers greater than themselves….
“Humans increased in numbers as their efficiency as hunters improved – with better tools and weapons and increased ability to communicate and co-operate. The climate improved for several thousand years from 43,000 BP at the time when modern humans first colonized western Europe.”7
A Balkan Refuge – M170 Haplogroup I
But
this
improvement in the climate would not endure. Early occupation of Europe was
arrested then reversed, as another prolonged period of severe cold gripped the
continent—the last Ice Age. It continued for thousands of years; it’s most severe
stage is called the Last Glacial Maximum, or LGM, which encompassed the
furthest extent of the ice sheets upon the land. Mankind could do little more
than survive, and was forced to retreat south to a few scattered enclaves in
Asia and Europe. Iberia was one, the Ukraine another. The M89 lineage sought
refuge in the Balkans, likely concentrated in the Southern Carpathian Mountains
(present-day Romania), where it survived through the LGM. Scientists speculate that human
enclaves favored the high ground because it provided commanding views of the
territory below and maximized sunlight by avoiding the shadows of the valleys.
At this time our species numbered in the hundreds of thousands, but the earth
could not support an increase in Homo
sapiens sapiens. The emphasis was merely on survival. “During this time, it
isn’t possible to venture too far north within Europe as the ice sheets cover
much of northern Europe and tundra exists for several miles beneath them. The
humans in this part of the world are relatively recent visitors and are not so
adapted to the colder climes as are the people of Siberia. Thus, they take
refuge below the tree line which at 18,000 years ago, the time of the last
glacial maximum, extends across southern Europe. The refugia of Iberia, the
Balkans and Ukraine allow people to ‘wait out’ the worst of the ice-age.”8
Haplogroup I is credited with the spread of the Gravettian culture
(shown here in purple), which extended into
Europe and Asia. The Gravettian “industry,”
as it’s called—symbolized by the Gravette point used by its hunters—thrived in
the Serbia – S31 (or P215) Subclade I2
Man survived the
last Ice Age, proving just how tough and adaptable the human race is. As the
climate moderated and the ice sheets receded, he started to abandon his
mountain refuges and move to lower ground, following those large game animals
which were his food source. He then set out to reclaim Europe. “There are
several pieces of evidence to suggest that our hunters were just as hardy as
the polar wild flowers and hung on in there, albeit in lower numbers, in all
the places they had reoccupied.”9 Oppenheimer suggests that Ivan was one of
the haplogroups in the vanguard of this recolonization process, and in fact he
“represented Northern Europe’s main internal migrating male
Mesolithic-Neolithic component.”10 He proposes a specific area to which this
gene group might have migrated, and he identifies it—quite logically—as a
locale in southeastern
Over the generations, more mutation
markers sprang up in the DNA of the Ivan line. Geneticists have decided these
markers define “subclades” within the gene group, and over the span of a few
thousand years Ivan splintered into a handful of these subclades. Oppenheimer
counts four in his book. Over time they became geographically dispersed, but
the frequency of Haplogroup I in any location was never very great. One Ivan
subclade made its way southwest along the coast of the Mediterranean, one went
north to Scandinavia, one moved northeast into Russia. And one—my
line—proceeded northwest, following natural features such as river basins,
eventually settling in modern-day Germany. Oppenheimer theorizes this particular
subclade “had a post-LGM origin near the Black Sea, probably in Moldova.” He
calls the line Ingert, which he says
“could have come from the Moldavian refuge…up the Dnestr [River] into Poland and then into Germany.”12 But he later (p. 199) speculates that Ingert simply moved north
and west along the Danube (taking the same “northern route” used by early man) and eventually made his way into
Into Germany – S33 (or P214, or M436) Subclade I2b
Ingert’s DNA contains a marker labeled S33 by EthnoAncestry, P214 by Family Tree DNA and M436 by Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (smgf.org). The
marker’s relative concentration in Europe is established by the distribution of
the present-day DNA donor samples. Although written information about this marker is scarce, much can be inferred from a “descendant” marker labeled M223. According to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (isogg.org), that marker “Occurs at a moderate frequency among populations of Northwest Europe, with a peak frequency in the region of Lower Saxony in central Germany,”13 making it easy to imagine a migration from the Starčevo zone to the north then the west along the
These self-reliant people still
sought big game as their food source. But the ice was not done with mankind
yet, and they were forced to again become survivors. “Over the centuries leading
up to 12,500 years ago, the weather became more and more erratic; it grew
colder, and human activity declined. Around 12,300 years ago Europe plunged
into another severe glaciation, known as the Younger Dryas – ‘Younger’ because
there had been a couple of other chills in the preceding few thousand years,
and ‘Dryas’ because the hardy polar wild flower Dryas octopetala flourished during these cold spells, and is
detected in deposits by its pollen. The Younger Dryas was extremely cold and
arid, and lasted about 1,500 years. Ice caps re-expanded over Scandinavia, with
the resulting fall in sea levels, and even reformed on the Scottish Grampians
and the Pennines.”14 This vast increase in ice caused the sea levels to drop. Ingert continued to push west, and with the sea level dropping lower, more
and more land was becoming available to him.
Doggerland – M223 Subclade I2b1
A new and somewhat rare
marker now makes its appearance, further subdividing the Ingert subclade of the
Ivan gene group. The founder of this marker lived somewhere in the northwestern regions of the European continent, perhaps even in what seems a very unlikely
place: the bed of what is now the 
all the way from Poland and the southern Baltic,
through southern Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Frisia and Holland across the North
Sea and in to eastern England. In fact, had they wished, our forebears could
have walked in a straight line all the way from Berlin to Belfast, although
they seemed to prefer wandering along beaches.”15
Author David
Miles agrees. “At this time of low sea level much of the North Sea basin was
dry land, linking Britain and the Continent. 
Bryony Coles has named ‘Doggerland.’…where once herds and hunters moved in annual
rituals….
“…Doggerland would have covered an area about the size of England, a tundra landscape across which vast herds of reindeer and horses plodded, where salmon spawned in its prolific rivers. As the climate warmed, oak woodland colonized the valleys and hills. Red deer, roe deer and wild pig replaced the barren-ground reindeer. It remained an ideal hunting ground….
“Around the
shores there is still plenty of evidence of these coastal changes: waterlogged
stumps of prehistoric trees in the Thames estuary, or
Britain – M284 Subclade I2b1a
A small percentage of the Ingert
subclade with the M223 marker are further subdivided by an additional rare
marker which, according to the website of the International Society of Genetic
Genealogists, “occurs almost exclusively in Britain, so it apparently
originated there and has probably been present for thousands of years.”
(www.isogg.org/tree) My DNA contains this marker, only recently (2005) identified,
which is known as M284. So apparently my ancestors were
among those who made
their way into
“....The drowned North Sea Plain is
one of the oldest geographical indicators of the beginning of an eastern
British identity, and there is genetic evidence to support this….Britain,
gripped by cold, was an uninhabited polar desert and humans lived south of the
Loire [River, in France]….Exactly
when humans returned to Britain is not certain; but return they certainly did.
There is well-preserved evidence of a group of Late Glacial humans in Gough’s
Cave, Cheddar (Somerset), dated to the centuries either side of 12,000 BP….”17
“Ingert had already arrived in
Britain during the pre-YD era, and more Ingert males were arriving during the
Mesolithic, even as the gene line was diversifying further.”18 Oppenheimer
feels that the dispersal and low frequency rate of Ingert is evidence that this
subclade was already in the
Eventually this period of intense
cold weather ended, and somewhat abruptly. “The Younger Dryas finished even
faster than it started, perhaps over a period of just fifty years. Effectively
this was the end of the last ice age; it would not get cold again, except for a
minor freeze-up around 8,500 years ago….The...era is also conventionally known
as the Holocene epoch (meaning
roughly ‘completely new’) to differentiate it from the preceding nearly two million
years of the Pleistocene (or Great
Ice Age)…..
“As the crushing weight of ice was
lifted from the north, Scotland breathed, and still breathes, a sign of relief
that lifted its land beyond the reach of the sea and raised the terraces of
ancient beaches high and dry. In contrast, south-eastern
“After the Younger Dryas, most of the Paleolithic hunters’ rich, chilly grasslands disappeared, along with the mammoth’s habitat, to be replaced by woodland. Other herds, of elk and reindeer for example, moved farther north, to be replaced in the south by the wild pig, red and roe deer, aurochs and a variety of smaller mammals.
“There was much
ice left to melt down, apart from the vast sheet remaining over Scandinavia,
but it did not melt gradually. Immediately after the Younger Dryas, sea levels
rose at an initially dramatic rate…causing the over-topping ‘flood’ of the
Black Sea around 7,500 years ago.”21 And at about the same time
Agriculture
Humans 
were still relatively
scarce at this time, and were easily outnumbered by other hominid species.
“Surprisingly perhaps, for tens of thousands of years our ancestors were a
relatively rare species, constantly knocked back by climate change, and making
relatively little impact on the planet. The number of people in the world
10,000 years ago was probably in the region of 4 million. Growth rates were
extremely slow through most of the Stone Age, perhaps as little as 0.001 per
cent, rising to 0.1 in the Mesolithic, on the eve of the expansion of
agriculture. Hunter-gatherers live at very low densities, as they are dependent
on the natural productivity or carrying capacity, of the land they inhabit….For
much of the year large animals such as red deer tend to be very lean – good for
protein, but lacking the carbohydrate-rich fat that humans also need.” England
contained only 1,100 to 1,200 humans by 9,000 BC; only 1,200 to 2,400 by 8,000
BC; only 2,500 to 5,000 by 7,000 BC, and only 2,750 to 5,500 by about 5,000 BC,
“which is low compared with the estimates of 10,000 to 27,000 for the Middle
Palaeolithic hominid populations of Britain and Ireland….”23
But the more
intelligent human species was now discovering a fundamentally better way to
feed itself. And change, in the form of an 
agricultural lifestyle, was coming
to the relatively remote
“At present we
can say little about the scale of colonization of Britain by Continental
farmers. It seems likely that the indigenous Mesolithic population adopted
various aspects of plant and animal domestication quite rapidly about 4,000 BC, possibly stimulated by contacts with the
Continent or by the presence of immigrant farmers. The changes were not simply
economic: farming brought with it a new cosmology, new ways of looking at the
world, at nature, the land and the gods. In the first two millennia of farming
in Britain it appears from the archaeological record that as much effort went
into cultivating the gods as went into cultivating the land.” 25
Survivors
Thus, The First People, those
masters of survival and adaptation, now becoming skilled in agriculture,
started to retake 
to recede as more and more
water became locked in permanent ice sheets, not just in Europe but also at the
Poles and over the mountain ranges of Europe, Asia and America. The Isles
became a peninsula as the
“And then, quite suddenly, the
climate began to improve as the planet moved its alignment in the heavens. The
warmth of the sun returned to the northern latitudes and the ice began to melt.
Our ancestors followed the herds north from the huddled refuges as the frozen
land began to thaw.”26 The First
People, as represented by “Cheddar Man,” began to re-colonize the Isles. “He
arrived in a landscape scrubbed clean of human occupation by the effects of the
Ice Age, even though the ice itself never reached as far south as his home in Cheddar….
“When he arrived, 12,000 years or so
ago, the Isles were connected to the rest of continental Europe. The sea was
100 feet lower than it is now and large tracts 
of land that are now under water
were well above sea level. Ireland was connected to mainland Britain through a
broad plain that joined it to the west coast of Scotland and took in what is
now the whisky isle of Islay. The Irish Sea, which now entirely separated
Ireland from the rest of the Isles, was then a narrow sea inlet between flat
plains, blocked at its northern end by the isthmus that joined Scotland to the
north of Ireland. The Western Isles off the northwest coast of Scotland were
similarly joined to the mainland with a narrow strip of dry land….
“Most important of all, there was
dry land connecting Britain to
continental Europe. This was no narrow causeway, but a wide rolling plain
joining eastern Britain to the rest of Europe from the Tyne in the north to
Beachy Head near Eastbourne in the south. The entire southern section of what
is now the North Sea was dry land intersected with wide rivers. The Thames was
then a tributary of the Rhine, their joined waters emptying into the sea 100
miles east of Newcastle upon Tyne. What is now Britain and Ireland, separated
by shallow seas, was then a great peninsula protruding into the Atlantic Ocean.
The Irish Sea was open only at its southern end and the North Sea was dry land.
The sea level was rising as global temperatures climbed back up after the last
Ice Age. The great ice sheets that covered the northern hemisphere were
melting, as their remnants in the polar north continue to do today.”27
Scotland-Ireland – S165, S166 (or L126, L137) Subclade I2b1a1
As stated, my DNA has the marker M284, making it probable that my ancestors lived in 
Dr. Kenneth
Nordtvedt, a self-described genetic genealogy “hobbyist,” is a member
of Haplogroup I and has studied it extensively. Dr. Nordtvedt calculates mathematically that the new subclade is considerably younger than M284. He estimates that M284 began to expand about 3,300 years ago, while the newer S165/S166 began to expand only about 1,500 years ago. (See http://knordtvedt.home.bresnan.net/)(Also, for up-to-the-minute discussions, see http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/other/DNA/Y-DNA-HAPLOGROUP-I.html and http://DNA-Forums.com/ and http:dna.ancestry.com/dnaGroups.aspx)
Although this genetic genealogy story is almost entirely devoid of details so far and needs more donors to flesh it out, we can be more specific about the location the founder of S165/S166 within Britain. Based on the locations of the ancestors of the donors who are positive for S165/S166, it is supposed that he lived somewhere in southwestern Scotland. This dramatic new information begins to transform the cold statistical data into something much more personal: We can now imagine living, breathing human beings who are proven to be our direct—and fairly recent—ancestors. Genetic genealogy has now delivered us to the very dawn of recorded history, where we may even discover quasi-historical figures associated with Haplogroup I and its subclades. The early saints who were instrumental in converting Ireland to Christianity come to mind: St. Patrick, St. Brigid, St. Columba. Another important example might be the Dál Riata overkingdom, commonly believed to have been an Irish Gaelic colony in Scotland. It is thought to have encompassed territory in southwest Scotland and northwest Ireland during the 6th and 7th centuries AD. These are exciting times for everyone involved in this important hobby. We find ourselves on the cutting edge of discovery in this field of science.
Surnames
In 2006, Brian McEvoy and Daniel
Bradley, of
The First People
Although the story is still far from
complete, all the DNA testing by donors and the ingenious genetic detective work
by the scientists and hobbyists makes it possible for me to block out the
presumed path of my ancestors’ habitats over tens of thousands of years.
Fathers have passed on their genetic information to their sons in my line by
way of the Y-chromosome in an unbroken chain for more than a thousand
generations. We now know that The First People made their way out of Africa,
into Eurasia, through the Middle East and far up into
My ancestors are members of a subclade which is part of a relatively small haplogroup, Haplogroup I. In Ireland, these ancestors were
fully integrated with the much more plentiful Haplogroup R, which has had its
own long migration story, and some of whose members wound up in the same place. And as the
Arvin Family Biographical Sketches begin, we find—in the eleventh century AD, perhaps twenty generations removed from the founder of S165/S166—a
hypothetical character named Áed, born near a small settlement in the South of
Áed – The Monk
from Osraighe
Researched and written
by Robert Joseph Arvin, Jr. © Copyright A.D. 2008, 2009
Notes
1. Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak and Ann Turner, Trace Your Roots with DNA (2004), p 235
2. Short Tandem Repeats (STR) analysis by DNA
Heritage (www.dnaheritage.com). Single
Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP)
analysis by DNA Heritage and EthnoAncestry
(www.ethnoancestry.com) See also
my entry in ySearch. (www.ySearch.org) D39XD
3.
David Miles, The Tribes of Britain
(2005), p 47
4. See www.bradshawfoundation.com
5. Svante Pääbo of Leipzig’s Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, as quoted by David Miles in
The Tribes of Britain, p 47
6. Paul Mellers, “Neanderthals and the modern human colonization of Europe,” Nature, Vol. 432, no. 25
(November 2004), pp 461-465
7. Miles, Tribes, pp 48-50
8.
Courtesy DNA Heritage
9.
Stephen Oppenheimer, The Origins
of the British, A Genetic Detective Story: The Surprising
Roots of the English, Irish,
Scottish, and Welsh (2006), p 134
10. Oppenheimer, Origins of the British, p 199
11. Oppenheimer, p 199
12. Oppenheimer, p 166
13. See also Oppenheimer, p 166. See also Wikipedia: Haplogroup I (Y-DNA). See also
www.GeneTree.com/education/i
14. Oppenheimer, p 134
15. Oppenheimer, p 129
16. Miles, Tribes of
See also Steven J. Mithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC (2004)
See also N.C. Fleming, ed., Submarine prehistoric archaelology of the North Sea (2004)
17. Oppenheimer, p 128, 129;
18. Oppenheimer, p 170
19. Oppenheimer, p 129, See also p 121,124
20. Miles, Tribes of
21. Oppenheimer 135-136
22. Miles, Tribes of
23. Miles, Tribes, p 57
24. Miles, Tribes, p 65
25. Miles, p 72
26. Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings and Celts, The Genetic Roots of
pp 14-16
27. Sykes, Saxons, Vikings and Celts, pp 16-17
28. Brian McEvoy and Daniel Bradley, Smurfit Institute of Genetics,
“Y-chromosome and the Extent of Patrilineal
Ancestry in Irish Surnames,” Human
Genetics
(February 2006), Vol. 119, Nos. 1-2,
p 212-219
Images
DNA molecule courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Bab el-Mandeb courtesy of The National Aeronautics and Space Administration
World Haplogroup Map courtesy of J. Douglas McDonald. Used with permission.
Doggerland courtesy Wikipedia Commons
Northern Britain and Ireland by Angus McLellan, modified from NASA image, courtesy Wikipedia
Many images taken at Irish National Heritage Park. See http://www.inhp.com/
Arvin Family
Biographical Sketches