Some Other Considerations For African Relatedness
By Doug Phelps
I would like to give my insight about African haplogroup SNP testing as it relates to recent historical genealogy. I've given much thought to this for quite a while. Our member Big Y testing has clearly opened doors of understanding, but one can easily get confused... and I am no exception.
Only a very, very few M44 African men HAVE BEEN DOWNSTREAM SNP TESTED. A tiny few have been aplpied to an E Tree at Yfull's E tree, which includes other M44 fully SNP tested men . Click HERE Look for M44. ( After viewing that next go to our annotated M44 portion of the tree documenting our men - click HERE). On that tree are two African men, Simms and one Mandingo, snp tested with a current terminal SNP of E-Z20646. They are separated from the others tested there by 3400 years +/- Are there other Africans that might relate closely to your terminal snp? Only by testing new Africans would we know that. Consider the following for what might be.
Test a M44 Fulani African (or any known M44 African) with a big y. His results will place him somewhere on the E hap tree. Likely his most common ancestor will be back a few 1000 years in the tree. All those downstream would be of his descent. The further up the tree he is placed the further back in time he must be. The more recent in time you place him, the fewer related subhaps (and tested men) there will be.
For example say he is placed just below E-Y24438 (Halls and Castle) thus creating a new subhap ancestor of recent time, thus a branch out from a common ancestor. Using current aging, we might guess at 600 years (at least in historical time). But consider this: this finding will not associate any recent ancestry to any of the other subhap groups .
Now place him just below E-Z17699 tmrca 3100 ybp. That incorporates the Druze and those from parts of Europe. Thus we could say they are descended from a common ancestor with the Fulani. But the others would not be.
So the closer a Fulani is to a given member here, the further he is from most others here. Alternatively the further a Fulani is , the more distant in time of a common ancestor
Would the Fulani be like the our Mandenka Africans... far down the tree but with a common ancestor at 3200 years ago?. In my own opinion, I am concluding that even though the argument seems reasonable that some of us descended from African slaves, the haplogroup tree tells me it would be very selective. To illustrate, the tree is telling us that even the Phelps and Halls are separated by 3200 years.
Doug Phelps