Haplogroup

What is a haplogroup? Well, as I understand it, it is a classification of people, once thought of as races but now proving not necessarily so, that emerged as humans populated this earth. In the scientific world a Haplogroup is defined as all the male descendants of the single person who first showed a SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) mutation. A SNP mutation identifies a group who had a common ancestor far back in time, since SNP's rarely mutate. Each member of a Haplogroup would have the same SNP mutation as the common ancestor. These mutations are extremely rare, and identify a group of people over a period of tens of thousands of years.   So a haplogroup can be thought of as extending back in time thousands and even tens of thousands of years.

Recently, Family Tree DNA, the lab that does the testing for this project, has posted on each participant’s personal page (at www.familytree.com) a suggested haplogroup for that participant using a technique called STR testing (Short Tandem Repeats). For a participant to access his Personal Page, he may log into FamilyTreeDNA.com with his kit number and password. The results posted there comparing each individual participant’s STR test with the extensive world-wide database created by Dr. Hammer, of Family Tree DNA, is very interesting. I urge each participant to visit his own personal page and read the material found there.

Notice in the above paragraph that Family Tree DNA informs us that this STR testing only indicates a suggested haplogroup. To actually confirm a haplogroup Family Tree DNA can perform a test for haplogroup determination utilizing specific SNP Markers. The Y-DNA SNP test will determine if the estimated haplogroup is your haplogroup. As an example, if your estimated haplogroup is R1b, a test could be ordered to confirm if you are indeed an R1b or not, but in case you are not, you would have to perform additional test(s) to find your Haplogroup. That is why Family Tree DNA only recommends the test to those who really want (we mean... very badly) want to know his haplogroup.

In the past there have seen at least seven (7) systems in use in the scientific community for defining and naming Haplogroups. These various systems, which assigned different names to Haplogroups, often led to confusion. One has only to surf the web in this field to view these differences first hand. Depending on which system was utilized in the literature you read, Haplogroups had different names and definitions. To solve this problem, a Y Chromosome Consortium was created to develop a new system to name Haplogroups and subgroups. The Y Chromosome Consortium scientific paper, which describes this Haplogroup naming system, can be found at the link below:
http://ycc.biosci.arizona.edu/nomenclature_system/frontpage.html

It is this system that we will use in this database. For a single page graphic representation of the Y Chromosome Haplogroup tree, please see:
http://www.familytreedna.com/haplotree.html