Journey of my ancestors

My journey to know about my ancestry began with the desire to research who my ancestor were, where they came from and how they contribute to me being me. Due to the history of the slave system of the United States of America and other European colonies, as well as the subsequent treatment of my Africans ancestors; their names, religions, histories, languages, and cultures were all but erased from their descendants memories. As a result, the enslaver who brought our ancestors here gave us names, their languages, their religions, and we created a new culture that is an amalgamation of the unknown cultures that our forbearers brought with them over the middle passage with new the identity the enslaver gave them. Thanks to science and technology, I had my Y-DNA tested by the Genographic Project, upgraded with Family Tree DNA. My Y-DNA test results identify me as a member of haplogroup E1b1a (E-M2 in shorthand). The genetic markers that define my ancestral history reach back roughly 70,000 years to the first common marker of all non-African men, M168, and follow my lineage to present day, ending with M2, the defining marker of haplogroup E1b1a. If I look at the genetics highlighting my ancestors' route in and out of Africa, I see that members of my haplogroup E1b1a carry the following Y-chromosome markers: Haplogroup CT or M168 >> Haplogroup DE or YAP +>> Haplogroup E or M96 >> Haplogroup E1 or P147 >> E1b or P177 >> Haplogroup E1b1 or P2 >> Haplogroup E1b1a or M2. I am descended from an ancient African lineage.
What I Know Now:

My paternal ancestry begin with an individual carrying the genetic marker M168 in my lineage who probably lived in northeast Africa in the region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania, some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago. Scientists put the most likely date for when he lived at around 70,000 years ago. His descendants, which I am too, became the only lineage to survive outside of Africa, making him the common ancestor of every non-African man living today. But why would man have first ventured out of the familiar African hunting grounds and into unexplored lands? It is likely that a fluctuation in climate may have provided the impetus for my ancestors' exodus out of Africa. The African ice age was characterized by drought rather than by cold. It was around 50,000 years ago that the ice sheets of northern Europe began to melt, introducing a period of warmer temperatures and moister climate in Africa. Parts of the inhospitable Sahara briefly became habitable. As the drought-ridden desert changed to a savanna, the animals hunted by my ancestors expanded their range and began moving through the newly emerging green corridor of grasslands. My nomadic ancestors followed the good weather and the animals they hunted, although the exact route they followed remains to be determined. In addition to a favorable change in climate, around this same time there was a great leap forward in modern humans' intellectual capacity. Many scientists believe that the emergence of language gave us a huge advantage over other early human species. Improved tools and weapons, the ability to plan ahead and cooperate with one another, and an increased capacity to exploit resources in ways we hadn't been able to earlier, all allowed modern humans to rapidly migrate to new territories, exploit new resources, and replace other hominids. As time moves on he have descendants, one his descendants had another mutation. Sub-Saharan populations living today are characterized by one of three distinct Y-chromosome branches on the human tree.
My paternal lineage E1b1a falls under one of these ancient branches and is referred to by geneticists as YAP+ or Haplogroup DE.The individual carrying the YAP was born around northeast Africa and is the most common of the three ancient genetic branches found in sub-Saharan Africa. He had a mutational event known as an Alu insertion or YAP, which is a 300-nucleotide fragment of DNA which, on rare occasion, gets inserted into different parts of the human genome during cell replication. Living around 65,500 years ago, my distant ancestor, acquired this fragment on his Y-chromosome and passed it on to his descendants. Over time his lineage split into two distinct groups. One is found primarily in Africa and the Mediterranean, is defined by marker M96 and is called haplogroup E. The other group, haplogroup D is found in Asia and defined by the M174 mutation. Y-DNA haplogroup E would appear to have arisen in Northeast Africa based on the concentration and variety of E subclades in that area today. But the fact that Haplogroup E is closely linked with Haplogroup D, which is not found in Africa, leaves open the possibility that E first arose in the Near or Middle East and was subsequently carried into Africa by a back migration.E1b1 is by far the lineage of greatest geographical distribution. It has two important sub-lineages, E1b1a and E1b1b. My genetic lineage lies within the group that remained close to home, and was carried by men who likely played an integral role in recent cultural and migratory events within Africa.
Moving Out of Africa:
As explain above, my ancestor have descendants they move out of east Africa into “North Africa/Middle East/Near East” corridor possibly present day region from Egypt to possibly present day Iran/Iraq. As the population grows from the abundant food and livestock in the region, these resources become strained. Therefore some of Haplogroup DE (YAP+) descendants migrate to Far East Asia, while some remain close to Africa via the Middle East/Near East corridor, one such descendant had another mutation which created a new Haplogroup called E. This Branch of the tree and ancestral lineage was born around 52,500 years ago in northeast Africa and had a new mutation that gave rise to marker M96. The origins of M96 are unclear; hopefully as DNA research is refined and updated more light will be shed on his origins.
What is known is that there were two great waves of migration out of Africa. The first small groups of people left around 60,000 years ago and followed a coastal route that eventually reached Australia. The second exodus occurred beginning around 50,000 years ago, heading north. The bulk of these travelers were descendants of a man born with marker M89, a group we'll call the Middle Eastern Clan. Some 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans today are descendants of the Middle Eastern Clan. I am descended from an ancient African lineage that chose to move north into North Africa and Middle/Near East regions. My kinsmen may have accompanied the Middle Eastern Clan as they followed the great herds of large mammals north through the grassy plains and savannas of the Sahara gateway. Alternatively, a group of my ancestors may have undertaken their own migration at a later date, following the same route previously traveled by the Middle Eastern Clan peoples.Nevertheless, beginning about 40,000 years ago, the climate shifted once again and became colder and more arid. Drought hit Africa and the grasslands reverted to desert; for the next 20,000 years, the Saharan Gateway was effectively closed. With the desert impassable, my ancestors had two options: remain in North Africa, or move on. Retreat back to the home continent was not an option. Like his father he too had descendants, some stayed in the North Africa/Middle East/Near East regions and others longed to return to home (Africa). Like his ancestors there was another mutation on my ancestors Y-DNA which gave rise to a new branch now called E1b1a with the defining mutation or marker called M2.
The Rise of E1b1a (E-M2):

The haplogroup E1b1a (E-M2) may have originated about 20,000 to 25,000 years ago in the pockets of habitable land along the Sahara/Sahel/Sudanese Belt that runs from the Red Sea to Senegal/Mauritania in Western Africa, when much of the continent was extremely dry due to Ice Age climate conditions (i.e. the Last Glacial Maximum). E1b1a is often associated with Agricultural Expansion in Western, Central,Eastern and Southern Africa, one well studied expansion was the migration of Bantu-speaking agriculturalist throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon to South Africa). One migration path crossed the central African rain forests into eastern Africa, and then turned southward about 1,500 years ago to extend from Tanzania into southeastern Africa. A second route began in the Congo basin and moved southward along the Atlantic coast into Angola, Namibia and Botswana. E1b1a reaches levels of 50% and higher among Bantu-speaking populations on the paths of these two broad migrations, such as the Hutu, Sukuma, Herero and !Xhosa. However, the Bantu expansion does not explain the high frequencies of the haplogroup in non-Bantu Niger-Kordofanian speakers in the western regions of Africa from Senegal to Nigeria. Moreover the high frequency in non-Bantu speaking regions, in some published studies it reaches levels of up to 90% among the Mandinka and Yoruba of western Africa, has lead to other hypothesis’s of E1b1a expansion into the Sudanese belt (a region south of the Sahara extending from western to central Africa) is more complex and perhaps involved a separate expansion or was existing in Western non-Bantu speakers before the Bantu expansion 5,000 years ago. For instance E1b1a* also called E-M2, and its derivative, haplogroup E1b1a7 also called E-M191, harbor opposite clinal distributions in the Sudanese Belt region, a finding that is at odds with the hypothesis of a Bantu expansion of these two lineages in the area. Haplogroup E1b1a7 has a frequency of 23% in Cameroon (where it represents 42% of haplotypes carrying the DYS271 mutation or E-M2), 13% in Burkina Faso (16% of haplotypes carrying the DYS271 mutation or (M2)) and only 1% in Senegal (Semino et al. 2002), whereas '''Haplogroup E1b1a* or E-M2''' reaches its highest frequency (81%) in Senegal (Semino et al. 2002). In other words, as you move to West Africa from west Central Africa the less subclade M-191 is found and the more M-2 is found, this lead Cruciani to concluded "A possible explanation might be that haplogroup E1b1a or E-M2 were already present across the Sudanese belt when the M191 mutation, which defines haplogroup E1b1a7, arose in central western Africa." Therefore this give credence to E1b1a (E-M2) originating in pockets of habitable land along the Sudanese belt 20,000 years ago, with each area developing their own language , cultures, agricultural centers and technology, each with a separate expansion. E1b1a is also the most common haplogroup among African-American male individuals. About 60% of African-American men have E1b1a Y-chromosomes, primarily because the Atlantic slave trade drew most of its individuals from western Africa and Mozambique, where E1b1a occurs in high frequencies. Thanks to science, it is reassuring to know that my ancestors did not begin in the chains of slavery in the United States of America but 70,000 years ago on the continent of Africa.

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