About us
Genographic Project Results
The Genographic Project identified my Y-Chromosome as being Haplogroup J2 (M172). From early “Eurasian Adam”, the group that left Africa for the Middle East is identified as M168, during their Middle East stay, the group is known as M89 and, while traveling westward on both the North shore and South shore of the Mediterranean, the group is categorized as M172. The Mediterranean period was about 10,000 years ago, or about 8,000 BC.
Today, descendents of this line appear in the highest frequencies in the Middle East, North Africa and Ethiopia, and at a much lower frequency in Europe, where it is observed exclusively in the Mediterranean area. About 20% of the males in Southern Italy carry this marker, along with 10% of the men in Southern Spain. Both Haplo group J and its sub-group J2 are found at a combined frequency of around 30% among Jewish individuals. The Group is of Semitic background.
The term Semitic is a recent one, in terms of deep ancestry, and probably did not exist 10,000 years ago, when our ancestors lived around the Mediterranean. So I looked up what it means in modern times. Detailed background follows later.
Quick History
50,000 Years ago:
Ancestor: Earliest male to which all living males today can be traced (M189)
Place: Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia)
Number of Homo Sapiens: about 10,000
Climate: Retreat of African Ice Age
Tools: Stone
Skills: Some art, advanced conceptual skills
As temperatures increased and conditions became more moist, animals expanded their range and people followed them right out of Africa and into the Middle East. Intellect increased, language developed, people learned to plan, to cooperate and, to exploit resources. They began to replace other hominids.
45,000 Years ago:
Ancestor: the male that gave rise to M89, a marker found in 90 to 95% of all non-Africans
Place: North Africa, Middle East
Number of Homo Sapiens: Tens of thousands
Climate: Semi-arid grass plains
Tools: Stone, ivory, wood
Africa turned colder once again and the Saharan Desert gateway would be impassable for 20,000 years. Smaller groups followed coastlines eastwards and eventually ended up in Australia. Our ancestors stayed around the Middle East.
15,000 to 10,000 Years ago:
Ancestor: Patriarch of Haplo Group J2
Place: Fertile Crescent (the floodplain of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, today's Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq
Climate: Ice Age ending
Number of Homo Sapiens: Millions
Tools & Skills: Neolithic Revolution
This person's descendants sparked the Neolithic Revolution, that is, the change from nomadic hunters-gatherers to settled agriculturalists. Being able to control their own food supply was a turning point for human evolution. It was the beginning of civilization: occupation of a single territory, more complex social organizations, creation of larger communities and the rise of modern communities and cities. Early farming successes spawned population booms and started migration throughout the Mediterranean world.
10,000 Years ago:
Ancestor: The male that started the marker M172
Place: Fertile Crescent, Middle East
Climate: Ice Age ending
Number of Homo Sapiens: A few million
People with this marker are found today in North Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe. In southern Italy, 20% of the population carry this marker. In Spain, 10% have it. Among Jewish individuals, 30% have the J and J2 Haplo Groups.
Artifacts found around Jericho and Jerusalem have established permanent human settlements at around 8,500 BC and demonstrate a relatively quick change from hunter-gatherers tribes to settled life.
Background of Semitism (from Internet research):
There are good reasons why I include a very lengthy description of Semitism. First, the term is misunderstood by many and I would like to set it straight (although I'm not an expert by any means). Second, it may come as a complete surprise to many family members and people with the Doreleyers surname that indeed this is our background. Just as surprising as it may be to people new to genaeology and DNA tracing, that everyone living today comes from an African background and dark skin colour. Therefore, allow me to share with you the very detailed information I found on the Internet:
Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem") was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. This family includes the ancient and modern forms of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Akkadian, Ge'ez, Hebrew, Maltese, Syriac, Tigrinya, etc.
As language studies are interwoven with cultural studies, the term also came to describe the extended cultures and ethnicities, as well as the history of these varied peoples as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution. The late 19th century term "anti-Semitism" came to be used in reference specifically to anti-Jewish sentiment, further complicating the understood meaning and boundaries of the term.
Origin
The term Semite was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn's "Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45. In his "Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIII).
The word "Semitic" is an adjective derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible (Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the Greek form of that name, namely Sem; the noun from referring to a person is Semite. The negative form of the adjective, anti-Semitic, is almost always used as a misnomer to mean "anti-Jewish" specifically.
The concept of a "Semitic" peoples is derived from Biblical accounts of the origins of the cultures known to the ancient Hebrews. Those closest to them in culture and language were generally deemed to be descended from their forefather Shem. Enemies were often said to be descendants of his cursed brother Ham. In Genesis 10:21-31, Shem is described as the father of Aram, Asshur, and others: the Biblical ancestors of the Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Sabaeans, and Hebrews, etc., all of whose languages are closely related. The language family containing them was therefore named Semitic by linguists. However, the Canaanites and Amorites also spoke a language belonging to this family and are therefore also termed Semitic in linguistics despite being described in Genesis as sons of Ham (See Sons of Noah). Shem is also described in Genesis as the father of the Elamites and the descendants of Lud, whose languages were not Semitic.
The hypothetical Proto-Semitic people, ancestral to the speakers of the historical Semitic languages in the Middle East are thought to have been originally from either the Arabian Peninsula (particularly around Yemen) or the Ethiopian Highlands (home of "Adam" - Ed.), but its homeland is still much debated and uncertain.
Ancient Semitic peoples
Akkadians appear ca. 2,500 BC and amalgamate with Mesopotamian populations into the Assyrians of the late Bronze Age;
Eblaites 23rd century BC
Aramaeans from the 14th century BC, evolve into the Syriacs of the early centuries AD
Ugarites 14th to 12th centuries BC
Canaanite nations of the early Iron Age
Amorites --
Ammonites --
Edomites --
Hebrews founded the kingdom of Israel and Judah, the remnants of which became the Jews of Late Antiquity.
Moabites --
Phoenicians --
Sabaeans of Yemen and Ethiopia, from ca. the 9th century BC, evolving into Semitic Ethiopian peoples from the 5th century BC
Arabs appearing from the 5th century BC as Nabataeans
My comment here: Note that 10,000 years ago, or 8,000 BC, our ancestors are known to have already left the Middle East and to have traveled further westward on both the North and South sides of the Mediterranean.
Geography
Semitic peoples in modern and ancient historic times have covered a broad area bridging Africa, Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest historic (written) evidences of them are found in the Fertile Crescent, an area encompassing the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, extending northwest into southern Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and the Levant along the eastern Mediterranean. Today this same region is populated by Arabic speakers except for Israel, where modern Hebrew was reintroduced in the 20th century as the national language.
Early traces of Semitic speakers are found, too, in South Arabian inscriptions in Yemen, Eritrea, Northern Ethiopia and later, in Roman times, in Nabataean inscriptions from Petra (modern Jordan) south into Arabia. Here, too, Arabic has largely won out over the original Semitic tongues. Semitic languages and peoples are also found in the Horn of Africa, especially Eritrea and Ethiopia, the last great holdout of South Semitic languages. Later expansions of Semitic languages also spread into North Africa at two widely separated periods.
The first expansion occurred with the ancient Phoenicians, the name given by the Greeks to the Canaanites, along the southern Mediterranean Sea all the way to the Atlantic Ocean (colonies which included ancient Rome's nemesis Carthage). The second, a millennium later, occurred with the expansion of the Muslim armies and Arabic in the 7th-8th centuries AD, which, at their height, controlled the Hispanic Peninsula and Sicily. Arab Muslim expansion is also responsible for modern Arabic's presence from Mauretania, on the Atlantic coast of West Africa, to the Red Sea in the northeastern corner of Africa, and its reach south along the Nile River through traditionally non-Semitic territory, as far as the northern half of Sudan, where, as the national language, non-Arab Sudanese even farther south must learn it. Semitic languages today are also spoken in Malta (where an Italian-influenced dialect of North African Arabic is spoken) and on the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean between Yemen and Somalia, where a dying vestige of South Arabian is spoken in the form of Soqotri.
Religion
In a religious context, the term Semitic can refer to the religions associated with the speakers of these languages: thus Judaism, Christianity and Islam are often described as "Semitic religions," though the term Abrahamic religions is more commonly used today. A truly comprehensive account of "Semitic" religions would include the polytheistic Ancient Semitic religions (such as the religions of Adad, Hadad) that flourished in the Middle East before the Abrahamic religions.
Ethnicity and race
A stylised T and O map, depicts Asia as the home of the descendents of Shem (Sem). Africa is ascribed to Ham and Europe to Japheth. In Medieval Europe, all Asian peoples were thought of as descendents of Shem. By the nineteenth century, the term Semitic was confined to the ethnic groups who have historically spoken Semitic languages. These peoples were often considered to be a distinct race. However, some anti-Semitic racial theorists of the time argued that the Semitic peoples arose from the blurring of distinctions between previously separate races. This supposed process was referred to as Semiticization by the race-theorist Arthur de Gobineau. The notion that Semitic identity was a product of racial "confusion" was later taken up by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg.
Modern science, in contrast, identifies an ethnic group's common physical descent through genetic research, and analysis of the Semitic peoples suggests that they share a significant common ancestry. Though no significant common mitochondrial results have been yielded, Y-chromosomal links between Near-Eastern peoples like the Arabs, Syrians and Jews have proved fruitful, despite differences contributed from other groups (see Y-chromosomal Aaron). Although population genetics is still a young science, it seems to indicate that a significant proportion of these peoples' ancestry comes from a common Near Eastern population to which (despite the differences with the Biblical genealogy) the term Semitic has been applied.
My additional Comments
While the Genographic Project allowed me to find out about ancestral travels out of Africa, it was not until I received more information following the transfer of my personal information to the Family Tree DNA Project that things became much more relevant in terms of living connections around the world.
My DNA sample is based on a 12 Marker Y Chromosome DNA analysis and the Family Tree DNA Project looked for exact matches to this. Would you believe that I already have eleven exact matches from people around the world that have already participated in this Project! None of these people have the same surname as I do, yet we have perfect DNA matches. There are three from Germany, and one each from Bohemia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Polynesia, Puerto Rico and Syria. I have their emails and will be pursuing further contact in due course. Additionally, there are many "close" matches, in DNA terms "One Step Mutations", "Two Step Mutations" and so forth. Isn't this intriguing and does it not make YOU want to participate in this?
There is one caution about this analysis. When our ancestors lived around the Mediterranean 10,000 years ago, there were only a "few million" people living in Europe and the genetic pool was not very diverse, meaning that many people must have had similar DNA types, and must have been related to common ancestry not that far back, perhaps within a few generations. The interesting part is that my Haplo group J2 (M172) is actually quite rare in Europe even today. Most of Europe was settled by hunters-gatherers who, after having left Africa, traveled East from the Middle East towards Mongolia, then North to the edge of the glaciers, then West towards what is now known as Europe. We know about these travels because not everyone kept on traveling over the centuries, many stayed behind at various locations and National Geographic DNA analysis of present local populations in some very remote areas have established this pattern.
My ancestors, on the contrary, took a shorter route to the Southern parts of Europe and North Africa and along the way, invented domestication and farming. Incidentally, they were also the primary settlers in areas that we now consider the cradle of modern civilization and democracy, namely today's Egypt, Greece and Italy. Imagine our ancestors were at all of these locations in 8,000 BC, which is just prior to or at the time of these great civilizations!
The Genographic Project identified my Y-Chromosome as being Haplogroup J2 (M172). From early “Eurasian Adam”, the group that left Africa for the Middle East is identified as M168, during their Middle East stay, the group is known as M89 and, while traveling westward on both the North shore and South shore of the Mediterranean, the group is categorized as M172. The Mediterranean period was about 10,000 years ago, or about 8,000 BC.
Today, descendents of this line appear in the highest frequencies in the Middle East, North Africa and Ethiopia, and at a much lower frequency in Europe, where it is observed exclusively in the Mediterranean area. About 20% of the males in Southern Italy carry this marker, along with 10% of the men in Southern Spain. Both Haplo group J and its sub-group J2 are found at a combined frequency of around 30% among Jewish individuals. The Group is of Semitic background.
The term Semitic is a recent one, in terms of deep ancestry, and probably did not exist 10,000 years ago, when our ancestors lived around the Mediterranean. So I looked up what it means in modern times. Detailed background follows later.
Quick History
50,000 Years ago:
Ancestor: Earliest male to which all living males today can be traced (M189)
Place: Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia)
Number of Homo Sapiens: about 10,000
Climate: Retreat of African Ice Age
Tools: Stone
Skills: Some art, advanced conceptual skills
As temperatures increased and conditions became more moist, animals expanded their range and people followed them right out of Africa and into the Middle East. Intellect increased, language developed, people learned to plan, to cooperate and, to exploit resources. They began to replace other hominids.
45,000 Years ago:
Ancestor: the male that gave rise to M89, a marker found in 90 to 95% of all non-Africans
Place: North Africa, Middle East
Number of Homo Sapiens: Tens of thousands
Climate: Semi-arid grass plains
Tools: Stone, ivory, wood
Africa turned colder once again and the Saharan Desert gateway would be impassable for 20,000 years. Smaller groups followed coastlines eastwards and eventually ended up in Australia. Our ancestors stayed around the Middle East.
15,000 to 10,000 Years ago:
Ancestor: Patriarch of Haplo Group J2
Place: Fertile Crescent (the floodplain of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, today's Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq
Climate: Ice Age ending
Number of Homo Sapiens: Millions
Tools & Skills: Neolithic Revolution
This person's descendants sparked the Neolithic Revolution, that is, the change from nomadic hunters-gatherers to settled agriculturalists. Being able to control their own food supply was a turning point for human evolution. It was the beginning of civilization: occupation of a single territory, more complex social organizations, creation of larger communities and the rise of modern communities and cities. Early farming successes spawned population booms and started migration throughout the Mediterranean world.
10,000 Years ago:
Ancestor: The male that started the marker M172
Place: Fertile Crescent, Middle East
Climate: Ice Age ending
Number of Homo Sapiens: A few million
People with this marker are found today in North Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe. In southern Italy, 20% of the population carry this marker. In Spain, 10% have it. Among Jewish individuals, 30% have the J and J2 Haplo Groups.
Artifacts found around Jericho and Jerusalem have established permanent human settlements at around 8,500 BC and demonstrate a relatively quick change from hunter-gatherers tribes to settled life.
Background of Semitism (from Internet research):
There are good reasons why I include a very lengthy description of Semitism. First, the term is misunderstood by many and I would like to set it straight (although I'm not an expert by any means). Second, it may come as a complete surprise to many family members and people with the Doreleyers surname that indeed this is our background. Just as surprising as it may be to people new to genaeology and DNA tracing, that everyone living today comes from an African background and dark skin colour. Therefore, allow me to share with you the very detailed information I found on the Internet:
Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem") was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. This family includes the ancient and modern forms of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Akkadian, Ge'ez, Hebrew, Maltese, Syriac, Tigrinya, etc.
As language studies are interwoven with cultural studies, the term also came to describe the extended cultures and ethnicities, as well as the history of these varied peoples as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution. The late 19th century term "anti-Semitism" came to be used in reference specifically to anti-Jewish sentiment, further complicating the understood meaning and boundaries of the term.
Origin
The term Semite was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn's "Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45. In his "Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIII).
The word "Semitic" is an adjective derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible (Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the Greek form of that name, namely Sem; the noun from referring to a person is Semite. The negative form of the adjective, anti-Semitic, is almost always used as a misnomer to mean "anti-Jewish" specifically.
The concept of a "Semitic" peoples is derived from Biblical accounts of the origins of the cultures known to the ancient Hebrews. Those closest to them in culture and language were generally deemed to be descended from their forefather Shem. Enemies were often said to be descendants of his cursed brother Ham. In Genesis 10:21-31, Shem is described as the father of Aram, Asshur, and others: the Biblical ancestors of the Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Sabaeans, and Hebrews, etc., all of whose languages are closely related. The language family containing them was therefore named Semitic by linguists. However, the Canaanites and Amorites also spoke a language belonging to this family and are therefore also termed Semitic in linguistics despite being described in Genesis as sons of Ham (See Sons of Noah). Shem is also described in Genesis as the father of the Elamites and the descendants of Lud, whose languages were not Semitic.
The hypothetical Proto-Semitic people, ancestral to the speakers of the historical Semitic languages in the Middle East are thought to have been originally from either the Arabian Peninsula (particularly around Yemen) or the Ethiopian Highlands (home of "Adam" - Ed.), but its homeland is still much debated and uncertain.
Ancient Semitic peoples
Akkadians appear ca. 2,500 BC and amalgamate with Mesopotamian populations into the Assyrians of the late Bronze Age;
Eblaites 23rd century BC
Aramaeans from the 14th century BC, evolve into the Syriacs of the early centuries AD
Ugarites 14th to 12th centuries BC
Canaanite nations of the early Iron Age
Amorites --
Ammonites --
Edomites --
Hebrews founded the kingdom of Israel and Judah, the remnants of which became the Jews of Late Antiquity.
Moabites --
Phoenicians --
Sabaeans of Yemen and Ethiopia, from ca. the 9th century BC, evolving into Semitic Ethiopian peoples from the 5th century BC
Arabs appearing from the 5th century BC as Nabataeans
My comment here: Note that 10,000 years ago, or 8,000 BC, our ancestors are known to have already left the Middle East and to have traveled further westward on both the North and South sides of the Mediterranean.
Geography
Semitic peoples in modern and ancient historic times have covered a broad area bridging Africa, Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest historic (written) evidences of them are found in the Fertile Crescent, an area encompassing the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, extending northwest into southern Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and the Levant along the eastern Mediterranean. Today this same region is populated by Arabic speakers except for Israel, where modern Hebrew was reintroduced in the 20th century as the national language.
Early traces of Semitic speakers are found, too, in South Arabian inscriptions in Yemen, Eritrea, Northern Ethiopia and later, in Roman times, in Nabataean inscriptions from Petra (modern Jordan) south into Arabia. Here, too, Arabic has largely won out over the original Semitic tongues. Semitic languages and peoples are also found in the Horn of Africa, especially Eritrea and Ethiopia, the last great holdout of South Semitic languages. Later expansions of Semitic languages also spread into North Africa at two widely separated periods.
The first expansion occurred with the ancient Phoenicians, the name given by the Greeks to the Canaanites, along the southern Mediterranean Sea all the way to the Atlantic Ocean (colonies which included ancient Rome's nemesis Carthage). The second, a millennium later, occurred with the expansion of the Muslim armies and Arabic in the 7th-8th centuries AD, which, at their height, controlled the Hispanic Peninsula and Sicily. Arab Muslim expansion is also responsible for modern Arabic's presence from Mauretania, on the Atlantic coast of West Africa, to the Red Sea in the northeastern corner of Africa, and its reach south along the Nile River through traditionally non-Semitic territory, as far as the northern half of Sudan, where, as the national language, non-Arab Sudanese even farther south must learn it. Semitic languages today are also spoken in Malta (where an Italian-influenced dialect of North African Arabic is spoken) and on the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean between Yemen and Somalia, where a dying vestige of South Arabian is spoken in the form of Soqotri.
Religion
In a religious context, the term Semitic can refer to the religions associated with the speakers of these languages: thus Judaism, Christianity and Islam are often described as "Semitic religions," though the term Abrahamic religions is more commonly used today. A truly comprehensive account of "Semitic" religions would include the polytheistic Ancient Semitic religions (such as the religions of Adad, Hadad) that flourished in the Middle East before the Abrahamic religions.
Ethnicity and race
A stylised T and O map, depicts Asia as the home of the descendents of Shem (Sem). Africa is ascribed to Ham and Europe to Japheth. In Medieval Europe, all Asian peoples were thought of as descendents of Shem. By the nineteenth century, the term Semitic was confined to the ethnic groups who have historically spoken Semitic languages. These peoples were often considered to be a distinct race. However, some anti-Semitic racial theorists of the time argued that the Semitic peoples arose from the blurring of distinctions between previously separate races. This supposed process was referred to as Semiticization by the race-theorist Arthur de Gobineau. The notion that Semitic identity was a product of racial "confusion" was later taken up by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg.
Modern science, in contrast, identifies an ethnic group's common physical descent through genetic research, and analysis of the Semitic peoples suggests that they share a significant common ancestry. Though no significant common mitochondrial results have been yielded, Y-chromosomal links between Near-Eastern peoples like the Arabs, Syrians and Jews have proved fruitful, despite differences contributed from other groups (see Y-chromosomal Aaron). Although population genetics is still a young science, it seems to indicate that a significant proportion of these peoples' ancestry comes from a common Near Eastern population to which (despite the differences with the Biblical genealogy) the term Semitic has been applied.
My additional Comments
While the Genographic Project allowed me to find out about ancestral travels out of Africa, it was not until I received more information following the transfer of my personal information to the Family Tree DNA Project that things became much more relevant in terms of living connections around the world.
My DNA sample is based on a 12 Marker Y Chromosome DNA analysis and the Family Tree DNA Project looked for exact matches to this. Would you believe that I already have eleven exact matches from people around the world that have already participated in this Project! None of these people have the same surname as I do, yet we have perfect DNA matches. There are three from Germany, and one each from Bohemia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Polynesia, Puerto Rico and Syria. I have their emails and will be pursuing further contact in due course. Additionally, there are many "close" matches, in DNA terms "One Step Mutations", "Two Step Mutations" and so forth. Isn't this intriguing and does it not make YOU want to participate in this?
There is one caution about this analysis. When our ancestors lived around the Mediterranean 10,000 years ago, there were only a "few million" people living in Europe and the genetic pool was not very diverse, meaning that many people must have had similar DNA types, and must have been related to common ancestry not that far back, perhaps within a few generations. The interesting part is that my Haplo group J2 (M172) is actually quite rare in Europe even today. Most of Europe was settled by hunters-gatherers who, after having left Africa, traveled East from the Middle East towards Mongolia, then North to the edge of the glaciers, then West towards what is now known as Europe. We know about these travels because not everyone kept on traveling over the centuries, many stayed behind at various locations and National Geographic DNA analysis of present local populations in some very remote areas have established this pattern.
My ancestors, on the contrary, took a shorter route to the Southern parts of Europe and North Africa and along the way, invented domestication and farming. Incidentally, they were also the primary settlers in areas that we now consider the cradle of modern civilization and democracy, namely today's Egypt, Greece and Italy. Imagine our ancestors were at all of these locations in 8,000 BC, which is just prior to or at the time of these great civilizations!