April 10, 2015. Results of our 3rd member are in, Mr. Alfarajat. He is also J1 (i.e. now called J-M269 named after the terminal snp), like our other 2 members. However, I predict he is in branch P58 of J1, and the other two are in branch Z1828 of J1. The prediction is based both on his STR results and his matches at the STR 12 marker level (he has no matches at the 25, 37 or 67 marker levels). If one wanted to test for sure, one could test his results at snp P58 or test the new J1 test pack that tests all snps downstream of M269, if he needed to know which specific branch he was in. Assuming he is in P58, P58 and Z1828 branches split off from each other more than 10,000 years ago. This is before there were surnames. It thus would be hard to see a connection based on names (Al)Farajat and Faraggi. One might be left with the unsatisfying conclusion of J1 membership as "coincidence", or more specifically as once upon a time mid east origin for all, but with same names nonetheless coincidence. Note that at the 12 marker match level, country of orgin for his matches has the highest percent for Saudi Arabia, with over 1% of saudi samples at ftdna being J1. But of course so few countries from that region test here at 23andme so not much should be drawn from that result. Note also P58 is the middle east branch of J1, which makes sense give the Arab origins of this line.

April 2, 2015. We got a result back! One of the Fraggis/faraggis was tested at a position along the Y chromosome known as “Z1828”. The result was that yes, he has the variant at that position! This means that our Fraggis/Faraggis are NOT the most commonly found and talked about group of J1 (that one would be P58) meaning we are NOT the J1 of the Levant. (It is not the Jewish J1 people talk about, and is not the Cohanim modal haplotype people talk about.

Much less has been researched about our branch; Here is one summary: “It is particularly frequent around the Taurus and Zagros mountains and in the Caucasus, but has also been found at low frequencies in western Turkey, Greece, South Italy, Central Europe, France, and the British Isles.”. Of people who test with FTDNA and turn out to have J1, about 15% are from this (our) general branch. Nearly all the rest are the P58 branch mentioned above.  That makes ours the second most common J1, even though frequency is  only 15% of J1at FTDNA.  FTDNA has a pretty biased sample of people who test.  All of J1originated in Anatolia (Caucases, Iran) and believed to be sheep and goat herders, but the other branch (that popular P58 branch)  stayed in middle east longer and went to Levant. Our branch is one of the oldest ones and appears to have left the middle east the earliest. It is currently barely found in the middle east atall because it left so early.

We are similar to a cluster from Turkey, and also similar toa cluster from the Czech Republic…Others with the Z1828 like are branch are from caucuses with names I can’t pronounce and some in  other places in Eastern Europe I think I knowhow they got to Eastern Europe  from turkey, but we can discuss that after more data are in. There’s a paper on Sephardics in northern Portugal and about 25% were found to have J1, which is quite high. However, I don’t think they analyzed further to see if it is ourbranch (my guess is yes). I may look into seeing if we can find this out since it would be exciting if the known Portuguese Sephardic J1 were our branch andnot the Semitic branch of J1.

Technical stuff:

So we are officially J-Z1828. One way in which our clusterdiffers from all existing clusters that I know about (e.g. the Turkish, the CzeckRepublic) is that our STR at DYS385a and b are 12-12. Everyone else has higher repeats there, especially DYS385b. It’s possible this is a result that characterizes our specific Fraggis/Faraggis, or perhaps it’s a Sephardic signature generally.Won’t know until more Fraggis/Faraggis test and Sephardics with J-Z1828 turn up.

If we consider the branches downstream of Z1828, the most common would be Z1842. There’s only one more known alternative that’s much smaller and specific to a region that I forget, plus there’s likely plenty more snps not known about. After Z1842, there are two more downstream nodes of it that have been identified so far, and I believe that’s it. I have to check to see ifthe Turkish

Future:

 It would be nice to know if we are in the Z1842 branch (this is testable).  There’s also now a test for lots of J1 snps, though this is more relevant to the other branch I believe, not ours. I have not checked if any snps that are part of our z1828 cluster are tested in thatpackage. Also if we get more STRs (37 markers for example), that can be used instead to predict which branch. One interesting thing is I’ve seen it proposed that our J-Z1828 (our branch of J1) and R1-V88 traveled togeter; this is interesting since I’ve recently found R1-V88 to be a rare line within Sephardics. If we can get more info on this connection, this may really reveal the true migration paths of many Sephardic men. A lot may depend on when the literature catches up and gets more info on migration paths of J-Z1828 . We need to know more about its movement in Africa, if any (again connecting it to R1-V88 which went thru all of Africa). I’m tired of publishing population genetics papers, so it will have to be someone else.

Bottom line:

With this result we now know that we left Anatolia very early (9-10,000 years ago?- have to work on this number) leaving little to no trace in the Middle East. We are NOT the Levantine branch of J1. Exactly what happened to our ancestors after Anatolia it is not yet clear…

Feb 2015. The results for both members for 12 marker testing are the same (one member tested additional markers which is why they have data showing in more columns). Both of their Faraggi branches can be traced to residing in Monastir (now considered Macedonia, back then Ottomon) in the late 19^th century. Neither knew of a particular connection between their families. In the Y DNA results tab, for right now I have listed the country of origin that the project participant listed,as they have listed it. For countries of origin, I kept whatever country they listed on their profile. According to FTDNA’s , the two men have greater than 50 chance of a common male Faraggi ancestor within the last 8 generations. I do not know how accurate these predictions ("TIPs") are, especially for ethnic minority groups.

 Their results classify them as Haplogroup  “J1” for their Y chromosome, using older terminology. J1 originated in Anatolia maybe 10,000 years ago. in newer terminology, that means they are J-M267.

The results also show a  value of 13 at marker known DYS388.  This often (but not always!) points to a special branch of J1 that has not been as well studied as the most popular Semitic J1 branch. Once we know more, we can discuss the migration of people from this branch, or whatever branch is relevant.

With the current results then, we know they are J1, but do not yet know for sure on which branch of J1 these Faraggi’s reside. Since their STRs are the same, they are undoubtedly in the same branch. The two choices of branches, using old notation,  would be J1a and J1* (* meaning unclassified). Within J1a there are three  branches.  If one were testing further, my suggestion would be jump to testing for snp  (single nucleotide polymorphism) known as Z-1828, which tests to see if they are in branch 3. Although its not the largest branch of J1a, J1a3 most often goes along with the DYS388=13 result that they have, rather than the more popular J1a2 branch. . If they have the variant at Z-1828, then they are in J1a3 and if not, then further testing is needed, such as P-58, to test for J2a2 branch.