About us
18 December 2019: As a consequence of recent refinements in the y-chromosome phylogenetic tree due to Big Y testing, the old R1b-41-1123 Project is renamed the R1b-BY168 and Subclades Project and is broadened to include men who do not have the 41-1123 haplotype but are, like the members of that cluster, BY168+.
25 June 2018 Update: A lot has happened since the last update in 2016. As of now we have 12 members who have done the Big Y-500 test. That's pretty good for a small project like ours! As a consequence of this testing, a number of SNPs downstream of BY166 have been discovered, including FGC36974 and the two parallel SNPs downstream of it, FGC36982 and PF5064, and the SNP BY38518. These SNPs evidently identify branches of families and are important for that reason, among others.
On 21 February 2018, the final edition of the monumental scientific paper The Bell Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25738), by Dr. Iñigo Olalde and colleagues, was published. This paper is very significant for our group because we belong to the major y-dna haplogroup R1b-L21. Most of the Bell Beaker samples recovered from burials in Britain also belonged to R1b-L21, including "The Companion", who is believed to have been the son of the famous Amesbury Archer. Since no R1b of any kind was found in British samples from before the arrival of the Bell Beaker people, this means it is likely our y-dna line ancestors were Bell Beaker men. The presence of large amounts of steppe autosomal dna in these Bell Beaker ancestors, linked to the Yamnaya people of south Russia, indicates their ultimate origin, and makes it likely they were the ones who brought an Indo-European language to Britain.
08 April 2016: Family Tree DNA has decided to return to using the SNP BY166 (08487637T>G), also known as Z18021, as the terminal SNP for our subclade. BY166 is already on ISOGG's Tree, and a number of our members had already tested positive (derived) for it, so BY166 offers the greatest level of consistency and clarity among the several recently discovered SNPs (BY160-BY178) that could have been chosen.
February 2016: FTDNA is now using BY160 (06915643G>A) as the terminal SNP of the Big Y tested members of this project. BY160 is also known as Z18014.
15 September 2015: Family Tree DNA has decided to use the SNP BY178 (23866490C>T), also known as Z18037, as the terminal SNP for our cluster on the public web sites of its projects.
Tuesday 21 July 2015 We now have three Big Y tested members. Their shared SNPs can be seen on the DF41 section of Alex Williamson's excellent "The Big Tree" pages (scroll to near the bottom and to the right to find them, then trace the line up to the list of shared SNPs):
http://www.ytree.net/DisplayTree.php?blockID=7
BY166 has been added to ISOGG's R Tree as R1b1a2a1a2c1i8 BY166/Z18021.
http://www.isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpR.html
Breaking news! Sunday, 31 August 2014:
As a result of the comparison of Big Y results of two of our members, 19 new SNPs have been discovered downstream of DF41/CTS2501. Since these two members are 10 apart at 67 markers and 17 apart at 111 markers, it is likely that all of us in cluster 41-1123 share these SNPs. According to Mike Walsh, this means we belong to a new subclade of DF41/CTS2501 parallel to the other currently known subclades.
Yesterday I submitted one of those "Request New SNPs" forms to FTDNA. I asked them to assign "BY" (for Big Y) labels to them and add them to their Sanger Sequencing offerings. So, hopefully, these SNPs will have names before too long. Right now they are known only by their hg19 y chromosome position and the letters showing the allele changes (ancestral on the left, derived on the right). Here they are:
06915643G>A BY160
07452170A>T BY161
07506815C>T BY162
07550689A>T BY163
08121160T>C BY164
08172198C>T BY165
08487637T>G BY166
08702545C>T BY167
09963504A>T BY168
15330376T>C BY169
15590482G>C BY170
17676955T>C BY171
19118561C>T BY172
19278814T>C BY173
21384510G>T* BY174
22466490G>A BY175
22917674T>C BY176
22933398G>A BY177
23866490C>T BY178
Our new subclade will be characterized by the SNP BY166 above.
Follow Up (13 September 2014): Family Tree DNA has assigned numbers BY160-BY178, respectively, to the SNPs above. The new subclade discovered as a result has been christened BY166 after the first of these SNPs offered for sale under Advanced Orders by FTDNA. BY166 is the name given the SNP 08487637T>G.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17907527/R1b-L21_Tree_Chart.pdf
*Note: BY174 (21384510G>T) is possibly unstable, since it has been found in another clade outside of DF41.
25 June 2018 Update: A lot has happened since the last update in 2016. As of now we have 12 members who have done the Big Y-500 test. That's pretty good for a small project like ours! As a consequence of this testing, a number of SNPs downstream of BY166 have been discovered, including FGC36974 and the two parallel SNPs downstream of it, FGC36982 and PF5064, and the SNP BY38518. These SNPs evidently identify branches of families and are important for that reason, among others.
On 21 February 2018, the final edition of the monumental scientific paper The Bell Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25738), by Dr. Iñigo Olalde and colleagues, was published. This paper is very significant for our group because we belong to the major y-dna haplogroup R1b-L21. Most of the Bell Beaker samples recovered from burials in Britain also belonged to R1b-L21, including "The Companion", who is believed to have been the son of the famous Amesbury Archer. Since no R1b of any kind was found in British samples from before the arrival of the Bell Beaker people, this means it is likely our y-dna line ancestors were Bell Beaker men. The presence of large amounts of steppe autosomal dna in these Bell Beaker ancestors, linked to the Yamnaya people of south Russia, indicates their ultimate origin, and makes it likely they were the ones who brought an Indo-European language to Britain.
08 April 2016: Family Tree DNA has decided to return to using the SNP BY166 (08487637T>G), also known as Z18021, as the terminal SNP for our subclade. BY166 is already on ISOGG's Tree, and a number of our members had already tested positive (derived) for it, so BY166 offers the greatest level of consistency and clarity among the several recently discovered SNPs (BY160-BY178) that could have been chosen.
February 2016: FTDNA is now using BY160 (06915643G>A) as the terminal SNP of the Big Y tested members of this project. BY160 is also known as Z18014.
15 September 2015: Family Tree DNA has decided to use the SNP BY178 (23866490C>T), also known as Z18037, as the terminal SNP for our cluster on the public web sites of its projects.
Tuesday 21 July 2015 We now have three Big Y tested members. Their shared SNPs can be seen on the DF41 section of Alex Williamson's excellent "The Big Tree" pages (scroll to near the bottom and to the right to find them, then trace the line up to the list of shared SNPs):
http://www.ytree.net/DisplayTree.php?blockID=7
BY166 has been added to ISOGG's R Tree as R1b1a2a1a2c1i8 BY166/Z18021.
http://www.isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpR.html
Breaking news! Sunday, 31 August 2014:
As a result of the comparison of Big Y results of two of our members, 19 new SNPs have been discovered downstream of DF41/CTS2501. Since these two members are 10 apart at 67 markers and 17 apart at 111 markers, it is likely that all of us in cluster 41-1123 share these SNPs. According to Mike Walsh, this means we belong to a new subclade of DF41/CTS2501 parallel to the other currently known subclades.
Yesterday I submitted one of those "Request New SNPs" forms to FTDNA. I asked them to assign "BY" (for Big Y) labels to them and add them to their Sanger Sequencing offerings. So, hopefully, these SNPs will have names before too long. Right now they are known only by their hg19 y chromosome position and the letters showing the allele changes (ancestral on the left, derived on the right). Here they are:
06915643G>A BY160
07452170A>T BY161
07506815C>T BY162
07550689A>T BY163
08121160T>C BY164
08172198C>T BY165
08487637T>G BY166
08702545C>T BY167
09963504A>T BY168
15330376T>C BY169
15590482G>C BY170
17676955T>C BY171
19118561C>T BY172
19278814T>C BY173
21384510G>T* BY174
22466490G>A BY175
22917674T>C BY176
22933398G>A BY177
23866490C>T BY178
Our new subclade will be characterized by the SNP BY166 above.
Follow Up (13 September 2014): Family Tree DNA has assigned numbers BY160-BY178, respectively, to the SNPs above. The new subclade discovered as a result has been christened BY166 after the first of these SNPs offered for sale under Advanced Orders by FTDNA. BY166 is the name given the SNP 08487637T>G.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17907527/R1b-L21_Tree_Chart.pdf
*Note: BY174 (21384510G>T) is possibly unstable, since it has been found in another clade outside of DF41.