About us
A. G2c WOLINSKY SUBGROUP
1. EUPEDIA - G2c INFORMATION SUMMARY:
Haplogroup G has its roots in and around the Caucasus. It is found mostly in mountainous regions between the Near East and India (Caucasus, Iran, Afghanistan, Kashmir), but also in Central Asia (Kazakhstan), Europe and North Africa. Most Europeans belong to the G2a subclade, and most northern and western Europeans more specifically to G2a3b (or to a lower extend G2a3a). About all G2c Europeans are Ashkenazi Jews. The discovery of G2c subclades around Afghanistan indicates that it could have originated in that part of the world.
The G2c Haplogroup Group's population genetics work suggests the Litvak/Lithuanian group and other G2cs came to Eastern Europe from Sicily -- leaving around the time of the Inquisition. The Ashkenazi G2c Modal Hapotype originated around 1360 - 1390, probably in Italy around Sicily. Tester Wilonsky matches the Modal Haplotype on 34 / 37 markers, and tester Wolinsky matches the Modal Haplotype on 64 / 66 markers. It appears these G populations were in France and Spain before Sicily and before then in the Near East.
2. EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM SICILY IN 1492-1493
A great number of Jews reached Sicily after Pompey's sacking of Jerusalem in 63 BC. Roman Proconsul Crassus is said to have sold more than 30,000 Jewish slaves on the island. After enslavement under Roman rule, Jews in Sicily eventually assimilated into society, working in professions as wide-ranging as philosophy, medicine, artisanal pursuits, and farming. The exact number of Jews in Sicily at the time of the Jewish expulsion in 1492 is not certain. But the Jewish populations of Palermo, Messina and several other cities were considerable. There were Giudeccas, or Jewish settlements, in over 50 places in Sicily, with populations from 350 to 5000. At their height, Jewish Sicilians probably constituted five to eight percent of the island's population.
King Ferdinand II of Aragon and his wife Queen Isabella of Castille united their kingdoms and created the nation of Spain in 1479. In 1492 they expelled the last Moors from their kingdom and the Iberian peninsula. As part of an attempt to maintain Catholic orthodoxy and purify their kingdom of Moorish influence, they ordered the conversion or expulsion of all Jews from Spain (including Sicily) on pain of death in 1492-1492.
Witnesses recalled seeing the Jews of Palermo waving from the departing ships at their former neighbours as they were borne away. Many Sicilian Jews fled to neighboring Calabria where the Spanish Inquisition caught up with them again fifty years later. Wikipedia.
3. LITHUANIA – BRIEF HISTORY
The history of Lithuania dates back to at least 1009, the first recorded use of the term. Lithuanians later conquered neighboring lands, establishing the Kingdom of Lithuania. The Lithuanian state, founded around 1200 A.D., eventually grew as a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire. It remained fiercely independent and was one of the last areas of Europe to adopt Christianity. Lithuania became the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1398, occupying the geographic center of Europe. Committed to political policies of pluralism and religious tolerance, the Lithuanian princes welcomed and protected settlement by religious minorities including Jews, Karaites, Orthodox Old Believers, and so on. Over the centuries, Lithuania attracted settlement by Tartars, Germans, Armenians, Swedes, and Scots in significant numbers. So Lithuania was a logical place to go for Sicilian Jews fleeing from the Inquisition in 1492-1493.
In 1569, Lithuania became the largest state in Europe when it merged into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1795, however, Lithuania was erased from the political map and passed to Russia with the Partitions of Poland. The Lithuanians lived under the rule of the Russian Empire until World War I. In 1918 Lithuania re-established itself as an independent nation, and remained independent until it was occupied by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II.
During World War II the Nazis encouraged pogroms in Lithuania and carried out mass shootings of Jews with the help of Lithuanian collaborator elements. About 250,000 Jews lived in Lithuania in 1941. Nazis began encouraging pogroms against the Jews after the German invasion on the night of June 21-22, 1941. In the days before the Germans imposed effective administrative control, Lithuanian nationalist paramilitary forces began to massacre Jewish civilians. According to German documents, between June 25 and 26, "about 1,500 Jews were eliminated by the Lithuanian partisans. Many Jewish synagogues were set on fire; on the following nights of 25th and 26th of June another 2,300 were killed."
Between June and July 1941, detachments of German Einsatzgruppe A, together with Lithuanian auxiliaries, started large-scale mass shootings of Jews. By November 1941, many had been killed in places like Paneriai (Ponary massacre). The official German army report (“the Jager Report”) methodically lists for each Lithuanian town and village the number of men, women, and children who were systematically murdered by the joint forces of the SS and the Lithuanian paramilitary.
From the Sakiai district, surviving German documents include a 16 Sep 1941 report by the head of the Sakiai district to the police department director on the massacre of Jews in the district (in Lithuanian LCVA, fund R-683, schedule 2, case, 2, page 86).
The List of Lithuanian Cities and towns where Jews lived until the Nazi occupation as well as the sites where they were massacred, based on the information of town and district municipalities, on the book "Lithuanian Jews", vol. 4, Tel Aviv, 1984, and other sources, shows:
# 173 Town: Sakiai
Massacre site: near Sakiai, outskirts of Batiskiai forest,1,5 km N of the town
Page 152 Photographs 245-246
Close to 80% of Lithuanian Jews were exterminated before the end of 1941 under the overall command of Heydrich. Typically, the victims were murdered just outside the communities in which they lived. A minority of Jews were temporarily kept alive for slave labor. Approximately 40,000 Jews were concentrated in the Vilnius, Kaunas, Šiauliai, and Švenčionys ghettos, and in concentration camps, where they were given harsh work assignments and provided inadequate quantities of food. As a result, many died of starvation or disease over the next two years. In 1943, the ghettos were either destroyed by the Germans or turned into concentration camps, and 5,000 Jews were sent to the extermination camps.
At the end of the war, only 10% of Lithuania's Jews survived. The Soviet Army retook control of Lithuania from the Germans in 1944. Lithuania achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
B. R1B1B2 WOLINSKY BELARUS SUBGROUP
Our R1b Wolinsky Belarus Subgroup has been formed for our first R1b1b2 tester. He traces back to his Wolinsky Most Distant Known Ancestor around 1750 in the village of Drogozin (Drogichin) in Grodno Gubernia (Province), now in Belarus. Grodno (Hrodna) is just 30 km southeast of Lithuania on the Niemen River -- the capital of Grodno Region of Belarus.
Belarus (capital Minsk) is a land-locked country in eastern Europe, bounded by Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest, Poland to the west, the Ukraine to the south, and Russia to the east and northeast. Belarus (and Grodno) became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1398, became part of Poland when Lithuania united with Poland in 1569, and passed to Russia in 1795.
World War II devastated Belarus, which lost a third of its population and over half its economic resources. The Soviet army retook Belarus from the German army in 1944. Belarus gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Sources: Wikipedia; Lithuanian DNA Group.
FTDNA: Haplogroup R1b is the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, reaching over 90% of the population in some parts of western France, northern Spain or Ireland. It is widespread as far as Central Asia and Africa. It is believed to have expanded throughout Europe as humans re-colonized after the last glacial maximum (Ice Age) 10-12 thousand years ago. This lineage is also the haplogroup containing the Atlantic modal haplotype.
EUPEDIA: Haplogroup R1* might have originated in southern Central Asia (between the Caspian and the Hindu Kush), then developed into R1b* then R1b1* in the northern part of the Middle East during the Ice Age. It presumptively moved to northern Anatolia and across the Caucasus during the early Neolithic, where it became R1b1b. The Near Eastern leftovers evolved into R1b1a (M18), now found at low frequencies among the Lebanese and the Druze.The Phoenicians (who came from modern day Lebanon) spread this R1b1a and R1b1* to their colonies, notably Sardinia and the Maghreb.
The Proto-Indo-Europeans belonged to both R1a and R1b. Their homeland was in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, in what is known as the Kurgan culture (7000-2200 BCE). The presence of R1b in modern times between the Black Sea and the Caucasus hints at the Maykop culture (3500-2500 BCE) as their most plausible homeland, while the Eurasian steppes to the north were R1a territory.
R1b1b2 probably appeared during Maykop culture. It was an advanced Neolithic culture of farmers and herders, and one of the very first to develop metalworking, and therefore metal weapons. Stuck between two seas and the Caucasus, they possibly traded actively around the Black Sea, notably with the other R1b people from northern Anatolia (those that didn't cross the Caucasus and might be the ancestors of the Hittites).
Even though the R1b haplogroup is the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, it is found in only a small percentage of Ashkenazi Jews -- roughly 10%.
Several possible explanations and theories have been considered as to how this haplogroup made its way into the Jewish genetic mosaic, However, they remain untested until a significant enough sample of data is available to show whether these results are of recent or distant contribution to the Jewish genetic soup. R1b_Jewish Project.
C. I-M253-P WOLINSKI MLAWA SUBGROUP
Our newest member is a Wolinski tester who traces back to Mlawa, Poland.
The Cullen subclade predictor prodicts this tester as Haplogroup I1 to a 100 % probability and subclade I-M253-P to a 98 % probability.
We hope to learn more about the subclade and when and where it originated and moved as additional data is developed.
EUPEDIA on Haplogroup I1:
Haplogroup I (Y-DNA)
I is the oldest haplogroup in Europe and in all probability the only one that originated there (apart from deep subclades of other haplogroups). It is thought to have arrived from the Middle East as haplogroup IJ around 35,000 years ago, and developed into haplogroup I approximately 25,000 years ago. This means that Cro-Magnons most probably belonged (exclusively ?) to IJ or I. Nowadays haplogroup I accounts for 10 to 45% of the population in most of Europe. It is divided in four main subclades.
The megalithic structures (5000-1200 BCE) of Europe were built by I people.
Haplogroup I1 (formerly I1a) is the most common I subclade. It is found mostly in Scandinavia and Northern Germany, where it can represent over 35% of the population. Associated with the Norse ethnicity, it is found in all places invaded by the ancient Germanic tribes and the Vikings.
During the Neolithic period, pre-I1 and I1 people were part of the sucessive Ertebølle culture (5300-3950 BCE) and Funnelbeaker culture (4000-2700 BCE). The Corded Ware period (3200-1800 BCE) marks the arrival of the Indo-European R1a people from the Ukrainian steppes.
I1 is identified by at least 15 unique mutations, which indicates that this lineage has been isolated for a long period of time, or experienced a serious population bottleneck. Although the first mutation splitting I1 away from I2 may have arisen as long as 20,000 years ago, people belonging to this haplogroup all descend from a single man who lived less than 5,000 years ago. This corresponds to the arrival of the Indo-European, suggesting that a high percentage of the indigenous I1 men could possibly have been killed by the new immigrants.
WIKIPEDIA on Haplogroup I1, I-M253:
Haplogroup I-M253 (M253, M307, P30, P40) displays a very clear frequency gradient, with a peak frequency of approximately 35% among the populations of southern Norway, southwestern Sweden, and Denmark, and rapidly decreasing frequencies toward the edges of the historically Germanic-influenced world. A notable exception is Finland, where frequency in West Finns is up to 40%, and in certain provinces like Satakunta more than 50%.
Outside Fennoscandia, distribution of Haplogroup I-M253 is closely correlated with that of Haplogroup I-M436; but among Scandinavians (including both Germanic and Uralic peoples of the region) nearly all the Haplogroup I Y-chromosomes are I-M253. Another characteristic of the Scandinavian I-M253 Y-chromosomes is their rather low haplotype diversity (STR diversity): a greater variety of Haplogroup I-M253 Y-chromosomes has been found among the French and Italians, despite the much lower overall frequency of Haplogroup I-M253 among the modern French and Italian populations.
D. mt-DNA TESTING
We have three mt-DNA testers. Mt-DNA testing follows markers that are handed down along the direct maternal line from mother to her daughter to her daughter to her daughter, and so on. (Males receive mt-DNA from their mothers, but only females can pass their mt-DNA markers along to their children.) Y-DNA follows markers along the direct paternal line on the male Y-chromosome from father to his son to his son to his son, and so on. Consequently the mt-DNA markers do not follow along the normal surname line from generation to generation as the male-only y-DNA markers typically do (in the absence of an adoption or similar diverting event).
1. EUPEDIA - G2c INFORMATION SUMMARY:
Haplogroup G has its roots in and around the Caucasus. It is found mostly in mountainous regions between the Near East and India (Caucasus, Iran, Afghanistan, Kashmir), but also in Central Asia (Kazakhstan), Europe and North Africa. Most Europeans belong to the G2a subclade, and most northern and western Europeans more specifically to G2a3b (or to a lower extend G2a3a). About all G2c Europeans are Ashkenazi Jews. The discovery of G2c subclades around Afghanistan indicates that it could have originated in that part of the world.
The G2c Haplogroup Group's population genetics work suggests the Litvak/Lithuanian group and other G2cs came to Eastern Europe from Sicily -- leaving around the time of the Inquisition. The Ashkenazi G2c Modal Hapotype originated around 1360 - 1390, probably in Italy around Sicily. Tester Wilonsky matches the Modal Haplotype on 34 / 37 markers, and tester Wolinsky matches the Modal Haplotype on 64 / 66 markers. It appears these G populations were in France and Spain before Sicily and before then in the Near East.
2. EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM SICILY IN 1492-1493
A great number of Jews reached Sicily after Pompey's sacking of Jerusalem in 63 BC. Roman Proconsul Crassus is said to have sold more than 30,000 Jewish slaves on the island. After enslavement under Roman rule, Jews in Sicily eventually assimilated into society, working in professions as wide-ranging as philosophy, medicine, artisanal pursuits, and farming. The exact number of Jews in Sicily at the time of the Jewish expulsion in 1492 is not certain. But the Jewish populations of Palermo, Messina and several other cities were considerable. There were Giudeccas, or Jewish settlements, in over 50 places in Sicily, with populations from 350 to 5000. At their height, Jewish Sicilians probably constituted five to eight percent of the island's population.
King Ferdinand II of Aragon and his wife Queen Isabella of Castille united their kingdoms and created the nation of Spain in 1479. In 1492 they expelled the last Moors from their kingdom and the Iberian peninsula. As part of an attempt to maintain Catholic orthodoxy and purify their kingdom of Moorish influence, they ordered the conversion or expulsion of all Jews from Spain (including Sicily) on pain of death in 1492-1492.
Witnesses recalled seeing the Jews of Palermo waving from the departing ships at their former neighbours as they were borne away. Many Sicilian Jews fled to neighboring Calabria where the Spanish Inquisition caught up with them again fifty years later. Wikipedia.
3. LITHUANIA – BRIEF HISTORY
The history of Lithuania dates back to at least 1009, the first recorded use of the term. Lithuanians later conquered neighboring lands, establishing the Kingdom of Lithuania. The Lithuanian state, founded around 1200 A.D., eventually grew as a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire. It remained fiercely independent and was one of the last areas of Europe to adopt Christianity. Lithuania became the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1398, occupying the geographic center of Europe. Committed to political policies of pluralism and religious tolerance, the Lithuanian princes welcomed and protected settlement by religious minorities including Jews, Karaites, Orthodox Old Believers, and so on. Over the centuries, Lithuania attracted settlement by Tartars, Germans, Armenians, Swedes, and Scots in significant numbers. So Lithuania was a logical place to go for Sicilian Jews fleeing from the Inquisition in 1492-1493.
In 1569, Lithuania became the largest state in Europe when it merged into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1795, however, Lithuania was erased from the political map and passed to Russia with the Partitions of Poland. The Lithuanians lived under the rule of the Russian Empire until World War I. In 1918 Lithuania re-established itself as an independent nation, and remained independent until it was occupied by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II.
During World War II the Nazis encouraged pogroms in Lithuania and carried out mass shootings of Jews with the help of Lithuanian collaborator elements. About 250,000 Jews lived in Lithuania in 1941. Nazis began encouraging pogroms against the Jews after the German invasion on the night of June 21-22, 1941. In the days before the Germans imposed effective administrative control, Lithuanian nationalist paramilitary forces began to massacre Jewish civilians. According to German documents, between June 25 and 26, "about 1,500 Jews were eliminated by the Lithuanian partisans. Many Jewish synagogues were set on fire; on the following nights of 25th and 26th of June another 2,300 were killed."
Between June and July 1941, detachments of German Einsatzgruppe A, together with Lithuanian auxiliaries, started large-scale mass shootings of Jews. By November 1941, many had been killed in places like Paneriai (Ponary massacre). The official German army report (“the Jager Report”) methodically lists for each Lithuanian town and village the number of men, women, and children who were systematically murdered by the joint forces of the SS and the Lithuanian paramilitary.
From the Sakiai district, surviving German documents include a 16 Sep 1941 report by the head of the Sakiai district to the police department director on the massacre of Jews in the district (in Lithuanian LCVA, fund R-683, schedule 2, case, 2, page 86).
The List of Lithuanian Cities and towns where Jews lived until the Nazi occupation as well as the sites where they were massacred, based on the information of town and district municipalities, on the book "Lithuanian Jews", vol. 4, Tel Aviv, 1984, and other sources, shows:
# 173 Town: Sakiai
Massacre site: near Sakiai, outskirts of Batiskiai forest,1,5 km N of the town
Page 152 Photographs 245-246
Close to 80% of Lithuanian Jews were exterminated before the end of 1941 under the overall command of Heydrich. Typically, the victims were murdered just outside the communities in which they lived. A minority of Jews were temporarily kept alive for slave labor. Approximately 40,000 Jews were concentrated in the Vilnius, Kaunas, Šiauliai, and Švenčionys ghettos, and in concentration camps, where they were given harsh work assignments and provided inadequate quantities of food. As a result, many died of starvation or disease over the next two years. In 1943, the ghettos were either destroyed by the Germans or turned into concentration camps, and 5,000 Jews were sent to the extermination camps.
At the end of the war, only 10% of Lithuania's Jews survived. The Soviet Army retook control of Lithuania from the Germans in 1944. Lithuania achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
B. R1B1B2 WOLINSKY BELARUS SUBGROUP
Our R1b Wolinsky Belarus Subgroup has been formed for our first R1b1b2 tester. He traces back to his Wolinsky Most Distant Known Ancestor around 1750 in the village of Drogozin (Drogichin) in Grodno Gubernia (Province), now in Belarus. Grodno (Hrodna) is just 30 km southeast of Lithuania on the Niemen River -- the capital of Grodno Region of Belarus.
Belarus (capital Minsk) is a land-locked country in eastern Europe, bounded by Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest, Poland to the west, the Ukraine to the south, and Russia to the east and northeast. Belarus (and Grodno) became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1398, became part of Poland when Lithuania united with Poland in 1569, and passed to Russia in 1795.
World War II devastated Belarus, which lost a third of its population and over half its economic resources. The Soviet army retook Belarus from the German army in 1944. Belarus gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Sources: Wikipedia; Lithuanian DNA Group.
FTDNA: Haplogroup R1b is the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, reaching over 90% of the population in some parts of western France, northern Spain or Ireland. It is widespread as far as Central Asia and Africa. It is believed to have expanded throughout Europe as humans re-colonized after the last glacial maximum (Ice Age) 10-12 thousand years ago. This lineage is also the haplogroup containing the Atlantic modal haplotype.
EUPEDIA: Haplogroup R1* might have originated in southern Central Asia (between the Caspian and the Hindu Kush), then developed into R1b* then R1b1* in the northern part of the Middle East during the Ice Age. It presumptively moved to northern Anatolia and across the Caucasus during the early Neolithic, where it became R1b1b. The Near Eastern leftovers evolved into R1b1a (M18), now found at low frequencies among the Lebanese and the Druze.The Phoenicians (who came from modern day Lebanon) spread this R1b1a and R1b1* to their colonies, notably Sardinia and the Maghreb.
The Proto-Indo-Europeans belonged to both R1a and R1b. Their homeland was in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, in what is known as the Kurgan culture (7000-2200 BCE). The presence of R1b in modern times between the Black Sea and the Caucasus hints at the Maykop culture (3500-2500 BCE) as their most plausible homeland, while the Eurasian steppes to the north were R1a territory.
R1b1b2 probably appeared during Maykop culture. It was an advanced Neolithic culture of farmers and herders, and one of the very first to develop metalworking, and therefore metal weapons. Stuck between two seas and the Caucasus, they possibly traded actively around the Black Sea, notably with the other R1b people from northern Anatolia (those that didn't cross the Caucasus and might be the ancestors of the Hittites).
Even though the R1b haplogroup is the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, it is found in only a small percentage of Ashkenazi Jews -- roughly 10%.
Several possible explanations and theories have been considered as to how this haplogroup made its way into the Jewish genetic mosaic, However, they remain untested until a significant enough sample of data is available to show whether these results are of recent or distant contribution to the Jewish genetic soup. R1b_Jewish Project.
C. I-M253-P WOLINSKI MLAWA SUBGROUP
Our newest member is a Wolinski tester who traces back to Mlawa, Poland.
The Cullen subclade predictor prodicts this tester as Haplogroup I1 to a 100 % probability and subclade I-M253-P to a 98 % probability.
We hope to learn more about the subclade and when and where it originated and moved as additional data is developed.
EUPEDIA on Haplogroup I1:
Haplogroup I (Y-DNA)
I is the oldest haplogroup in Europe and in all probability the only one that originated there (apart from deep subclades of other haplogroups). It is thought to have arrived from the Middle East as haplogroup IJ around 35,000 years ago, and developed into haplogroup I approximately 25,000 years ago. This means that Cro-Magnons most probably belonged (exclusively ?) to IJ or I. Nowadays haplogroup I accounts for 10 to 45% of the population in most of Europe. It is divided in four main subclades.
The megalithic structures (5000-1200 BCE) of Europe were built by I people.
Haplogroup I1 (formerly I1a) is the most common I subclade. It is found mostly in Scandinavia and Northern Germany, where it can represent over 35% of the population. Associated with the Norse ethnicity, it is found in all places invaded by the ancient Germanic tribes and the Vikings.
During the Neolithic period, pre-I1 and I1 people were part of the sucessive Ertebølle culture (5300-3950 BCE) and Funnelbeaker culture (4000-2700 BCE). The Corded Ware period (3200-1800 BCE) marks the arrival of the Indo-European R1a people from the Ukrainian steppes.
I1 is identified by at least 15 unique mutations, which indicates that this lineage has been isolated for a long period of time, or experienced a serious population bottleneck. Although the first mutation splitting I1 away from I2 may have arisen as long as 20,000 years ago, people belonging to this haplogroup all descend from a single man who lived less than 5,000 years ago. This corresponds to the arrival of the Indo-European, suggesting that a high percentage of the indigenous I1 men could possibly have been killed by the new immigrants.
WIKIPEDIA on Haplogroup I1, I-M253:
Haplogroup I-M253 (M253, M307, P30, P40) displays a very clear frequency gradient, with a peak frequency of approximately 35% among the populations of southern Norway, southwestern Sweden, and Denmark, and rapidly decreasing frequencies toward the edges of the historically Germanic-influenced world. A notable exception is Finland, where frequency in West Finns is up to 40%, and in certain provinces like Satakunta more than 50%.
Outside Fennoscandia, distribution of Haplogroup I-M253 is closely correlated with that of Haplogroup I-M436; but among Scandinavians (including both Germanic and Uralic peoples of the region) nearly all the Haplogroup I Y-chromosomes are I-M253. Another characteristic of the Scandinavian I-M253 Y-chromosomes is their rather low haplotype diversity (STR diversity): a greater variety of Haplogroup I-M253 Y-chromosomes has been found among the French and Italians, despite the much lower overall frequency of Haplogroup I-M253 among the modern French and Italian populations.
D. mt-DNA TESTING
We have three mt-DNA testers. Mt-DNA testing follows markers that are handed down along the direct maternal line from mother to her daughter to her daughter to her daughter, and so on. (Males receive mt-DNA from their mothers, but only females can pass their mt-DNA markers along to their children.) Y-DNA follows markers along the direct paternal line on the male Y-chromosome from father to his son to his son to his son, and so on. Consequently the mt-DNA markers do not follow along the normal surname line from generation to generation as the male-only y-DNA markers typically do (in the absence of an adoption or similar diverting event).