mtDNA Eve

H1-T152C!
-This mutation is a "reversion." Evidently, the original value at location 152 in the mtDNA Hypervariable Region 2 [HRV2] was C.
-Sometime in the past, the H1 clade mutated to T. T is the value in the revised Cambridge Reference Sequence.
-Then more recently, the value at location 152 reversed back to C.
-One exclamation mark at the end of a phylogenic name denotes a reversion to the ancestral or original state. Thus, two mutations: ie C to T then reversion to C.
-The notation is read as Clade H1; value T at 152; reversion back to C.

    "Mitochondrial DNA: Part 2," DNA eXplained <https://dna-explained.com/2019/05/23/mitochondrial-dna-part-2> 22 July 2022.

Information gleamed from "Ancestral DNA Marker Pedigree Display"  <https://www.genetichomeland.com/welcome/dnapedigree.asp> 11 July 2022.

A Pre-History of mtDNA Haplogroup H

When humans first ventured out of Africa some 60,000 [84,000] years ago, they left genetic footprints still visible today. By mapping the appearance and frequency of genetic markers in modern peoples, we create a picture of when and where ancient humans moved around the world. These great migrations eventually led the descendants of a small group of Africans to occupy even the farthest reaches of the Earth.

    "The Human Journey," National Geographic <https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human-journey/> 12 July 2015.

2. Haplogroup L3: Out of Africa Dispersion c. 84,000 BCE

Modern human's first family, Haplogroup L, began mutating back when our forefathers were still in Africa. Haplogroup L0 remained in Central  Africa. Our family migrated up the valleys of the East African Rift along the streams and marshes until they encountered the White Nile on the west or the Afar Triangle to the east.

The Afar Triangle (also called the Afar Depression) is a geological depression caused by the Afar Triple Junction which is part of the Great Rift Valley in East Africa. The region has disclosed fossil specimens of the very earliest hominins: that is, the earliest of the human clade, and it is thought by some paleontologists to be the cradle of the evolution of humans.

    Afar Triangle <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afar_Triangle> 16 July 2022.

These people and this location are very important; as all modern non sub-Saharan Africans descend from L3. Thus the descendants of these people would have migrated northeast to cross the Red Sea and go on to populate Asia and continue north up the Nile or the Red Sea Rift to populate North Africa, the Levant, the Central Asian Steppe, the Pontic Steppe, and eventually Europe.

Some paleontologists postulate that ancient man sojourned in the lands northwest of Lake Turkana. From there, they would have continued on northward until they encountered the White Nile, eventually migrating north along the river bed toward the Mediterranean. But, I believe that there was an ancient route where very ancient man migrated back and forth along the Red Sea Rift and the Dead Sea Rift to the Levant and even the Balkans and then back.

Middle Paleolithic burials at sites such as Krapina in Croatia (dated to c. 130,000 BP) and the Qafzeh and Es Skhul caves in Israel (c. 100,000 BP) have led some anthropologists and archeologists (such as Philip Lieberman) to believe that Middle Paleolithic cultures may have possessed a developing religious ideology which included concepts such as an afterlife: other scholars suggest the bodies were buried for secular reasons.

    Middle Paleolithic <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Paleolithic> 24 July 2022.

These return migrations would explain how modern man encountered and "admixed" with Neanderthals c. 100,000 BCE.

The finding also adds to the already compelling body of evidence that there were multiple migrations of modern humans out of Africa, stretching back over hundreds of thousands of years. Modern humans were thought to have evolved in Africa after the departure of Neanderthals and Denisovans, and to have remained on the continent until their well-known out-of-Africa diaspora 60,000 years ago. But recently, fossil evidence has indicated otherwise: A human jawbone in Israel, reported last year to date back to 180,000 years ago, and a skull fragment in Greece that’s even older, indicate earlier human migrations.

    "Fossil DNA Reveals New Twists in Modern Human Origins" <https://www.quantamagazine.org/fossil-dna-reveals-new-twists-in-modern-human-origins> 24 July 2022.

4. Haplogroup R & R0: c. 65000 - 30,000 BCE

Haplogroup R may have emerged in Anatolia c. 65,000 BCE. From there, the people began to disperse into the Caucasus and north to the Pontic Steppe. Haplogroup R0 is found west of the Black Sea en route to the Pontic Steppe among the Eneolithic Trypillia Culture (5500 - 2750 BCE).

8. Haplogroup H: c. 20,000 BCE

Our people arrived in the Franco-Cantabrian Region of Iberia before the Last Glacial Maximum. Sometime around 20,000 BCE, Haplogroup H emerged. Our people are not the Cro Magnon; as mtDNA analysis proves that those people were Haplogroup N, our distant cousins. But, our Haplogroup H people were their replacements.

The Late Upper Palaeolithic of Europe, particularly the Last Glacial Maximum LGM: (26-19 kyr cal BP), was a time of dramatic climatic changes. Fauna, and the humans that preyed on them, were forced to adapt their behaviours in response to climate changes to survive. The Cantabrian Region of northern Spain was continuously inhabited during this period when many other areas of Europe were inhospitable. The site of Las Caldas (Asturias) was repeatedly occupied by hunter-gatherers during the Solutrean (26.1–20.3 kyr cal BP) and Magdalenian (18.5–14.3 kyr cal BP).

    After the Last Glacial Maximum in the refugium of northern Iberia: Environmental shifts, demographic pressure and changing economic strategies at Las Caldas Cave (Asturias, Spain) <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379121001384> 16 July 2022.

[S]ubhaplogroups H1 and H3 are characterized by frequency peaks centered in Iberia and surrounding areas and by declining distributions toward the northeast and southeast. This pattern is extremely similar to that previously reported for mtDNA haplogroup V. . .This suggests that the Franco-Cantabrian refuge area was indeed the source of late-glacial expansions of hunter-gatherers that repopulated much of Central and Northern Europe from 15 kya. . . .

    Molecular Dissection of mtDNA Haplogroup H <www.ebc.ee/EVOLUTSIOON/publications/Achilli2004.pdf> 16 July 2022.

Haplogroup H1 is by far the most common subclade in Europe, representing approximately half of the H lineages in Western Europe. . .H1 is found throughout Europe, North Africa, the Levant, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and as far as Central Asia and Siberia. The highest frequencies of H1 are observed in the Iberian peninsula, south-west France and Sardinia.

    Haplogroup H (mtDNA) <https://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_H_mtDNA.shtml> 16 July 2022.

R1b1a1a2a1a2a1b [DF27/S250]:
The Gascon/ Iberian Celts migrated southwest out of Gaul to the Iberian Peninsula in about 2,250 BCE. Their migration route took them through Gascony/ Pyrenees-Atlantiques (France). Perhaps some settled there. They left their DNA and their blood type and their technology; but not their language amongst the Basque peoples.

Eastern R1b-P312 Bell Beaker men with steppe ancestry probably arrived at their most westerly destinations, Britain and Iberia, in many ways. Bell Beaker/Corded Ware people were traversing all of Europe, trading and bringing innovations like metal working to some areas. Those Eastern Bell Beaker males belonged to different Y haplogroups (P312) to the existing farmer groups (I, I2a). According to Harvard geneticist David Reich, the displacement of local males in the British Isles by P312 Bell Beaker men after c. 2500 BC was very swift. In Iberia the process took longer - about 500 years longer. Iberia may have had a much bigger surviving population than the British Isles did at the time of P312's arrival. Metal working was already known in Iberia - it might not have been as much of an advantage for the newcomers as it was in Britain. . . .

    "Origins of DF27," Rox2 yDNA Cluster <https://sites.google.com/site/rox2cluster/ancient-df27> 29 March 2021.  

The Bell Beaker phenomenon in the Iberian Peninsula defines the late phase of the local Chalcolithic and even intrudes in the earliest centuries of the Bronze Age. A review of radiocarbon dates for Bell Beaker across Europe found that some of the earliest were found in Portugal, where the range from Zambujal and Cerro de la Virgen (Spain) ran c. 2900–2500 BC. . .

Peninsular corded Bell Beakers are usually found in coastal or near coastal regions in three main regions: the western Pyrenees, the lower Ebro and adjacent east coast, and the northwest (Galicia and northern Portugal). . .
With some notable exceptions, most Iberian early Bell Beaker "burials" are at or near the coastal regions. As for the settlements and monuments within the Iberian context, Beaker pottery is generally found in association with local Chalcolithic material and appears most of all as an "intrusion" from the third millennium in burial monuments whose origin may go back to the fourth or fifth millennia BC.

    Bell Beaker Culture <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Beaker_culture#Iberian_Peninsula> 12 July 2022.

When R-DF27 reached southern Gaul, they encountered and intermixed with the local females, the ancestors of my Mother's family.. Migrating c. 24,000 BCE west  from Anatolia to Iberia, the descendants of female Haplogroups HV, H, & H1 had been in Iberia over 20,000 years before the arrival of male R-DF27. These female descendants of Haplogroup H then followed their Celtic men during the subsequent migrations up until our modern time.

The Iberian Celts continued their migration southwest into the Douro Valley and then south to the region of Beira Alta and its capitol, Guarda, in what is now Portugal. Here, the Lusitanians settled. They spoke the proto-Celtic Lusitanian language.

The Gaelic Celts continued their migration, this time north to the northwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula and the regions of Gallaecia and Asturias in what is now Spain. They spoke q-Celt/ Goidelic/ Gaelic.

The Bronze Age did not appear in Iberia until 1800 BCE, and was mostly confined to the cultures of El Argar and Los Millares in south-east Spain, with sporadic sites showing up in Castile by 1700 BCE and in Extremadura and southern Portugal by 1500 BCE. These Early Bronze Age sites typically did not have more than some bronze daggers or axes and cannot be considered proper Bronze Age societies, but rather Copper Age societies with occasional bronze artefacts (perhaps imported). These cultures might have been founded by small groups of R1b adventurers looking for easy conquests in parts of Europe that did not yet have bronze weapons. They would have become a small ruling elite, would have had children with local women, and within a few generations their Indo-European language would have been lost, absorbed by the indigenous languages.

Iberia did not become a fully-fledged Bronze Age society until the 13th century BCE, when the Urnfield culture (1300-1200 BCE) expanded from Germany to Catalonia via southern France, then the ensuing Hallstatt culture (1200-750 BCE) spread throughout most of the peninsula (especially the western half). This period belongs to the wider Atlantic Bronze Age (1300-700 BCE), when Iberia was connected to the rest of Western Europe through a complex trade network. . .

The Atlantic Bronze Age could correspond to the period when DF27 radiated more evenly around Iberia and ended up, following Atlantic trade routes, all the way to the British Isles, the Netherlands and western Norway (where M153 and SRY2728 make up about 1% of the population).

    "Haplogroup R1b" <http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_R1b_Y-DNA.shtml> 26 July 2015.

Our people are the Milesians of Irish Mythology. They settled in Gallaecia on the northwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula where they became a trading nation along the Atlantic coast. Our people eventually worked their way up the coast of the Celtic Sea in their little round boats, most probably landing in Armorica (Brittany, France). From Armorica, they crossed the Irish Sea to Ireland.

In the Lebor Gabála Érenn, a medieval Christian pseudo-history of Ireland, the Milesians are the Gaels who came from Iberia and settled in Ireland. They represent the Irish people. They are named after the character Míl Espáine, which is the Irish form of the Latin Miles Hispaniae ("Soldier of Hispania").

    "Milesians (Irish)" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milesians_(Irish)> 17 July 2015.

According to Lebor Gabála Érenn, the "Book of the Taking of Ireland," in about 1,000 BCE, the Milesians sailed across the Celtic Sea and became the Over Kings of  Ireland. Having populated Ireland, their descendants, the Scoti, went on to populate Scotland and Wales.

The descendants of DF27 (post 1,000 BCE) who remained in Iberia spoke Gallaecian. Their cousins, the Celtiberians of central Spain, were a conglomeration of original Celt and autochthonous Iberians and spoke, not a different dialect, but a different q-Celt language.

Further reading:
-"Milesians, the Myth" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milesians_(Irish)> 17 July 2015.
-"The Story of the Irish Race" <http://homepage.eircom.net/~kthomas/history.htm> 17 July 2015.