The ancient path

 

FTDNA. Globetrekker map.

My Big Y-700 DNA results arrived on Friday, and I have been diving into the material to understand more about my place on the Block Tree. In my last Y-DNA update in mid-December, I was assigned haplogroup R-L2. This latest result puts me closer to modern times, with a most recent common ancestor located in England about 1600 CE.

FTDNA.

The screen shot above shows I have an ancient DNA connection with a man who lived during the Roman age in York, England between 100-400 CE (see this article in the Guardian from 2016). York was a Roman city called Eboracum. This particular ancient match may have originated from southwestern Wales. The link to Wales is not a surprise, with the surname Jones originating there. At that far back, this connection is before the creation of surnames.

There's a verse at the beginning of the 2002 song Turn the Page by the British hip hop project The Streets, where Mike Skinner raps "I'm forty-fifth generation Roman". An AI overview of the song lyric says "it's used to playfully highlight the idea that many people in Britain have distant ancestry linked to the Roman occupation, even if they don't directly experience that heritage in their lives today." I've been a fan of The Streets for a long time (saw them live in 2004 at the 9:30 Club in DC), so learning about this deep Roman connection is pretty cool.

In the meantime, I've joined Y-DNA group project R-U152-FGC22501 to learn more about how to work with the results. A fascinating blog entry from an administrator of the group describes some details on the project.