Collins Y-DNA "has blown holes in theories of Afro-Centrists."

New research into Collins y-dna

By Sean Collins Wright

In light of recent breakthroughs in the world of genetic genealogy, it is my habit to update my own y-dna profile in consistency with the recent developments. A Y- DNA database that I often peruse is ysearch.org. For those unfamiliar with this website, it is one in which y-dna donors, participants and researchers may search a database featuring y-dna from various sources including, but not limited to FTDNA, ancestry.com and a host of others. One major change that I have noticed is that now E1b1a and E1b1b have been formally linked by mutation V-38. A recent deep-subclade study of three members of my genetic relative circle undertaken at ftdna revealed a confirmed haplogroup of E1b1a7a. While still not resolutely certain of its accuracy, I too began to take notice of my own y-dna and it’s similarities with the E1b1b subclade. Marker numbers 19a, dys393 and dys390 still look as thought they are the ‘defining’ markers of my supposed haplogroup, the other 33 appear to be in line with E1b1b. At Whit Athey’s haplogroup predictor.  I put this hypothesis to the test.http://www.hprg.com/hapest5/hapest5a/hapest5.htm?order=num andhttp://members.bex.net/jtcullen515/haplotest.htm

By removing the three defining markers I get 88.6%. Still not enough to convince ftdna that they are wrong so I’ll just leave it as is for the time being and accept the confirmation of E1b1a7a. In an updated wikipedia article on E1b1a it states “Outside of Africa, E1b1a has been found at low frequencies. In Eurasia, the clade has primarily been found in West Asia. There have also been reported a few isolated incidents of E1b1a in Southern European populations in Malta, Spain and Portugal. There have also been isolated incidences in Austria and Germany”. I have been saying for quite sometime after conversations with Darren Marin of ftdna and the fact that genetic relatives show a “recent ancestral origin” in Germany. Mr. Marin said that our German match was from that country and had an ancient history there. He could not divulge anymore information than that due to privacy issues. One family having ancient origins in Europe is the Gabbenesch family of Tyrol, Austria. Recent immigrants to the US, with a confirmed haplogroup of E1b1a8a. Researchers of this line theorize a Roman ancestor or something more ancient among the Rhaetian, an Alpine Tribe of the Raetia and the Po Valley. This finding has blown holes into theories of quite a few Afro-centrists.

Afro-centrists being those who hold firm to the ‘out of Africa’ theory and those entrenched in the works of “Free African-Americans” by Paul Heinnig. While so many genealogists and researchers are persuaded that E1b1a in Caucasians results from unions of free Black men and indentured white servant women as per Mr. Heinnig’s book, which in fact was not his original intention. He speculated on the order of 1% of the colonial era Free African-Americans originated this way. By his reckoning and research he set out to prove that African-American’s today descended from such unions not Caucasians. It has been written that E1b1a accounts for 50-55% of African-American males, the rest are mostly haplogroup R1b (a supposed Celtic haplogroup). So then, how many of this 50-55% are descendants of a white man that carried this gene? How many disillusioned black carriers of R1b, thinking they are offspring of a white slave owner are truly from the 40% of the inhabitants of Cameroon who carry R1b?

Another line that I will briefly cover is a family that lived among my own and even trekked the same paths as my own. All the while the y-dna shows no relation to this family at least not paternally. The lineage in question has y-dna haplogroup of R1a and has among it’s members, descendants of David Collins born 1750, Griffin Collins born 1773, Vardy Collins born 1764 and Amos Collins born 1784 to name just a few. This line has an oral tradition that states a Native American origin. R1a is said to have originated in Eastern Europe and is common in Scandinavia and the British Isles amid those of Viking/Norse descent. Is it possible that R1a split much like mtdna hg X and one section traveled west into Europe and one traveled east, following the hunter-gatherers that crossed the Bering Strait? As this is not my own extraction, I cannot speak on their behalf. But as mtdna X, could be of a Soultrean culture.

Now I will examine various places around the world via ysearch how widespread haplogroup E1b1a is in comparison with my own and others of my group.

From the British Isles to continental Europe surely all of these cannot be wrong. The Lucy family immigrated to the northern United States, the Low’s immigrated to New Zealand. Clearly not all E1b1a Caucasians are from the U.S. south. So it is in my opinion that the slave male, white indentured female origin theory has been thoroughly debunked. If only 1% of free African births happened this way in early Colonial days, it does not account for the vast number of Caucasians now showing up as E1b1a. To propagate this nonsense any further is to hinder serious research.

Which brings me to my next point; how accurate are haplogroup designations? This website says that y-dna is determined by climate

http://www.britam.org/YDNAclime.html

“We are interested in DNA because it helps us trace different peoples and show the interrelationships amongst them.
We believe it may be useful. Nevertheless it also seems certain that environmental influence at some stage in the past does determine YDNA haplogroups. This however is not yet “officially” acknowledged. As soon as acknowledgement is forthcoming there may be studies showing how and when the YDNA changes take place. We will then be able to consider to what degree they are attributable to hereditary and what and when they are not. ” The fact that North America has a much warmer climate than say Northern Europe and many but not all of these families are from the Southern United States could it be ‘global warming’ on a genealogical scale?



The human Y chromosome is particularly exposed to high mutation rates due to the environment in which it is housed. The Y chromosome is passed exclusively through sperm, which undergo multiple cell divisions during gametogenesis. Each cellular division provides further opportunity to accumulate base pair mutations. Additionally, sperm are stored in the highly oxidative environment of the testis, which encourages further mutation. These two conditions combined put the Y chromosome at a risk of mutation 4.8 times greater than the rest of the genome.

Haplogroups can change every 200-400 some take longer to develop. Every new skeleton that is found is refuting the “out of Africa” theory. The Haplogroup designations cannot tell where our ancestors were a thousand years ago. The haplotypes can only tell if 2 or more males are related and show a common ancestor. Very little studies of European y-dna have been conducted; it’s usually by Americans of European descent. E1b1a which is allegedly a Sub-Saharan haplogroup has been found in Europeans and white Americans with no known African bloodline some going back 500 years.

Researcher Janet Crain states: “When scientists speak of haplogroups as being Asian, European, African or Native American they are speaking in broad terms of where these people lived in isolation for many, many thousands of years before they began migrating and mixing together. A haplogroup takes more than 400 years to evolve”
-From melungeon-L group forums-

It appears that haplogroups are little more than a convenient cataloging of similar haplotypes. That is why now I do not place much faith in them. I do not however deny the matches that I have encountered, whether they are close relations or relatives of a more ancient kind. Now I will briefly discuss my opinions on the ancient origins of my haplotype’s progenitor.

Theory I: A Moor origin. As the matches at ysearch show, we can follow a migration pattern from Algeria-Iberian peninsula-Germany. It is very well possible that my earliest discernable male ancestor was an Islamic Moor or Jew in the service of the Moor army that took part in the European invasion of 711. The Battle of Tours on October 10, 732 followed 23 years of Umayyad (Moor) conquests in Europe which had begun with the invasion of the Visigothic Christian Kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula in 711. These were followed by military expeditions into the Frankish territories of Gaul, former provinces of the Roman Empire. Umayyad military campaigns had reached northward into Aquitaine and Burgundy, including a major engagement at Bordeaux and a raid on Autun. Charles’ victory is widely believed to have stopped the northward advance of Umayyad forces from the Iberian Peninsula, and to have preserved Christianity in Europe during a period when Muslim rule was overrunning the remains of the old Roman and Persian Empires. Of course as with any advancing army there will be deserters. My ancestor could have been one of these.

Later in the year 1025 another invasion from North Africa occurred. The ‘black-skinned’ Muslim Almoravids swept Iberia and added to their previous conquests. The Almoravids (Berber: Imṛabḍen, Arabic: Al-Murābiṭūn) were a Berber dynasty of Morocco, who lived between the current Senegal and southern Morocco. It is affiliated to the Berber tribes of Sanhaja and Lamtuna. From the eleventh century to the twelfth century, their empire was extended over present-day Morocco, Mauritania, southern Spain and Portugal, western present-day Algeria and a part of what is now Mali. At its greatest extent, the empire stretched 3,000 kilometres north to south. Almoravids built the city of Marrakesh and made it their capital city which became then one of the most influential centers of power in Africa and the Mediterranean region. Another likely candidate for ancestral origins.

Theory II: Melungeons. Who were the mysterious Melungeons? It s a term traditionally applied to one of a number of “tri-racial isolate” groups of the Southeastern United States, mainly in the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and East Kentucky. Tri-racial describes populations thought to be of mixed European, sub-Saharan African, and Native American ancestry. Although there is no consensus on how many such groups exist, estimates range as high as 200.
From wikipedia.
Other theories on the Melungeons are shipwrecked Turkish and Portuguese sailors, which could fall in line with The Moor theory. Many patriarchs of these isolated did say on a number of occasions that they were “Port-gee”.

My own personal opinion on Melungeons can be summed up in a statement by scholar and Collins family researcher and genealogist Dwight S. Collins who writes:
“Melungeon was a little used and little unknown term until some enterprising “researcher’s realized it’s “yellow journalism” potential, I believe. It was only used in print the one time in the famous Stony Creek Church minutes when Will Drumgoogle picked it up and published it in a newspaper in the 1890′s I think it was. Will was a woman, and sensational journalism was the rage, so it made a good story about. some hill people from the mountains that sounded kind of strange, exotic, and mysterious. A perfect story to help the career of a budding reporter. Add that to the mix of Indian’s who managed to stay in the hills of home, the Trail of Tears was scarcely complete, and you can have an imagined story line ready for the masses.”

The oft quoted Drumgoole seems to be the only source behind melungeon mythology so you have to take this with some mindful thought behind it.
Theory III: Romany/Gypsy or Jewish. This theory once again can go back to the Moors/Melungeons. While in most of Europe the Romani arrived from Asia through Eastern Europe, they were recorded as having arrived in Spain from Northern Africa, as early as 1425. The Jews arrived much earlier. They were recorded in Barcelona and Zaragoza by 1447. At first they were well received and were even accorded official protection by many local authorities. By 1492, a time of increased persecution of minorities, the first anti-Romani law was passed in Spain. According to Blas Infante, in his book “Orígenes de lo flamenco y secreto del cante jondo” (Origins of Flamenco and Flamenco singing secret), the word Flamenco may derive from Andalusian Arabic fellah mengu, “Escapee Peasant”. Infante connects the numerous Muslim inhabitants of Andalusia who decided to stay and mix with the Romani newcomers instead of abandoning their lands because of their religious beliefs. After the Castilian “reconquest” of Andalusia, the Reconquista, the government expropriated formerly Muslim lands to give to warlords and mercenaries who had helped the Castilian Empire against Al-Andalus. When the Spanish Crown later ordered the expulsion or forceful conversion of the Andalusian Moors, many of them took refuge among the Roma, becoming fellah mengu to avoid persecution or forced deportation. In 1492 the Romanies and Jews were included in the list of peoples to be assimilated or driven out. Where did they go?

The Iberian Romany group has developed a strong identity, having kept isolated from the other European Roma for centuries. Caló is their common designation in Spain and Southern France (where their mother tongue is either Spanish or Catalan), while in Portugal their ethnonym is “Calon”. Calon sounds to be an early word that could have morphed into Collin or Collins. Interestingly enough it looks as though my own y-dna is as closely related to Ashkenazi Jews as to Sephardic Jews.

http://www.familytreedna.com/landing/ydna-transfer.aspx?ftdna_ref=497

http://www.familytreedna.com/public/dominicansephardim/default.aspx?section=yresults

http://www.familytreedna.com/public/IberianSurnamesofAshkenaz/default.aspx?section=yresults
http://www.familytreedna.com/public/4Sephardim/default.aspx?section=yresults
M2 (E1b1a) can be found among 8.4% of Sephardic Jews.  (Source: “History in the Interpretation of the Patten of p49a, f RFLP Y-Chromosome Variation in Egypt: A Consideration of Multiple Lines of Evidence TaqI” Keita, 2005). That being said I still do not waver on my stance for haplogroup designations.

The Ashkenazi, Jews of Ashkenaz are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany. Thus, Ashkenazim or Ashkenazi Jews are literally “German Jews.” Later, Jews from Western and Central Europe came to be called “Ashkenazi” because the main centers of Jewish learning were located in Germany. Ashkenazi is also a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations. This theory fits perfectly with the fact that I have a genetic relative surnamed Preisch (later Price) from the Rhineland region. This family was also in Montgomery County, Virginia at the same time as my Collins’.

Theory IV: the Ubii. Not much is known of the Ubii tribe of western Germany other than what Romans wrote about them. They were a Germanic tribe first encountered dwelling on the right bank of the Rhine in the time of Julius Caesar, who formed an alliance with them in 55 BC in order to launch attacks across the river. They were transported in 39 BC by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa to the left bank, apparently at their own request, as they feared the incursions of their neighbors the Chatti. The Ubii seem to have been so thoroughly Romanized that they adopted the name Agrippenses in honor of their “founder”, and their later history is submerged with other Franks in that of eastern Gaul as a whole.

So why would I even discuss the Ubii? There is a German origin and there is a Romanization of these people. This goes back to the aforementioned Gabbenesch family, remember their theories abound with Romans and/or a more ancient isolation of the Raetian tribe. It is a theory that cannot be proven nor can it be disproved.