Family trio: Majority of European men descended from just 3 ancestors, study finds

May 20th, 2015

David Schulberg

Reuters / Paul Hackett

Two-thirds of modern-day European males trace their genetic roots to just three Bronze Age forbears, who almost literally launched the “population explosion” many centuries ago, a new DNA study suggests.

Before coming to this
conclusion, a research team from the University of Leicester
analyzed the DNA sequences of 334 modern European men from 17
different European and Middle Eastern populations, focusing on
the large portions of the Y-chromosome passed exclusively from
fathers to sons.

Their findings were published in the Nature Communications.

After that they compared the DNA from each population in order to
trace the key mutations in the genomes and find out when they
might have occurred. Such an approach allowed the scientists to
trace paternal lines down through a long period of history.

One mutation they found originated around 4,750 to 7,340 years
ago and is prevalent in Norwegian and Orcadian populations. The
second occurred between 3,700 and 6,500 years ago and has spread
throughout Spain, Italy, France, England and Ireland. The third
dated from about 3,470 to 5,070 years ago is prominent in the
Sami in Lapland, Norwegians, Danes and Friesian populations in
the Netherlands, as well as being found in France, Hungary,
Serbia and Bavaria, the study reports.

According to the researchers, these three paternal lines account
for about 63 percent of modern European men. That means that from
371.25 million males currently living in Europe around 233
million are descendants of just three men, as reported by the
Daily Mail.

Those branches of the European genetic tree are fairly young,
which suggests most modern populations settled in Europe only
after the spread of farming during the Neolithic era, rather than
during the period of hunter-gatherers moving across the continent
in the Paleolithic era, as previously thought.

According to the scientists, the time of “population
explosion” was also a period of social, economic and
technological advances.

“The population expansion falls within the Bronze Age, which
involved changes in burial practices, the spread of horse-riding
and developments in weaponry,” Professor Mark Jobling, a
lead researcher and geneticist at the University of Leicester,
said.

“Dominant males linked with these cultures could be
responsible for the Y chromosome patterns we see today,” he
added.

Although it is still unclear who exactly the ‘fathers’ in these
paternal lineages were, or even if they were born in Europe, the
scientists believe they were influential and powerful
individuals, likely tribal chieftains.

According to the researchers, people in positions of power would
tend to travel more widely and father far more children than
their subjects, so their lineages became dominant.

“We think that a social structure in which resources and
power are more easily accessible to only some men may allow for a
few paternal lineages to become very frequent in a short amount
of time,” Dr. Chiara Batini, a co-author of the research and
a geneticist at the University of Leicester, said.

The scientists are now planning to continue their study, as it
can help them to gain deeper understanding of how the three
identified paternal lineages spread across Europe.

“Given the cultural complexity of the Bronze Age, it’s
difficult to link a particular event to the population growth
that we infer,” Batini said.

“But Y-chromosome DNA sequences from skeletal remains are
becoming available, and this will help us to understand what
happened, and when,” she added.

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Family trio: Majority of European men descended from just 3 ancestors, study finds
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Majority of European men descended from just 3 ancestors, study finds