Daku Y-DNA: Y19291

Yet another arcane code! My mom's cousin, Jim Daku, had a next-generation test completed on his Y-chromosome. This is a high-resolution test that examines most of the SNPs on that chromosome, looking for mutations that he shares with other men. By dating when these mutations occurred, we can get an idea of the deep ancestry of hist paternal line. 

Jim and my mother share a grandfather, Bálint Daku (1887 - 1970), and Jim inherited his Y-chromosome, almost entirely unchanged, as did my Grandpa Ben and my Mom's brothers. I did not inherit it, of course, because I inherited by Y-chromosome from my father. 

While this is a fantastic test, it's limitation is that comparatively few men have taken it and the value is chiefly with its comparison to other results. Currently, most of Jim's matches share ancestors thousands of years ago. However, as costs decrease and more men test, we may see a map of more recent ancestry.

Jim current terminal block is Y19291, although this may change with some analysis. Most of his closer matches are English but that means little. By far, most testers have a British background and many populations have flowed into Britain from all over Europe over the last 2000 years. The more interesting matches are those from outside the Isles. 

His closest match lives in Italy. Other fairly close matches come from France, Spain, and Italy.  The most recent common ancestor of Jim and his closest Italian cousin is estimated to have lived about 1300 BCE, considered the beginning of the proto-celtic age. It's very likely that the forefathers of this distant ancestor lived around the Alps, somewhere near modern day Switzerland. Whether this distant ancestor continued to live around the Alps, with one descendent moving south and another east, or had himself lived modern day Italy, or further east into the Danube Basin is anyone's guess. 

Were our distant Daku forefathers Roman and moved east with the legions? Or were they already in eastern Europe and absorbed by the great invasions from the Asian Steppes, which later raided west into Italy? Or perhaps they took a far more circuitous route, north through modern day Germany and then later south by some other migration? I suspect we'll need additional matches with more recent common ancestors to find out. However, now that the Daku DNA is in the database for comparison, we'll certainly learn that eventually.