The Sons of Adam
After analysing your DNA, GeoGene has identified the presence of four key genetic markers on your Y-chromosome, called: M168, YAP, M40 and M35. The eldest of these (M168) first appeared in a man who lived in East Africa approximately 90,000 years ago. This man is one of your direct paternal ancestors. He has become known as “Eurasian Adam” because essentially every non-African man alive today as well as the majority of African men belongs to one of the many family trees descended from him.

Your ancestors in ancient Africa
Your YAP marker first appeared in a descendent of Eurasian Adam who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago. He is another of your ancestors. Between around 50,000 – 60,000 years ago, some of this man’s descendents were probably among the first groups of modern humans to journey out of Africa, although your own ancestors did not leave with them. GeoGene can tell this because your Y-chromosome bears an additional marker called M40, which arose in Africa approximately 35,000 years ago. People with M40 continued to spread throughout the African interior, diversifying into a number of different lineages, of which your own is identified by M35.

Your genetic cousins
You inherited M35 from a man who lived in Africa approximately 30,000 years ago. He is your GeoFather and today his M35-bearing descendents – your “genetic cousins” – are predominantly found in the following parts of the world.

Present-day distribution of your M35-bearing cousins

Your genetic family expands throughout Africa,
and beyond …
Some M35-bearing people migrated into Egypt, where they seem to have been among the earliest inhabitants. This provides evidence that you may be genetically linked to the Ancient Egyptian civilisation, which flourished between about 3,300 B.C. and 30 B.C. Others travelled towards eastern Africa, where M35 is today carried by almost half of Ethiopian men. Between around 30,000 and 10,000 years ago, people carrying M35 arrived in the Maghreb, the NW African region loosely centred on Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Their genetic legacy still appears in some 75% of NW African men, being particularly prominent in Berber tribes. During the Moorish conquests of Iberia (A.D. 711 – A.D. 1492), Berber warriors almost certainly carried M35 north across the Strait of Gibraltar, and it is found today in approximately 5% of southern Iberian men.

The Fertile Crescent and the rise of agriculture
The Fertile Crescent and the rise of agriculture M35 is also associated with the spread of agriculture out of the Near
Eastern “Fertile Crescent” (modern-day Israel, Syria, SE Turkey and Iraq). Nomadic tribes of hunter-gathers, including M35-bearing lineages, began to settle here between about 30,000 and 10,000 years ago, and they would become some of the first people to cultivate their own crops and livestock. These new agricultural populations expanded into southern Europe (and, to a lesser extent, northern India and Pakistan), spreading both M35 and knowledge of agricultural practices. Soon after the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, they also expanded further west into Europe where their impact was greatest in the south.

The main GeoCousins