Tracing Harvey Barnes' Deep Ancestral Roots Through Y-DNA

Page Contents:
Introduction
Harvey's S18890 Subclade
Harvey's Cornish Background
Annie's Editorial Note
From 'Adam' to R1b
Tracking Harvey's Patrilineal Ancestors Through his R1b Haplogroup - (M343, P297, M269, L23, L51, U106 haplogroups)
Younger Branches - (U106, L48, Z9, Z30, Z2, Z7, Z8, Z11, Z12, Z8175, FGC12057, S18890, FT161969, BY100453)
Recent Generations - (from the mid 18th century onwards)
Please Consider DNA Testing - (...if you are a male called Barnes from the West Penwith / Penzance area of Cornwall.)
S18890 Men Who Have Already Tested (...please contact me.)
 

Introduction

The Y chromosome can be used to study a man's patrilineal (direct male) line because this particular chromosome passes only from fathers to their sons almost intact. Harvey (surname: BARNES) has taken a Y37 DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA and he's also undertaken the R1b-L48 SNP Panel at YSEQ.

The Y37 test looks at people who match Harvey within a recent time frame, although this can still be many centuries ago. Many of his DNA matches are linked to the surname, Bolling/Bolin/Bowling/Bowlin/Bolding and there are one or two called Tapscott also, rather than the expected Barnes surname. This may be because Harvey's connection to them pre-dates surnames.

Update - August 2017: Harvey's Y37 test has been upgraded to Y67 (ie. 67 tested markers) which, in theory, should refine his results. The Bolling/Bolin/Bowling/Bowlin/Bolding matches are still there, as are some Tapscott matches. There are also some matches called Snow which seem to have appeared at the 67 marker level which weren't there at 37 markers.

Update - December 2017: Harvey's Y67 test has now been upgraded to 111 markers and he currently has no matches at this level. This is not a complete surprise to me as his closest Y67 match was at a Genetic Distance of 5 which is quite distant. We now wait and hope for others to test.

The SNP test is more concerned with deep ancestry although some people have been fortunate that their terminal SNP dates within the time of documented evidence. It's the SNP test that this article relates to.

Harvey's S18890 Subclade

Update - January 2021: Since publishing the information below, Harvey's terminal SNP has moved down the Y-haplotree two more branches from S18890 to FT161969 and then BY100453.

Harvey's larger haplogroup is U106 and his subclade is R-S18890*. A more comprehensive way of expressing this is:

R1b-M343 > P297 > M269 > L23 > L51 > U106 > L48 > Z9 > Z30 > Z2 > Z7 > Z8 > Z338 > Z11 > Z12 > Z8175 > FGC12057 > S18890*

The asterisk at the end of S18890 means Harvey is negative for all known SNP's (single nucleotide polymorphism) downstream of S18890 in the L48 Panel at the time of testing.

Another way of describing Harvey's subclade is: R1b1a1a2a1a1c2b2a1b1a1a2b2

The image below shows the section of the L48 Panel where Harvey's ancestor is located on the Y-Chromosome phylogenetic tree. You will note that Harvey tested negative for the S7297, CTS4569 and FGC12058 SNP's which are downstream of S18890 but that's not to say a Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) test, such as FamilyTreeDNA's Big Y DNA test, might not refine Harvey's subclade further.
 

The section of the R1b-L48 Panel at YSEQ showing the location of the S18890 SNP
 

Harvey's Cornish Background

Using traditional research I've traced Harvey's patrilineal line (father's father's father, etc.) to William BARNES whose son, John, was baptized in 1783 in Paul Parish Church which is located in the tip of the County of Cornwall in the UK. John was a fisherman and most likely lived in Newlyn where his descendants lived until the end of the 20th century.

Annie's Editorial Note

I'm very grateful to those who put their time to the study of anthropology and other natural sciences. However, before we start, I feel I should mention that science can only answer questions based on the knowledge, evidence and scientific methodology available at any given time. As with any scientific study, may I recommend you always keep an open mind regarding dates and migration patterns, etc., as do the scientists themselves. Never stop asking questions!

[NOTE: If you happen to have already read my 'Tracing Annie Hibbitt's Deep Ancestral Roots Through Her Dad's Y-DNA' page, then please jump to this section to avoid duplication.]
 

From 'Adam' to R1b

We begin our journey 60,000 years ago with a metaphorically named 'Adam' who was born in Africa. He is the most recent common direct ancestor to most people alive today but he was not, however, the only man alive at the time. The following map shows the migration routes out of Africa over the next several thousands of years until we arrive at Harvey's major haplogroup, R1b.

Migration map of the major haplogroups from 'Adam'
 

Tracking Harvey's Patrilineal Ancestors Through His R1b Haplogroup

Much of the information below has been obtained from the R1b haplogroup page at Eupedia (Copyright © Eupedia.com) as at the time of writing (July 2017) with a few additions from Wikipedia. Contributions towards the younger branches came from Dr Iain McDonald, project admin for the R1b-U106 group at FamilyTreeDNA, and Dr Joe Flood, project admin for the Cornwall Advanced group at FTDNA.

Migration map of Y-haplogroup R1b from the Paleolithic (Stone Age) to the end of the Bronze Age (c. 1000 BC)
(Image: Copyright © Eupedia.com)

R1b-M343

Haplogroup R* is believed to have originated in North Asia just before the Last Glacial Maximum or Ice Age (26,500-19,000 years ago). The oldest forms of R1b (M343, P25, L389) are found dispersed at very low frequencies from Western Europe to India, a vast region where the nomadic R1b hunter-gatherers could have roamed during the Ice Age.

P297

The three main branches of R1b1 (R1b1a, R1b1b, R1b1c) all seem to have stemmed from the Middle East. The northern branch, R1b1a (P297), seems to have originated around the Caucasus, eastern Anatolia or northern Mesopotamia, then to have crossed over the Caucasus into the vast Pontic-Caspian Steppe, from where they would have invaded Europe and Central Asia. It has been hypothesized that R1b people (perhaps alongside neighbouring J2 tribes) were the first to domesticate cattle in northern Mesopotamia some 10,500 years ago. The Pontic-Caspian Steppe would have provided ideal grazing grounds for cattle. A steppe is a large area of flat unforested grassland. They then split into two factions; M73 and M269.

M269

R1b-M269 is observed most frequently in Europe, especially western Europe, but with notable frequency in southwest Asia. M269 is estimated to have arisen approximately 4,000 to 8,000 years ago in southwest Asia and to have spread into Europe from there.

M269 is closely associated with the diffusion of Indo-European languages. Modern linguists have placed the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, a distinct geographic and archaeological region extending from the Danube estuary to the Ural mountains to the east and North Caucasus to the south.

The first clearly Proto-Indo-European cultures were the Khvalynsk (5200-4500 BC) and Sredny Stog (4600-3900 BC) cultures in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. This is when small kurgan burials (the practice of burying the dead under mounds 'kurgan') began to appear, with the distinctive posturing of the dead on the back with knees raised and orientated toward the northeast, which would be found in later steppe cultures as well. There is evidence of population blending from the variety of skull shapes. Towards the end of the 5th millennium BC an elite started to develop with cattle, horses and copper used as status symbols.

L23

It was at the turn of the Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog periods that R1b-M269's main subclade, L23, is thought to have appeared, around 4,500 BC. 99% of Indo-European R1b descends from the L23 clade.

The Yamna period (3500-2500 BC) was the most important one in the creation of Indo-European culture and society. Middle Eastern R1b-M269 people had been living and blending to some extent with the local R1a foragers and herders for over a millennium, perhaps even two or three. The close cultural contact and interactions between R1a and R1b people all over the Pontic-Caspian Steppe resulted in the creation of a common vernacular, Proto-Indo-European.

During the Yamna period, cattle and sheep herders adopted wagons to transport their food and tents, which allowed them to move deeper into the steppe, giving rise to a new mobile lifestyle that would eventually lead to the great Indo-European migrations. The Yamna horizon was not a single, unified culture. The northern branch would evolve into the Corded Ware culture and disperse around the Baltic, Poland, Germany and Scandinavia.

The Corded Ware culture comprised a broad Indo-European archaeological horizon of Europe between c. 2900 BC – c. 2350 BC, thus from the late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending in the early Bronze Age. Corded Ware culture encompassed a vast area, from the Rhine on the west to the Volga in the east, occupying parts of Northern Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe.
Features of the culture were...

• A mobile pastoral economy relying mostly on cattle and occasional cereal cultivation.
• Regular use of horses and ox-drawn wagons. Presence of copper and bronze artefacts as well as stone battle-axes.
• Coarse pottery typically decorated with twisted cord impressions and sometimes with other types of impressions or incisions. Use of beakers and cups for drinking.
• The dead were inhumed in flat graves inside a small mound. Bodies were laid on their side with bent knees. Wagons/carts and sacrificed animals were present in graves.

L51

When R1b crossed the Caucasus in the Late Neolithic, it split into two main groups. The western one, L51, is thought to have arrived in Central Europe (Hungary, Austria, Bohemia) around 2500 BC. It seems there was a large scale migration of Indo-European speakers (possibly riding on horses) to Western Europe between 2500 to 2100 BC, contributing to the replacement of the Neolithic or Chalcolithic (Copper Age) lifestyle by an inherently new Bronze Age culture, with simpler pottery, less farming, more herding, new rituals (single graves) and new values (patrilinear society, warrior heroes) that did not evolve from local predecessors.

U106

The principal Proto-Germanic branch of the Indo-European family tree is R1b-S21, also known as U106 or M405. This haplogroup is found at high concentrations in the Netherlands and north-west Germany. It is likely to have penetrated into Scandinavia around 1700 BC (probably alongside R1a-L664), thus creating a new culture, that of the Nordic Bronze Age (1700-500 BC). U106 would then have blended for more than a millennium with pre-existing Scandinavian populations. When the Germanic Iron Age started c. 500 BC, the Scandinavian population had developed a truly Germanic culture and language. U106 became the dominant haplogroup among the West Germanic tribes but remained in the minority in East Germanic and Nordic tribes, including those originating from Sweden such as the Goths, the Vandals and Lombards.

Distribution of Haplogroup R1b-S21 (U106) in Europe
(Image: Copyright © Eupedia.com)

Younger Branches

There are numerous dates for the various haplogroups, depending on the source, so what follows is a compilation of the information which I've managed to accumulate.

• U106 - Thought to descend from the Corded Ware culture or contemporary proto-Indo-European culture, around 3000 BC (range: between 3669 BC - 2447 BC).
  

• L48 - Germanic countries. Age of clade approx.: 2597 BC (range: 3181 BC - 2077 BC).
  

• Z9 - Age of clade approx.: 2258 BC (range: 2941 BC - 1842 BC).
  

• Z30 - Age of clade approx.: 2229 BC (range: 2807 BC - 1706 BC).
  

• Z2 - Age of clade approx.: 2132 BC (range: 2698 BC -1620 BC).
  

• Z7 - Age of clade approx.: 1816 BC (range: 2408 BC - 1282 BC).
  

• Z8 - Age of clade approx.: 1234 BC (range: 1758 BC - 789 BC).
  Common around the western Baltic from where modern Germanic peoples spread from around 700 BC. Z8 represents the outcome of a major population collapse then expansion, perhaps associated with the late Nordic Bronze Age or at the start of the Iron Age around 1100 - 1000 BC.
  

• Z11 - Age of clade approx.: 968 BC (range: 1531 BC - 431 BC).
  

• Z12 - About 2000-3000 years old. Age of clade approx.: 457 BC (range: 977 BC - 4 BC).
  Z12 may be associable with the expansion of the Germanic peoples around 600 BC although this remains fairly speculative and the dates are very uncertain. It dates to the time of the La Tène Celts and the Jastorf Culture.
  La Tène culture (not Harvey's haplogroup) developed and flourished during the late Iron Age (from about 500 BC to the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC) in Belgium, eastern France, Switzerland, Austria, Southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and parts of Hungary, Ukraine and Romania.
  The Jastorf culture was an Iron Age material culture in what are now southern Scandinavia and north Germany, spanning the 6th to 1st centuries BC, forming the southern part of the Pre-Roman Iron Age. The culture evolved out of the Nordic Bronze Age.
  

• Z8175 - Age of clade approx.: 414 BC (range: 894 BC - 9 AD).
  

• FGC12057 - Age of clade approx.: 308 BC (range: 773 BC - 114 AD).
  

• S18890 - Age of clade approx.: 112 BC (range: 580 BC - 326 AD).
  
  It's very likely that the dates are much closer to the central range of these estimates.
  
  Harvey's continental European Y-DNA matches at the S18890 level are all either north German or Norwegian. Hence, it is very likely that the origin of the S18890 family is within one of the pre-Roman Germanic peoples that were living in either one of these countries during the later centuries BC. It's likely that his ancestor's arrival into the UK was during the Roman era or later. One possibility is a Wessex (Saxon) connection. Devon and Cornwall seem a common theme for the S18890 group and it may be that the S18890 in Devon and Cornwall is due to a single wave of migration.
  
  Alternatively, there might have been some sort of just pre-Roman intrusion to Britain/Cornwall from Scandinavia. There are three possibilities, all of which would involve Harvey's ancestor coming down into Denmark first...

  1. He was one of the people displaced by the massive storm disaster at the end of the 2nd century BC. These storms occurred in 108 BC at the beginning of the Roman Warm Period and they were so bad they changed the coastline of Denmark and the Baltic permanently. It sent the tribes careening down into Roman-controlled territory and this, along with the warmer weather, is what caused them to move the legions north, eventually culminating in the conquest of Britain.
      
  2. He was in the tribes displaced from Northern Europe by Caesar's army.
      
  3. He was a Jute. The Jutes were a Germanic people. According to Bede, the Jutes were one of the three most powerful Germanic peoples of their time in the Nordic Iron Age, the other two being the Saxons and the Angles. The Jutes are believed to have originated from the Jutland Peninsula and part of the North Frisian coast. In present times, the Jutlandic Peninsula consists of the mainland of Denmark and Southern Schleswig in Germany. North Frisia is also part of Germany. The Jutes invaded and settled in southern Britain in the late 4th century during the Age of Migrations, as part of a larger wave of Germanic settlement in the British Isles.
     

• FT161969 > BY100453 - The two West Country surnames in Z12 parted company after S18890. They therefore made separate entries to Britain. The FGC12058 > BY18024 > A687 in Devon splits only recently (1500 CE) and is supposed to be Norman/Flanders, though there are no French or Dutch matches. The FT161969 > BY100453 in Cornwall (Harvey's line) is a long thin line with parallel Dutch and Finnish lines going back to 450 CE. It also may be Norman.
  ('U106 in the West Country' by Joe Flood, Aug 2020.)

Recent Generations

There's currently a gap between Harvey's S18890 ancestors and his known Cornish lineage. As time progresses and more data is accrued (ie. with more Y-DNA testers) improvements might well be made to both the age estimates and knowledge of the geography of the S18890 clade.

Moving forward in time, these are Harvey's known patrilineal ancestors:

• William Barnes (4 x Great-grandfather) - Married to Elizabeth [possibly Elizabeth Hampton in 1766 in Gulval, Cornwall - further evidence is required, perhaps through DNA, to verify this marriage belongs to the same William Barnes].
   
• John Barnes (3 x Great-grandfather) - Born: abt. 1783. Lived in Newlyn, Cornwall. Married to Ann/Nancy Dawes. Occupation: Fisherman.
   
• John Barnes (2 x Great-grandfather) - Born: abt. 1830 in Newlyn. Bap: Paul Parish Church on 7 Nov 1830. Lived in Newlyn. Married to Mary Ann Reynolds. Occupation: Fisherman. Died: 28 Jan 1895. Buried: 2 Feb 1895 in Paul Parish.
   
• Thomas Barnes (Great-grandfather) - Born: abt. 1864 in Newlyn. Lived in Newlyn. Married to Sarah Elizabeth Wright. Occupation: Fisherman and Boat Owner. Died 10 Oct 1939. Buried at Sheffield Road Cemetery, Paul, Cornwall.
   
• Thomas Barnes (Grandfather) - Born: 23 June 1907 in Newlyn. Lived in Newlyn. Married to Lizzie Annie Harvey. Occupations: Fisherman, Grocer and Trinity House Pilot. Died: 15 Apr 1975 in Penzance, Cornwall. Buried at Sheffield Road Cemetery, Paul, Cornwall.
   
• Harvey's Father
   
• Harvey Barnes whose lineage this is.

Properties in Newlyn, Cornwall, owned by the Barnes family for most of the 20th century

The three encircled properties in Fore Street, Newlyn, were first owned by Harvey's great-grandfather, Thomas Barnes senior, who acquired them around the turn of the 20th century. The properties were eventually sold around the time of the millennium.

The family have come a long way since Africa!
 

Please Consider DNA Testing

If you are a male called BARNES with ancestry from the West Penwith / Penzance area of Cornwall, especially in Newlyn, Paul or Mousehole, please would you consider taking a Y-DNA test. It would be great to compare. Feel free to contact me before testing as, whilst I'm not an expert in Y-DNA, it may be that taking a cheaper SNP test might be more appropriate depending on your aims. It may also be possible to obtain some data from an autosomal test too (see below).

If you are male and have taken the AncestryDNA, 23andMe or MyHeritage test, there may be a way to extract some SNP data from this to obtain an estimated haplogroup. Although this isn't a substitute for a dedicated Y-DNA test it might be useful in pointing you in the right direction for further testing. Harvey's haplogroup was reported as Z12 using this method with his AncestryDNA kit before he took the SNP test so, as you can see, we got quite a way down the Y phylogenetic tree. See this blog post for further details.

S18890 Men Who Have Already Tested

It would be interesting to know whether there are any other S18890 men (or perhaps downstream or a little upstream of S18890 on the Y phylogenetic tree) with or without a different surname whose descendants were living in close proximity to Harvey's family.

If you've already tested and are S18890 or close to it, please get in touch as it would be interesting to see whether there is a pattern developing. I'm wondering whether the South West of England may continue to be a common theme for the British contingent but even if your most distant patrilineal ancestor is from elsewhere, it would still be useful to know so we can get an idea of the spread.

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