I recently attended the Group Administrators' Conference in Houston Texas put on by Family Tree DNA. Thanks to the good work of Rebekah Canada, Alissandro Biondo and others, the Y-chromosome Tree has been updated. Most of us are now Q1b1*. There are new tests in process right now which may show we are Q1b1a or Q1b1b.

If you go to Rebekah's site at Family Tree DNA you can see how the new SNPs have changed the chart. What she does not show is the newly published tree which does recognize some of her work. What is most significant for all of us is that we all probably have the L245 SNP.

Click on this link to see Rebekah's New Tree. 

When we all first started we were told we were in Haplogroup Q meaning that we had the M242 SNP generic to all Haplogroup Q members. It is theorized that this mutation took place about 20,000 years ago in Siberia. Then they found the P36.2 SNP which showed we branched off from the Siberian group more than 12,000 years ago when a group of Q's migrated to the Western Hemisphere.

More recently they found we all had M378 SNP which is found among a small percentage of the Hazara tribe in India and a small percentage of the Sindhi tribe of Pakistan. How and when this link to a group of Ashkenazi Jewish people took place has been the subject of some interesting and confusing debates in this chat room.

But the L245 SNP is downstream from the M378. Downstream means evolved later in time. This makes us even more unique. Two of our members have SNPs downstream from the L245. One is the L272 and the other is the L315.
These more recent mutations may have evolved  within a few hundred years in the Mediterranean area.

Since many of you have consented to have your samples tested for these newly discovered SNPs we will soon know so much more about this.

Family Tree DNA posts its version of the draft y-chromosome tree at the following link. But Rebekah's is more up-to-date and gives much more information - the link above.

Draft Y-Tree at FTDNA Site 

I personally believe these new discoveries will put to rest any notion that the Khazars or the mythical Ashina were the source of our Qness.

As more and more downstream SNPs are discovered we may eventually find there is one unique to Ashkenazi Jewish Qs. I will wait for Rebekah and Alissandro to announce this.

I would like to personally express my appreciation to Rebekah, Alissandro and the others who are doing this work on our behalf.

If you do not understand what I am talking about post a response. If you do understand what I am talking about and know more than me please post a response.

Regards,

Dave Howard