R-U198 (S29) Y-DNA Project

R-U198 Discussion

SOME THINGS WE KNOW:

• R-U198 is a significant haplogroup within the huge R1b super-haplogroup that is ubiquitous in Western Europe
• R-U198 itself is not particularly common. Even in those areas where it is relatively prevalent, such as the United Kingdom and the Low Countries, it does not seem to comprise more than about 2% to 3% of the male population
• The U198 mutation is represented by a G to A change at rs17222279 (build 37 position 16839499) and it occurred long ago in a man who was already carrying the “U106” mutation
• U198 is also known as S29 and M467
• We can identify a great deal of structure within R-U198 and have published a set of trees, on this website, to illustrate that
• In many cases we can now trace a specific family line or surname all the way back through the Y-DNA tree using a series of identifiable mutations known as “SNPs”
• In many cases we can predict approximately where a man will fit into the R-U198 structure simply from his basic markers (Y-STRs) alone

SOME THINGS WE OBSERVE:

• R-U198 is very old - probably between 4 and 5 millennia! Age estimates are subject to considerable uncertainly but are improving
• We come across R-U198 quite often in men whose ancestry is English, Lowland-Scots or Ulster-Scots, Flemish, Dutch or German (particularly from the Rhine Valley)
• Well-sampled populations where we do not tend to find much R-U198 include Gaelic Irish, Highland Scots and Scandinavians although of course it has spread a lot over the millennia and might occur anywhere
• Around half of R-U198 belongs to its main downstream clade, R-S15627 and around a quarter belongs its other large branch, R-DF93 (aka R-S1687). Both groups are well-dispersed today but arguably the DF93 wing may be more prevalent in Dutch/German populations whereas the large DF89 wing (within R-S15627) seems relatively common in Britain (and in the Low Countries). The DF93 branch also looks like it may have spread out more and travelled further afield

SOME THINGS WE DO NOT YET KNOW:

• Where did R-U198 originate? To date (August 2021) R-U198 has been almost exclusively identified in living individuals; an exception* is a Lombard boy who was buried in North-West Italy (*Amorim et al, 2018: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06024-4). As someone once said, “Trying to ascertain ancient origins using living subjects is like providing an alibi for where you were, one week after the crime”. We eagerly await further recoveries of R-U198 from ancient or mediaeval remains of known provenance. There are clues that our haplogroup originated somewhere in Western Eurasia and spread West towards Britain but we would rather await the empirical data
• When did the U198 mutation occur? As discussed above, we are starting to get much better estimates of this from extensive “next generation SNP testing” but again it is hoped to one day actually find it in ancient samples of known age
• Which groups spread R-U198? We must remain open-minded because, yet again, we require empirical data from ancient remains. We cannot deduce this from living individuals. Part of the problem is that quite literally the majority of surnames represented in our haplogroup project (and the same will apply equally to other haplogroups) are not the “true” ancestral surnames at all, if one looks back a few centuries. There may be clues in the few surnames that are starting to emerge as genuinely old, for instance some of these claim Norman, Breton or Flemish origins and indeed we do seem to come across the events post-1066 quite a lot but we have no more than circumstantial evidence and it is likely that R-U198 reached Britain in several different ways over many centuries
• How much R-U198 is in France, and where? A huge disadvantage is that European populations have not been scientifically sampled in any consistent way and France is a notoriously under-sampled area. We would love to know how much R-U198 is in places like Normandy, Alsace and “French Flanders”

© J.F. Sloan 1 Sep 2015/Rev 26 Aug 2021

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