Haplogroup Q

Haplogroup Q has old branch splits in Asia. The majority of the Q-branches is in Asia. The diagrams show a first migration passing the Bering Strait near 15500ybp (Q-Z780). The large population jump in the Americas was with the arrival of Q-L804 near 12600ybp. In a short period humans spread over the Americas, after which they settled in the area where they arrived, and did not migrate much after that early arrival.

Two branches in America and one in Scandinavia

The ancestral line of Q-M1107 has three descending lines: Q780 to America (15500 ybp), M930-L804 to Scandinavia and M930-M3 to America (12600 ybp). Three scenarios exist to explain the arrival of the Q-branches in the Americas. In all scenarios the origin of the shared ancestor of Q-M1107 lived near Beringia.

Two separated migrations to the Americas

In this scenario the first migration (Z780) arrived near 15600 ybp. This branch has a majority of descendants in North Marica and a few descendants in South America. The famous ancient sample Anzick1 has a C14 age of 12750 ybp. The yfull age (based on SNP mutations) is consistent. The first branch split was already 27 SNP mutations in the Americas.

The second branch (M930-L804) arrived near 3200 ybp in Scandinavia.

Members of the third branch (M930-M3) migrated near 12600 ybp in the Americas and has the largest number of descendants in the Americas. A few descendants have some ancient DNA in Chukotka on the Russian side of Beringia.

The old easiest model was a single crossing of Beringia. Recent research has already claimed that a single crossing was insufficient to explain all aspects of archeology and DNA ancient research.

One migration of two branches to the Americas

In this scenario the migrating group had several members from different lineages and the present descendants are the descendants of two of these lineages.

The main challenge with this scenario is the time of fast expansion of M930-M3. Since we have several members in Beringia in the M930-M3 branch, it would mean that the migration was near 12600 ybp, but the group would have many Q-Z780 membe(with large family distance) and some M930-M3 members. The Z780 descendants would spread in part of the northern part of the Americas and have a relative smaller number of descendants. The M930-M3 would behave tribal with fast expansion over a large area of the Americas.

This scenario is rather complex because it needs a large group for the crossing of Beringia, but also a long period (about 3000 years, so 100 generations) for the group to evolve from a shared ancestor. Within this period we also need a split to a branch that ends in Scandinavia, and descendants who remained in Russia.

An back migration to Scandinavia

Pinotti et al (2018) suggest that the Q-L804 branch moved back over northern Russia to arrive in Scandinavia, and the shared ancestor 3200 ybp distributed over a larger area. The percentages of Q-L804 in the different countries are fairly small, reaching a maximum of about 7 percent is Iceland (DOI: 10.1126/science.aar2625). Q-L804 already had a significant number of branches at the moment of colonizing Iceland (about 20 in yfull). It makes it likely that the Q-L804 was present in the region where the original settles to Iceland originated, which is probably the west coast of Norway. Other scenarios (an origin in Iceland, and Y-DNA arriving from the Canadian side) would give a shorter geographical travel distance, but are harder to fit with the phylogenetic tree after 3200ybp. Notice that the population density in the Scandinavian countries was still very small. One would expect that the Q-L804 ancestors were present in the furthest northern liveable areas of Scandinavia, while the Indo-Europeans (I1, R1b-U106 and R1a) were migrating northward.
Notice that branch Q-Y4827 (below Q-Y2659) also has a distribution that started near 3000ybp and expanded in the same period starting in Norway and Sweden.

Additional knowledge

The mtdna of the American Indians has four originating branches that crossed Beringia. In historic data it is more common that a male has multiple females than that a woman has multiple males. In that case we see more old female branches than male branches. It seems likely that the group who passed Beringia was of significant size.

Most likely scenario

The first scenario (two time separated migrations) is the easiest scenario to fit the data.

Languages in the Americas

Notice that the lack of large language families is probably related to the pattern of the phylogenetic tree. Humans distributed in a very short period over all parts of the Americas. After that they stayed in the regions where they arrived. No large migrations or derge mixtures took place in the Americas. This resulted in a pattern that is comparable with isolated islands. Each island has is own changing language which resulted in a language isolate and the Y-DNA pattern with only one or a few Y-DNA ancestors, depending on the size of the group.

The only exceptions are the larger powerful tribes of Aztec, Maya and Inca. These tribes resulted in larger distribution of the language families of Uto-Aztecan, Mayan and Quechuan, see Indigenous languages of the Americas on wikipedia.

A study of Y-DNA in the languages isolate in the Americas will probably help to understand the history of languages in the Americas.

This means that 12000 years is sufficient to create a language isolate.

The origin of the Turkic language is discussed, but unclear. It has been suggested several times that at the oldest information of the Turkic language it was already a mixtures of genetic lines. The most plausible scenario that has been suggested a few times is the combination of the parallel lines of Q-YP4010 and Q-L330 (e.g. Skhalyakho et al.). An attempt to relate the Y-DNA and Turkic language together, based on Chinese historical documents was not succesfull, see Lee and Kuang (2017)

link to phylogenetic tree: Q-L275
link to phylogenetic tree: Q-F1096
link to phylogenetic tree: Q-Y2659
link to phylogenetic tree: Q-YP4010
link to phylogenetic tree: Q-L330
link to phylogenetic tree: Q-Z780
link to phylogenetic tree: Q-L804
link to phylogenetic tree: Q-M3

yfull-links: Q - Q-L275
yfull-links: Q - Q-L472 - Q-F1096
yfull-links: Q - Q-L472 - Q-L56 - Q-Y2659
yfull-links: Q - Q-L472 - Q-L56 - Q-L53 - Q-YP4010
yfull-links: Q - Q-L472 - Q-L56 - Q-L53 - Q-L54 - Q-L330
yfull-links: Q - Q-L472 - Q-L56 - Q-L53 - Q-L54 - Q-M1107 - Q-Z780
yfull-links: Q - Q-L472 - Q-L56 - Q-L53 - Q-L54 - Q-M1107 - Q-M930 - Q-L804
yfull-links: Q - Q-L472 - Q-L56 - Q-L53 - Q-L54 - Q-M1107 - Q-M930 - Q-M3