Genographic Journey - Ten Thousand Years ago - Truher Men -
• This page is about Jack's DNA genographic test by the National Geographic Society. That result traces the actual geographical travels which the linear ancestor of our male Truher line took some ten thousand years ago out of Africa toward Europe.
• The test costs about a hundred dollars. Most Western Europeans took the route of the Cro-Magnons into France, known by the cave drawings they left. Our paternal line were East Germans in the 19th century. Our ancestors had unexpectedly taken a sharp left turn toward the Ukraine and Central Asia some 10 thousand years ago. These were the genetic Haplogroup M17 as on page 4 of the PDF link at bottom.
These people became the first skilled horsemen and carriage-makers (Kurgan people). They were also founders of of all the Indo-European languages, as explained at bottom of page 6 of the same PDF. This particular male gene is more often shared with Czechs, Siberians, and Central Asians today, than with Western Europeans. Of course, our particular male line is just one of many thousands of other European genetic contributors.
We can speculate further. We can imagine that the name Truher may be derived somehow from the Kurgan era. My great grandfather referred to his own European work as "wagon-maker", at least in later conversations with family. "Truhe" is a German noun for trunk or container of goods, So Truher is one who makes travelers' wagons. Not likely a Kurgan word, but we can dream.
It's better to right-click and download this link to desktop. Then open it in a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat Reader.
• When dad's brother Lewis married a woman of Polish heritage in the 1930s, his German parents, August and Nellie bitterly opposed the marriage. There is some irony in how August's Truher family was prejudiced against the Poles.
It turns out that our male genealogy mutation R17 (Haplogroup R1a), is shared with half of Russians and Poles, but only a quarter of all Germans. Our linear male Truher originator shares origin more with Central Asians and East Europeans than the average German.
Whereas Truher Men - have haplogroup R1a for M17 mutation - question has been what percentage of European ethnicities share this M17 male mutation? Jack found the answer in a Wikimedia site (as at bottom) which is generally consistent with what else I have read in the National Geographic genographics site. The short answer is that the R17 mutation appears in about a quarter of all Germans, but in about a half of all Poles and Russians. This is from a researcher at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
There are two competing hypotheses for locus of the M17 mutation, the first is more often in favor: (1) the Kurgan Hypothesis for origin in Ukranian Steppes, and (2) the Altaians Hypothesis, which is shown in east Russia, mid-latitutes, with symbol, AL on this map.
Page 2 of set of maps shows distribution of M17 in yellow coloration. Red color represents mutation R1b, more typically Western European cro-magnon origin perhaps from Iberian Peninsula.
A specific haplogroup R1a1 defined by the M17 (SNP marker) of the Y chromosome (see:[4] for nomenclature) is associated by some with the Kurgan culture. The haplogroup R1a1 is currently found in Slavic populations and in central and western Asia, India, but it is rare in most countries of Western Europe (e.g. France, or some parts of Great Britain) (see [5] [6]). However, 23.6% of Norwegians, 18.4% of Swedes, 16.5% of Danes, 11% of Saami share this lineage ([7]). Investigations suggest the Hg R1a1 gene expanded from the Dniepr-Don Valley, between 13 000 and 7600 years ago, and was linked to the reindeer hunters of the Ahrensburg culture that started from the Dniepr valley in Ukraine and reached Scandinavia 12 000 years ago.[4]
Ornella Semino et al. (see [8]) propose this postglacial spread of the R1a1 gene from the Ukrainian LGM refuge was magnified by the expansion of the Kurgan culture into Europe and eastward. R1a1 is most prevalent in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary and is also observed in Pakistan, India, and central Asia.