Some new results have come in for Farrell Group 4 since the last update in Dec 2017. You will see from the diagrams below that in December of last year there were only 5 people with SNP results. That number has now increased to 9:
- Member BD-6155 did the FGC5494 SNP Pack
- 3 members completed Big Y testing (JF-7935, JGF-9768, HF-1095)
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| Farrell Group 4 (R1b-GF4) in Dec 2017 |
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| Farrell Group 4 (R1b-GF4) in Nov 2018 |
So what do these new results tell us?
Firstly, many more people have SNP data and this allows us to place this group further downstream on the Tree of Mankind (by "downstream" I mean closer to the present day). Three of the four members who have done the Big Y test now all sit on the downstream branch characterised by the SNP marker called BY163677 (Farrell, Farrell & Ferrell). The fourth one sits on the branch above this - BY59055 (Farris).
And this could be a very interesting and important distinction. It appears to separate out the Farris branch from the Farrell / Ferrell branch - something we have been trying to do for quite a while. Ideally another Farris should do the Big Y in order to confirm this distinction and to identify downstream sub-branches on the Farris part of the tree.
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| FTDNA's version of the Tree has BY163677 branching off from BY59055 |
Thus, combining the data from FTDNA & The Big Tree, we can define the revised SNP Progression for this group as follows (the SNP Progression is simply the series of SNP markers that characterise each branch of the Tree of Mankind from the upstream branches to the downstream branch on which the Group 4 Farrell's sit):
- R-P312/S116 > Z290 > L21/S145 > DF13 > FGC5494 > FGC5561 > FGC7448 > FGC5496 > FGC5521 > Y18844 > Y18846 > BY10339 > BY33481 > BY59055 > BY163677
The main SNP markers (in bold) are highlighted by yellow dots and underlined in red in The Big Tree diagram below. Note that the morphology of The Big Tree is slightly different to FTDNA's version and does not distinguish between BY163677 & BY59055 (i.e. it thinks they are the same). This will change when the two remaining Big Y testers from Group 4 upload their data to The Big Tree.
As described in the update I gave at the Farrell Clan Gathering in June (see
video here from 11:45), this branch of the Tree of Mankind is fairly isolated from other branches. The nearest genetic neighbours to Group 4 (two men called Janssen & Virtue respectively) are connected by a common ancestor some 2300 years ago. So this is a very rare branch of the human evolutionary tree.
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Group 4 Farrell's on the Tree of Mankind
(click to enlarge)
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We can calculate crude dates (and I mean very crude indeed) for when these various branching points arose:
- DF13, FGC5494, FGC5496 ... 4300 years old (from YFULL)
- FGC5521 ... 4200 years old (from YFULL)
- BY10339 ... 3500 years old (from YFULL)
- BY33481 ... 3100 years ago (crude calculation from The Big Tree)
- BY59055 ... 2300 years ago (crude calculation from The Big Tree)
- BY163677 ... some time in the past 1000 years??
- Common Ancestor of two Big Y Farrell's ... about 200-300 years ago (+/-200 years ... yes, very crude indeed)
If everyone did the Big Y test, then we would probably find that most of the group members sit on the branch of the tree characterised by the SNP marker BY59055 (or the branch below it - BY163677). The reason why the people who did the SNP Packs sit higher up the tree than the Big Y testers is because the SNP Packs do not test for as many downstream SNP markers as the Big Y. But if the SNP Pack testers did the Big Y, I would guess that most of them would also sit on the BY59055 branch.
Only two of the four Big Y testers have uploaded their results to the Big Tree. It is essential that the others do so too -
instructions here. Doing so will likely split up the BY59055 / BY163677 SNP Block (it contains 23 SNPs) into several downstream sub-branches, and will look more like the branching structure depicted in the FTDNA tree, thus potentially splitting the Farris branch from the Farrell branch.
I will post a further update when the two remaining Big Y test results have been uploaded to
The Big Tree.
Maurice Gleeson
1 Nov 2018
Update 26 Nov 2018
Two more of the 4 Big Y testers have uploaded their data to
the Big Tree. Alex Williamson has now analysed the data and the morphology of the tree has changed accordingly.
This is what it used to look like (on the left) compared to what it looks like now (on the right):
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| The updated Big Tree (on the right) - the large SNP Block below BY59055 has been split |
The first thing to note is that the large block of 23 SNPs (headed by BY59055) has now been split in two, and then in two again.
- there is now a 21-SNP block from which all the 4 group members descend
- below this, there are two branches:
- the first is a Farris (167989) all on his own
- the second is a 3-SNP block starting with BY164250, and an additional two branches emerge from this:
- a single Ferrell (369768)
- a branch characterised by the SNP BY178261, on which two Farrell's sit (631095 & 467935)
We can also estimate some crude dates for when the various branches split apart (and I emphasise these are crude - the actual dates could be +/- 200 years on either side of these estimates). Allowing for 100 years per SNP, and assuming the year of birth of all people who tested is about 1950, the following crude approximations are obtained.
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| Crude date estimates for the various branching points in Farrell Group 4 |
So, what do we learn from these new results?
- the Farrell's of Group 4 still sit on a relatively isolated branch of the Tree of Mankind with their nearest genetic neighbours being related some 2300 years ago
- the Farris individual appears to split off from the rest of the group about 1600 AD
- The Farrell's in this sample appear to be related by a common ancestor born about 1400 AD
- We might get a slightly better estimate of the dating of the branching points if we were to rerun the SAPP Programme, taking these new SNP data into account. And that is something that can be done in due course.
- FTDNA have changed the names of the terminal SNPs to reflect these new developments.
Maurice Gleeson
26 Nov 2018
