# Population Genetics > mtDNA Haplogroups > L >  Rare European haplogroup of remote Western African origin: L3f1b6

## adnsanchezherrero

Hi,

My mt haplogroup is L3f1b6 (my sample appears listed as such both at YFull and Ian Logan's website but I cannot post links for being a newbie here (despite being 50 years old).
According to Wikipedia, this clade could have reached Iberia before the Sahara became a desert:



> There is at least one relatively deep non-M, non-N clade of L3 outside Africa, L3f1b6, which is found at a frequency of 1% in Asturias, Spain. *It diverged from African L3 lineages at least 10,000 years ago.*


Regards
Fernando

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## kingjohn

Some branches of mtdna L
are not recent more like bronze age 
Or even before in iberia :Cool V: 

P.s
Since you can't post the links i will post it 
For you 

https://www.yfull.com/mtree/L3f1b6/

http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/sequences_..._sequences.htm

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## adnsanchezherrero

Thank you, yes those are the links (I cannot quote your answer because it contains links and I am not allowed to publish links).
It is important to remember that L3f1b is basically a Sub-Saharan clade, not North African. The TMRCA of 4700 years for the fully Iberian L3f1b6 seems to suggest that it had already reached Iberia in a remote time.

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## Wanderer

african during latin america and brazils colonial era that migrated to Portugal

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## adnsanchezherrero

L3f1b6 has not been found neither in Brazil nor in Africa, it is only an Iberian haplogroup which seems to have existed there for about 4,700 years. 
It seems it is carried by about 1% of the population of Asturias in NW Spain, I don't think 1% of the population of Asturias can descend from the same Brazlian woman.

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## Duarte

*Abstract*

*Objectives*

There is an ongoing effort to characterize the genetic links between Africa and Europe, mostly using lineages and haplotypes that are specific to one continent but had an ancient origin in the other. Mitochondrial DNA has been proven to be a very useful tool for this purpose since a high number of putatively European‐specific variants of the African L* lineages have been defined over the years. Due to their geographic locations, Spain and Portugal seem to be ideal places for searching for these lineages.
*Methods*

Five members of a minor branch of haplogroup L3f were found in recent DNA samplings in the region of Asturias (Northern Spain), which is known for its historical isolation. The frequency of L3f in this population (≈1%) is unexpectedly high in comparison with other related lineages in Europe. Complete mitochondrial DNA sequencing of these L3f lineages, as well phylogenetic and phylogeographic comparative analyses have been performed.
*Results*

The L3f variant found in Asturias seems to constitute an Iberian‐specific haplogroup, distantly related to lineages in Northern Africa and with a deep ancestry in Western Africa. Coalescent algorithms estimate the minimum arrival time as 8,000 years ago, and a possible route through the Gibraltar Strait.
*Conclusions*

Results are concordant with a previously proposed Neolithic connection between Southern Europe and Western Africa, which might be key to the proper understanding of the ancient links between these two continents. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 26:777–783, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...002/ajhb.22601

There is a continuous effort for characterizing the genetic links between Africa and Europe, mostly using lineages and haplotypes th at are specific to one continent but had an ancient origin in the other. Mitochondrial DNA has been proven to be a very useful tool for this purpose since a high number of putatively European-specific variants of the African L* lineages have been defined over the years. Complete mitochondrial sequences reveal that as much as 65% of these can be the product of recent introgressions, while the remaining 35% hint to pre-Neolithic population movements over the Strait of Gibraltar. Due to their geographic position, Spain and Portugal seem to be ideal places for searching for these lineages. However, micro-differentiation patterns across the Iberian Peninsula make their frequency geographically uneven. Five members of a minor branch of haplogroup L3f have been found in recent DNA samplings in the region of Asturias (Northern Spain), which is noteworthy for its historical isolation. Its frequency in the population (≈1%) is unexpectedly high in comparison with other related lineages in Europe. Complete mitochondrial DNA sequencing, phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses, yield results concordant with a previously proposed Neolithic connection between Southern Europe and Western Africa, which might be key to the proper understanding of the ancient links between these two continents.


https://digibuo.uniovi.es/dspace/handle/10651/28277

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## kingjohn

Thanks durate  :Good Job: 
Even among slavs there is 
A specific european mtdna L type
https://www.yfull.com/mtree/L2a1k/

P.s
Most of the samples from academic papers

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## Duarte

> Thanks durate 
> Even among slavs there is 
> A specific european mtdna L type
> https://www.yfull.com/mtree/L2a1k/
> P.s
> Most of the samples from academic papers


Thanks KingJohn. 

The original research paper - “Over the Sands and Far Away: Interpreting an Iberian Mitochondrial Lineage with Ancient Western African Origins” - can be seen in the internet link below:

https://vdocuments.site//over-the-sa...ndrial-lineage

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## Duarte

I think that this paper can be interesting too:

*Reconstructing ancient mitochondrial DNA links between Africa and Europe*


*Abstract*


Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages of macro-haplogroup L (excluding the derived L3 branches M and N) represent the majority of the typical sub-Saharan mtDNA variability. In Europe, these mtDNAs account for <1% of the total but, when analyzed at the level of control region, they show no signals of having evolved within the European continent, an observation that is compatible with a recent arrival from the African continent. To further evaluate this issue, we analyzed 69 mitochondrial genomes belonging to various L sublineages from a wide range of European populations. Phylogeographic analyses showed that ∼65% of the European L lineages most likely arrived in rather recent historical times, including the Romanization period, the Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily, and during the period of the Atlantic slave trade. However, the remaining 35% of L mtDNAs form European-specific subclades, revealing that there was gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa toward Europe as early as 11,000 yr ago.

http://m.genome.cshlp.org/content/22...&pmid=22454235

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## adnsanchezherrero

Thank you *Duarte* for the link to the study. 

The extracts above mention five samples from Asturias (=Oviedo Province) but both at Yfull and at Ian Logan's website there are only four from Asturias (in the company of two else from the neighboring province of Leon, mine is one of those two).

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## Duarte

> Thank you *Duarte* for the link to the study. 
> 
> The extracts above mention five samples from Asturias (=Oviedo Province) but both at Yfull and at Ian Logan's website there are only four from Asturias (in the company of two else from the neighboring province of Leon, mine is one of those two).


You’re welcome @adnsanchezherrero.

Not all samples published in studies or included in the FTDNA database, for example, were uploaded to Yfull. Take the case of these Italians, for example:

Paper:

“We found L3d1b1a exclusively in Italy (five subjects from Tuscany, Umbria, and Campania) (Supplemental Table S1), thus most likely it evolved in situ. All individuals carried different haplotypes suggesting local divergence dating back to 3.6 kya (95% C.I.: 2.2–5.1) (Supplemental Table S2).”

Yfull:

Those “five” below are the Italians referenced in the paper. Where is the flag. I am not sure.

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## adnsanchezherrero

Thank you again *Duarte*. 
Regarding the flags and the provinces they are not nornally added at YFull when a sample from a study is loaded. That happened also with all the L3f1b6 samples until I emailed YFull telling them the countries and provinces (showing them the sources, of course) of all of them.

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## Duarte

> You’re welcome @adnsanchezherrero.
> 
> Not all samples published in studies or included in the FTDNA database, for example, were uploaded to Yfull. Take the case of these Italians, for example:
> 
> Paper:
> 
> “We found L3d1b1a exclusively in Italy (five subjects from Tuscany, Umbria, and Campania) (Supplemental Table S1), thus most likely it evolved in situ. All individuals carried different haplotypes suggesting local divergence dating back to 3.6 kya (95% C.I.: 2.2–5.1) (Supplemental Table S2).”
> 
> Yfull:
> ...


No doubt that the source of these samples is the paper “Reconstructing ancient mitochondrial DNA links between Africa and Europe”


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/JN214450.1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/JN214459.1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/JN214478

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/JN225467.1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/JN225468.1

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## Wanderer

Tmrca is 2700bc. So its more than likely not in europe prior to that. And more likely migrated to europe after 2700bc for l3f1b6

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## adnsanchezherrero

A 2019 paper entitled *A western route of prehistoric human migration from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula* (I cannot add links) stated that there exists evidence of a Sub-Saharan migration into Iberia in a prehistoric period:



> Whatever the date of gene flow from Africa might be, the presence of African affinities in several individuals, including a clearly African mitogenome, shows that *one or more contacts occurred between prehistoric Iberian populations and a population whose features we can describe as sub-Saharan*. Whether that happened in a single episode, or two (accounting for the African affinities in, respectively, Spanish MN/ChL samples, and COV20126), we cannot tell at present. In both cases, the episode(s) we detected left a small, but not negligible, mark at the population level, *contributing to a fraction*, if minor, *of the Iberian gene pool*.


As for the timing of that contact it pruposes that the most probable moment for that migration might have been before 3600 years ago:



> *The exact date of this episode is difficult to define* with confidence. In principle,* if it happened* in Middle Neolithic times (i.e. *a little more than 3600 years ago*, which is COV20126 age), i*ts consequences should be evident in the clustering analysis of samples from that period and geographical area, which was not the case.*


However it also purpososes a much earlier moment for that migration:



> *An alternative possibility* is *that gene flow may have occurred even earlier in Southern Iberia from a population with Sub-Saharan African features*, which left some genetic contribution in the genomes of the people, *the local hunter–gatherers, they admixed with*. Because hunter–gatherer genomes from Southern Spain are not available yet, the consequences of such gene flow become apparent to us only in samples from Middle Neolithic times, in parallel with the reemergence of the local hunter–gatherer component of ancient European genomes. This hypothesis implies the existence of some north–south genetic structure in pre-Neolithic Iberia, with hunter–gatherers from the south showing a stronger resemblance with sub-Saharan Africans, and it would account for all findings of the present study, as well as for those of previous studies of modern DNA.


Finally it claims that there would be needed Mesolithic Southern Iberian samples in order to decide which one of the two options is better:



> However, to safely discriminate between the two hypotheses, *we would need Mesolithic samples from southern Spain*, which are at present unavailable.

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## Wanderer

> A 2019 paper entitled *A western route of prehistoric human migration from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula* (I cannot add links) stated that there exists evidence of a Sub-Saharan migration into Iberia in a prehistoric period:
> 
> 
> As for the timing of that contact it pruposes that the most probable moment for that migration might have been before 3600 years ago:
> 
> 
> However it also purpososes a much earlier moment for that migration:
> 
> 
> Finally it claims that there would be needed Mesolithic Southern Iberian samples in order to decide which one of the two options is better:


Tmrca is 2700 BC on yfull.

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## adnsanchezherrero

> Tmrca is 2700 BC on yfull.


Yes, I know. What does that imply?

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## Wanderer

> Yes, I know. What does that imply?


Time of most recent common ancestor

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## Ygorcs

> Time of most recent common ancestor


The problem with TMRCA is that it does not necessarily imply when that specific clade of a haplogroup arrived in the region. It may simply be the case that it arrived centuries or even millennia before, but all the other lineages derived from it ultimately died out and all the extant lineages derive from just one branch of several that had once existed. If that happens, which is not so unlikely in the very long term, then the TMRCA will not, in fact, match the time when the haplogroup arrived in the new location and started to expand independently.

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## Ygorcs

> A 2019 paper entitled *A western route of prehistoric human migration from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula* (I cannot add links) stated that there exists evidence of a Sub-Saharan migration into Iberia in a prehistoric period:
> 
> 
> As for the timing of that contact it pruposes that the most probable moment for that migration might have been before 3600 years ago:
> 
> 
> However it also purpososes a much earlier moment for that migration:
> 
> 
> Finally it claims that there would be needed Mesolithic Southern Iberian samples in order to decide which one of the two options is better:


Isn't it a bit of a stretch or excessive self-confidence to state that it involved a population "with Sub-Saharan African features" based only on mitochondrial DNA lineages found in modern people unconnected to any signals of autosomal DNA input in concomitance with that? I think so. At least theoretically, a lineage may perfectly Sub-Saharan in origin, but be picked up by increasingly different and less Sub-Saharan-related populations via successive generations of admixture and gradual dilution of autosomal DNA without leading to disappearance of the Mt-DNA lineage. I see no reason to believe a priori that the direction must've have been directly from a Sub-Saharan African group to an Iberian one, instead of the also possible and IMO even more plausible northward movement of the lineage in connection with contacts between Mediterranean North Africans with Saharan North Africans as well as between those and Sub-Saharan Africans. 

Is there any solid reason to believe the input was from a people "with Sub-Saharan African features" instead of another population (like, say, an Iberomaurusian-like people or even a Berber-like people, since we know from the outliers found in Copper Age and Bronze Age Iberia that Berber-like genetic makeup existed in the Maghreb even before 4,000 years ago)? It's not like you can predict much about a people's overall genetic makeup and phenotype based only on Mt-DNA or Y-DNA lineages, let alone just one of them.

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## Wanderer

> The problem with TMRCA is that it does not necessarily imply when that specific clade of a haplogroup arrived in the region. It may simply be the case that it arrived centuries or even millennia before, but all the other lineages derived from it ultimately died out and all the extant lineages derive from just one branch of several that had once existed. If that happens, which is not so unlikely in the very long term, then the TMRCA will not, in fact, match the time when the haplogroup arrived in the new location and started to expand independently.


As said before
Time of most recent common ancestor
Time of most common ancestor is 2700BC to the one posted earlier. Dont know what else to tell you. They more than likely migrated more recently.

This is the information we have. The actual data.

TMRCA is 2700
Which would be 700 BC.
Or more recent.

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## Wanderer

Hmm the TMRCA changed on yfull I think. Not sure.
Its more distant now.

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## Ygorcs

> As said before
> Time of most recent common ancestor
> Time of most common ancestor is 2700BC to the one posted earlier. Dont know what else to tell you. They more than likely migrated more recently.
> 
> This is the information we have. The actual data.
> 
> TMRCA is 2700
> Which would be 700 BC.
> Or more recent.


So? I'm elaborating the subject further, but if you want only the "actual data", the the thread should already be closed. lol

2700 BC is 2700 BEFORE CHRIST, so ~4.7 thousand years ago. So you're probably mixing up BC with YBP/Kya.

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## kingjohn

> Hmm the TMRCA changed on yfull I think. Not sure.
> Its more distant now.


Yes i saw 7100 ky 
Thats 5100bc 
So it might even be earlier than bronze age 
In iberia could be neolithic entrance 
Across gibraltar who knows :Thinking: 

P.s
The truth might be somewhere in the middle
Chl :Smile:

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## adnsanchezherrero

Thank you moderator for the answer. (Unfortunately I don't have permissions to quote or it fails every time I try).


I fail to understand all what that study claims, it would be wonderful if someone wiser than me would review it and share its opinions.

Here I try to quote two paragraphs from the conclussions:


"In this study, we found indisputable evidence of the presence of a mitochondrial sequence of sub-Saharan African origin in a 3600 years-old sample, COV20126, from southern Spain. Considering the absence of any closely related mitogenomes in prehistoric Europe, it is difficult to explain this finding by a process other than cross-Mediterranean gene flow before the BA.["


"Although COV20216's nuclear genome showed no obvious traces of African admixture, several other samples from Iberia did; in particular, relatively late samples (from the Middle Neolithic and Chalcolithic) collected along the Mediterranean area and on the Spanish plateau. The increased, significant similarity to sub-Saharan African samples shown by these individuals is not matched, as far as we could test, elsewhere in Europe (figure 3 and electronic supplementary material, table S4)."




Otherwise, the original work about L3f1b6 by A.F. Pardinas proposed a much earlier (Mesolithic) arrival of this lineage to Iberia:
"The L3f variant found in Asturias seems to constitute an Iberian-specific haplogroup, distantly related to lineages in Northern Africa and with a deep ancestry in Western Africa. Coalescent algorithms estimate the minimum arrival time as 8,000 years ago, and a possible route through the Gibraltar Strait."

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## adnsanchezherrero

Just in case some one in interested, Ian Logan included one more L3f1b6 sample (it's from Oviedo = Asturias region in NW Spain):

As I am not allowed to include pics nor links, I paste all the samples he considers to be L3f1b6. In total there are 6 from Asturias: a mountainous area in NW Spain, two from Leon (one is mine) a province just South of Asturias, one from Tenerife (Canary Islands) and three from Mexico.

It seems to be a NW Spain branch (so far)

1. JQ703621(Spain: Leon)Behar 07-APR-2012
2. KF011502(Spain: Oviedo) Pardinas 31-DEC-2013
3. KF011503(Spain: Oviedo) Pardinas 31-DEC-2013
4. KJ959229(Spain: Oviedo) Pardinas 28-AUG-2014
5. KJ959230(Spain: Oviedo) Pardinas 28-AUG-2014
6. MF621073(Canarian: Tenerife)Cabrera 21-FEB-2018
7. MN703760(Spain: Leon) FTDNA 02-DEC-2019
8. MZ714017(Spain: Oviedo) FTDNA 05-SEP-2021
9. MZ920576(Spain: Oviedo) Silva 22-SEP-2021
..
.. 23andMe ('R' - Mexico) 
.. 23andMe ('A' - Mexico) 
.. 23andMe ('V' - Mexico)

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## Albruic

is L3f1b6 anything related to L3e5?

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## adnsanchezherrero

Recent paper about sub-Saharan mitochondrial haplogroups outside Africa seems to confirm the arrival of most of them into Iberia in Early Holocene period across the Straight of Gibraltar (Eupedia does not allow me to post links): "Phylogeography of Sub-Saharan Mitochondrial Lineages Outside Africa Highlights the Roles of the Holocene Climate Changes and the Atlantic Slave Trade".

Some extracts from the article:

"The migration scans indicate *two main peaks of migration*,* one in the early Holocene* around the Holocene Climate Optimum (~7.4 ka–10 ka ), and another in the present or close to present (~0 ka). We see an absence of movements carrying sub-Saharan lineages between those periods. As expected, for North and South America, we see only recent episodes of gene flow. "

"*For Europe*, our founder analyses suggest that *there are more African mtDNA lineages related to the prehistoric than the historical period (~60:40)*. Note, however, that most of the lineages here considered in the European analysis are from Iberia"

"the higher percentage of sub-Saharan lineages arriving in Europe during this period, mostly from West Africa (63%) is likely from* migrants that first crossed the Sahel belt into North Africa and moved from there into Europe via the Strait of Gibraltar*"

"Previous inferences regarding the presence of sub-Saharan mitogenomes in Europe have highlighted movements from North Africa, following the Ice Age and with the onset of the Holocene in Africa ~8–9 kya [24 ], including gene flow specifically to Iberia [50]"

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## kingjohn

> Recent paper about sub-Saharan mitochondrial haplogroups outside Africa seems to confirm the arrival of most of them into Iberia in Early Holocene period across the Straight of Gibraltar (Eupedia does not allow me to post links):* "Phylogeography of Sub-Saharan Mitochondrial Lineages Outside Africa Highlights the Roles of the Holocene Climate Changes and the Atlantic Slave Trade".*
> 
> Some extracts from the article:
> 
> "The migration scans indicate *two main peaks of migration*,* one in the early Holocene* around the Holocene Climate Optimum (~7.4 ka–10 ka ), and another in the present or close to present (~0 ka). We see an absence of movements carrying sub-Saharan lineages between those periods. As expected, for North and South America, we see only recent episodes of gene flow. "
> 
> "*For Europe*, our founder analyses suggest that *there are more African mtDNA lineages related to the prehistoric than the historical period (~60:40)*. Note, however, that most of the lineages here considered in the European analysis are from Iberia"
> 
> "the higher percentage of sub-Saharan lineages arriving in Europe during this period, mostly from West Africa (63%) is likely from* migrants that first crossed the Sahel belt into North Africa and moved from there into Europe via the Strait of Gibraltar*"
> ...



here is the link to the paper you talk about 

https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/23/16/9219





p.s
by the way
recentley i saw this 
there is a *bronze age* *1640-1420 bc* individual from *sicily motya* who fall on *L3b1a5* :Cool V: 

https://i.imgur.com/Pl54DSS.png

https://i.imgur.com/6MTKOgu.png


source:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...45227/abstract

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## adnsanchezherrero

Thank you for the info (I'm not allowed to quote your message), very interesting to see ancient L3 samples outside Africa.

By the way, YFull has create the L3f1b-a9 subranch with only two samples (both of them of Italian origin, one from Genoa and other from Naples).

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## kingjohn

> Thank you for the info (I'm not allowed to quote your message), *very interesting to see ancient L3 samples outside Africa.*
> 
> By the way, YFull has create the L3f1b-a9 subranch with only two samples (both of them of Italian origin, one from Genoa and other from Naples).



indeed
here is another 1 *this time from* *early bronze age euboea island greece* who belonged to *mtdna L3d1b1* :Wink: 

https://i.imgur.com/7sM50PS.png

https://i.imgur.com/K4TBprt.png

https://i.imgur.com/GEfdUWX.png


source paper here :


https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...92867421003706


*table s1:*

is this *mik08* dude

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## adnsanchezherrero

Thanks again kingjohn 

I just checked at YFull (too fastly) for some of the L3 haplogroups from the recent paper I tried to share a few days ago and found at least 4 fully Iberian L branches: L1b1a6a, L1b1a6e, L1b1a6f, and L3d1b3a2a

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## Wanderer

> So? I'm elaborating the subject further, but if you want only the "actual data", the the thread should already be closed. lol
> 
> 2700 BC is 2700 BEFORE CHRIST, so ~4.7 thousand years ago. So you're probably mixing up BC with YBP/Kya.


it was a typo in the paragraph.

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