I'm italian from campania province southern Italy. I also have haplogroup t (M70) lineage and my sub-group is L299. Those are the paternal haplogroup results I received from the genographic project 2.0. I'm one of those Italians that has jet black hair and olive skin so naturally I always suspected I had some form of Assyrian or Mesopotamian influence in my blood. I was surprised that I don't harbour the J-M172 lineage (haplogroup j2) as this is the typical northern middle-eastern Fertile Crescent haplogroup,( it is also found in 20-25% of italian men.) instead, belonging to hg T this is MUCH rarer ( 4% of Italians). Information on our haplogroup is as scarce as the lineage itself but according to information given to me upon having received my results, haplogroup T is found in 20% of Jordanian men, up to 16% of Egyptian men in certain regions, 5 to 17% of Sicilian males, 13% of Iraqi men, and it is quite prevalent in Mizrahim Jews ( middle eastern Jews) such as Iraqi Jews (18%) iranian Jews (14%) and Kurdish Jews (22%) It is also found in 10 to 13% of Assyrian males near Anatolia. In Europe, it is found in a few isolated hotspots: the Balearic islands off the coast of Spain (16%) , Italy (4%) Sicily (5-17%) and small isolated regions of Germany (3-24%). Surprisingly, Somalia and Ethiopia both have about 14% haplogroup T but I can confirm from my own Assyrian/ Mesopotamian looks that it did not originate there; it must have arrived there from the Middle East. There are also a few tiny hotspots in India belonging to Bauris and Gond Indians but there too the haplogroup T arrived from a different source location, the Middle East. What is so confusing about this lineage is its patchy distribution ad it's low percentages all across the map even in it's middle eastern hotspots of 10-15%. Thus it is difficult to discover EXACTLY where it first originated or whether it is a Jewish diaspora genetics or rare middle eastern blood. I have never seen a study say this but I can 100% confirm that JORDAN males have , on a national level, approximately 21% haplogroup T thanks to my genographic project 2.0 "results" presentation. Other people in the project that HAVE haplogroup T and that was placed very similar to me in the "Our Story" section was :
1.An italian man from Rofrano city, Salerno , campania , southern Italy
2. An Assyrian Iraqi man from Nineveh , Iraq 3. A Jew from Poland. 4. A man from Lucca, Italy. 5. Ashkenazi Jew from Germany/Austria. 6. A second polish Jew. 7. Man from Urmia , Iran ( according to personal family stories he may be a Kurdish Jew). 8. An American man who's ancestors came from England for as many generations as he can remember. 9. 10. Two men from Peru and El Salvador that believe they have Sephardic Jewish roots. 11. Me. 12. You. So there you have it, 12 individuals from various different ethnic origins that are haplogroup T (M70) positive