This page was begun 29 September and was last updated 22 January 2004 -- rak.
Y-Chromosome Haplogroup G.
This is the first Haplogroup with which a Kraus line has been identified. The identification was done on my DNA and thus it applies, at minimum, to the line of Krauses who may have come out of Austria in the early 1600's, lived in the Thuengen Barony of northern Bavaria until 1766, and lived in the Saratov Province of Russia on the Volga River from 1767-1786 (later for some branches), at which time various members of the family began coming to the US.
As will be seen in the following text, we now know that there are Crouses/Krouses in the US who apparently are members of Y-Chromosome Haplogroup R, specifically subgroup R1b. These G and the R1b Kraus/Crouse lines, do share a common male ancestor, but he lived some 45,000 years ago! Not very close cousins. I should note here that my mother's father's people, the US Casebolts, are also R1b.
However, some Kraus/Krouse/Crouse families are Haplogroup I and Haplogroup J2, both of which are more closely related in time to Haplogroup G.
For an explanation of how Haplogroups are defined and determined, click on Background.
Please note that the female X (mtDNA) Chromosomes also have Haplogroups. Unfortunately, the mtDNA Haplogroups also are named with letters of the alphabet, although that those Haplogroups are totally different from the Y-Chromosome Haplogroups under discussion here. So the mtDNA Haplogroup G is a completely different from the Y-DNA Haplogroup G under discussion here. As you can see there is abundant opportunity for confusion in this.
Our First DNA-identified ancestor.
Much of the following sections down into M89 is cribbed from Spencer Wells, The Journey of Man -- A Genetic Odyssey, Princeton, 2002, which is available from Amazon.com -- rak
We, like every male living today, who has been tested, are descended from a guy who lived about 150,000 years ago, most probably on the plains of eastern Africa. This is not to say there then was only one male alive – presumably there were many – but over time the “rival” male lines have died out. Whenever a male does not have sons, his DNA line as determined by the Y-chromosome stops forever. If this happens over time to all lines descended from a long-ago male, that male ancestor’s DNA disappears forever. So starting from the thousands of male homo sapiens that probably were alive 150,000 years ago, the lines from all but one have died out – and if we were able to trace our family trees back 150,000 years we would find that everyone living today is our cousin!
This man's ancestors most likely evolved to become homo sapiens in the jungles of central Africa beginning some 2 million years ago. He and his more immediate ancestors had moved out into the grasslands of east-central Africa where the hunting was much better. He has been dubbed Adam by the popular press. But of course he was not -- he was not the first man. The various groups, i.e. Haplogroups, of his descendants are identified by specific named mutations, of which at the UEP-level there are only a few dozen. In the following I will name his male descendants who are our ancestors by the mutation which identifies them.
M42.
"Adam's" descendant identified by the mutation M42, which we have, lived, still on the plains of East Africa some 80,000 years ago. He is the ancestor of the overwhelming majority of males today because it is his progeny who "founded" all Haplogroups B through R. Only Haplogroup A, which until fairly recently was confined to sub-Saharan Africa, does not carry M42. Otherwise, all the folk of Africa and all the other continents are descended from M42 and, like ourselves, carry his mutation. It is believed that many of his descendants pushed their way to the African coasts and up into what is now the Sahara (but was then grassland) in search of adequate food supplies for a growing population.
M168.
"M42's" descendant M168 lived 50-60,000 years ago perhaps in the area of today's Ethiopia. He too is our ancestor and we carry his M168 mutation. His descendants make up Haplogroups C-R. It is believed that increasing ice in the far north dried up the African climate to the extent that at least two different groups of M168's descendants left Africa in search of adequate food supplies. Virtually everyone who populated the other continents, like we ourselves, are descended from M168. The first wave of his descendants left Africa close to 50,000 years ago and are believed to have followed the coast line east. Since so much water was tied up in the north, the oceans were as much as 400 feet lower than now is the case. So these guys and gals had a virtual coastal highway. They and their descendants ended up in Southeast Asia, Australia, south China, and the Pacific Islands. A few even joined their, by then, distant cousins in North America some 10,000 years ago.
A second wave of M168's descendants went north and east out of the Sahara area (forced out in a period of drying) through Egypt into the Middle East. Our ancestors were among them.
M89.
"M168's" descendant M89 lived about 45,000 years ago probably in modern-day Iraq. He was our ancestor and we carry his mutation. Some have dubbed him the father of the "Middle Eastern clan" and his descendants include all of Haplogroups G-R. That means that he is the ancestor of virtually everyone in Europe and the Middle East, and of the vast majority of Asians and Native Americans.
The most prolific of M89's descendants moved up into central Asia north east of the Caspian Sea. It was very cold. He was near the edge of the great northern ice pack. Life was harsh but food was plentiful. Vast herds of big game thronged the tundra and, a bit further south, the grasslands south of the ice pack He was M9 ("father" of the EurAsian clan) and his descendants. They populated the huge grass-land plains that stretched from England to Alaska. They became Haplogroups K-R and peopled most of Europe, Asia and the Americas. The ancestors of the Thuengen Krauses were not among them! However, the Pennsylvania-Maryland Crouses seem to be Haplogroup R1b and their ancestors are among the descendants of M9. [If you came from a Casebolt page, you can return by clicking here.]
A few of M89's descendants stayed in or near the Middle East. Among them were the progenitors of Haplogroups G-J (for Haplogroups I and J2 see below). Food supplies were extremely limited and these folk, prior to 10,000 years ago did not thrive, therefore there are relatively few of today's people who are members of these Haplogroups. Nevertheless, some of their members have played important roles in history. The Phoenicians, the early masters of the Mediterranean Sea, are believed to have been mostly Haplogroup G. The ancestors of the various peoples of the Old Testament and of the Koran, as well as many other peoples of the mid-East and Europe, are scattered throughout the four Haplogroups G-J.
Want to see what these folk looked like? Click here.
Then about 10-12,000 years ago things began to change for the members of these four Haplogroups. Prior to this time all humans were hunter-gatherers. Then some bright person, probably a female gatherer, must have noticed that finding grains was especially good and pretty handy in places where grains had been spilled the previous season. Agriculture happened! Population could expand rapidly and farmers began moving out of the Middle East, through the islands and along the shores of the Mediterranean, through Turkey into the Balkans and the Caucasus Mountains.
Not long ago, the hypothesis was that with this new technology and with rapidly increasing numbers, these middle eastern farmers must have killed off or starved, by eliminating their hunting grounds, the earlier hunter-gatherers of Europe. Then came DNA studies which showed that the advancing new Middle-Eastern farmers remained a tiny minority in Europe. Which means they came more as county agricultural agents (!) than as conquering armies putting everyone in their way to the sword. They taught, rather than killed or starved, their predecessors in Europe.
And as they taught farming, they may have taught language as well. An hypothesis which is growing stronger recently is that these same people at the same time may have introduced the Indo-European language into north India, the mid-East and Europe. Indo-European is the parent language for Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and hence of most of the other languages of the mid-east, north India and Europe!
M201 ... this is G!
The first guy to have the M201 mutation which distinguishes our Haplogroup G is thought to have lived about 30,000 years ago along the eastern edge of the Middle East, perhaps as far east as the Himalayan foothills in Pakistan or India. He has had relatively few descendants. Some of them went east on into Southeast Asia, south China and the Pacific Islands, but most moved back into the Middle East, moving west and north, at exactly the same time (some 5,000 years ago) and in the same places that agriculture was being introduced into Europe. We are the descendants of these teacher-farmers!
The latest published research that I have seen on this is by Roy King and Peter A. Underhill, "Congruent distribution of Neolithic painted pottery and ceramic figurines with Y-chromosome lineages", Antiquity (journal), v.76(2002), pp.707-14. In this article the authors show 1) how the early Middle Eastern farmers carried their particular painted pottery and ceramic devotional figures with them into Europe, and 2) how concentrations of G (they use an older classification for G called EU11) people match almost perfectly where archaeologists have dug up in Europe the Middle Eastern farmers' painted pottery and ceramic figures. Too see what the pottery and figurines looked like, click on them.
To be more specific about where Gs are to be found today: those that went east have small numbers of living male-line descendant members in China, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Polynesian Islands of the Pacific.
Those that went north have small numbers of living male-line descendant G-folk in Syria (Arab), Russia (Adygeans), Uzbekistan (Tartars and Karakalpaks), Mongolia, and western China (Uygurs).
Those that went as much west as north live today in Italy, Sicily, Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, Norway and Sweden. In the little country of Georgia (Caucasus Mountains south of Russia), north of Turkey) Gs make up as much as 30% of the population, 14% on the island of Sardinia, 10% in north central Italy, 8% in northern Spain, almost 7% in Turkey, and lesser percentages in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Ukraine, Lebanon, Greece, Hungary, Albania, Croatia, and Ethiopia. Some of these are Arab, some are Jews, many are neither.
All of those listed above and so far identified as G-haplogroup folk, have a pattern of mutations which indicates that they separated from the line of our direct ancestors more than 1500 years ago, many of them more than 3,000 years or more ago. So although we are members of an identifiable group, Haplogroup G, so far our “cousins”, who have been tested and who share our haplogroup are very, very distant.
Within G, two of the largest groups are many northern Italians and most of the Ashkenazi Jews of eastern Europe. One fellow G, whose relatives are the Ashkenazi seeing that our Haplotype (25 marker version) being 11 STR mutations (check STR testing in Background if you forget what those are) removed from most of the Italians and 9 removed from most of the Jews, believes that we must be derived from neither of those two groups, but be part of a third group inside G. As more Gs are tested, this picture should become clearer.
M170 -- this is I!
It is not clear to me when the first M170 mutation is supposed to have occurred, thereby marking the father of Haplogroup I. But apparently he lived sometime between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago. Some of his progeny seem to have moved north out of the mid-East, and then west, continuing into Scandinavia where the nascent German peoples then lived and where high concentrations of I folk still live. So there were I folk among the much larger groups of R1b who made up both the early German people and, later, the Viking folk. These early Germans began moving down into central Europe in the days of the Roman Empire.
M172 -- this is J2!
Most of those within the J Haplogroup seem to be within the subgroup J2. The father of this sub-group, M172, is believed to have lived a mere 10,000 years ago in the mid-East. So this sub-group arose as farming arose and they along with the G folk are believed to have brought farming through Turkey into Europe. Apparently more J2 than G stayed behind in the mid-East because more of them than G became ancestors of today's Jews, Arabs and other peoples of the mid-East.
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