There are four men whose WGS upgrade would advance the research into the male line origins of major lineages of Y-DNA haplogroup J2b-L283.
The first man I've already ordered a few weeks ago, but I'm waiting on donations to cover this cost before I can proceed with ordering WGS for the next three candidates.
By the way, in case you missed it, I recently made a brief video update on the overall state of our research:
J2b-Z631* from Campania, Italy
J2b-Z631 is the most prolific lineage of J2b-L283 and still quite mysterious regarding its geographic origin around 900 BCE, as no ancient DNA dating to the Iron Age has yet been found positive for this line.
This man traces his male line to Roberti from Campania. The name "Campania" comes from the Latin word for countryside. The Romans knew the region as Campania felix, "fertile countryside" or "happy countryside".
However, we should avoid being too Roman-centric in our thinking, keeping in mind that based on other ancient samples found in Italy we know that J2b-L283 was living all over Italy several centuries before the rise of Roman power.
There is currently just one other sample at the basal J2b-Z631 level (basal meaning negative for all known child lines, also indicated by appending an asterisk), a man tracing his male line ancestors to Vrhnika, Slovenia.
The ancient sample from the Via Salaria necropolis at this position on the YFull tree has too low resolution to claim it as J2b-Z631* - it could in fact be positive for several of the children lines, you can see this when you mouse over the "i" on YFull.
First Ancient J-Z631 Found in the Via Salaria Necropolis in Rome (Nov 2019)
Recent Progress and the Challenges of J-Z631 and J-Z1043 Origins (Dec 2021)
J2b-FT33373 an Iron Age Line of J2b-Z1043 with Significant Western Balkans Diversity (Oct 2022)
I've ordered the WGS at YSEQ already for this sample. I'll order the remaining candidates once I get more donations to advance the J2b-L283 research.
J2b-L283>? from Njeguši, Montenegro
This man's 37 STR test result did not yield any reliable subclade prediction.
His DYS385 = 12-12 could be an indicator of having mutated from the J-Z631* haplotype of 13-17 vs ancestral 14-17, but a single recLOH from any allele could result in this as well.
He traces his male line to Njeguši, Montenegro, a village of population 17 near Lovcen Mountain that is only 20km away from the 1100 BCE ancient sample I13167 that is J2b-Y21878 and negative for most downstream branches.
Lovćen is a mountain and national park in southwestern Montenegro. It is the inspiration behind the names Montenegro and Crna Gora, both of which mean "Black Mountain" and refer to the appearance of Mount Lovćen when covered in dense forests. - Lovćen on Wikipedia
If he were found to share some SNPs with I13167 then he could be an example of regional continuity of this line from the Late Bronze Age.
J2b-Y21878* from Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
This man traces his male line to an ancestor with surname Berrens who was born in the town of Bewingen, in the Vulkaneifel Landkreis of Rheinland-Pfalz.
He was found negative for every subclade of J2b-Y21878 at YSEQ except for the newly discovered lineage J2b-FT266208 which is not cost-effective to test for a la carte given that the lineage has a recent TMRCA. One of the men in that branch traces to Poland and the other is unknown.
So this sample has the potential to form a new subclade with the 1100 BCE sample I13167 from Velika Gruda, with the man who traces his line to a Slavomolisano-speaker from Acquaviva Collecroce, or with the men in J2b-FT266208.
J2b-FT103684? from Tiszaalpár, Hungary
This man traces his male line to an ancestor with the surname Toth who lived in Tiszaalpár, Hungary. This is a large village in the northeast part of Bács-Kiskun County, on the border with Csongrad and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok counties.
Tiszaalpár lies on the part of the Tisza River known as Alpári-Holt-Tisza (YouTube) and seems to be described as a lake on Google maps.
We assume that this man is positive for the J2b-FT103684 branch because he is positive for J2b-Z38241 and negative for the only other known child line, J2b-PH1602.
Because J2b-FT103684 is defined by a single SNP which is in a less stable part of the Y chromosome, YSEQ does not offer it as an a la carte SNP.
The WGS test will most likely contain readable calls for the homologous SNP FT103684 and enough downstream SNPs for YFull to reliably place this sample on their tree.
J2b-FT103684 is rare today and has also not yet been found in an ancient context. It diversified around 2100 BCE over a few hundred years, as evidenced by three succesive lineages defined by one SNP, but then all these lineages except one went through a two-thousand years long bottleneck.
While other lineages of J2b-L283 have been found in samples from the Cetina Culture, J2b-FT103684 has not.
If there was a massive migration of lineages of J2b-Z2507 from further inland to the Cetina River / Adriatic coast, then J2b-FT103684 may have stayed behind. Or if J2b-Z2507 itself originated along the Cetina River / Adriatic coast, the result of an earlier migration from further inland, then J2b-FT103684 may have been one line that 'back-migrated' further inland and to the Pannonian Basin.
It will help us further refine our theories to learn whether or not this sample ends up being more closely related to the other Hungarian sample in J2b-FT103684 from Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County of northeastern Hungary.
With your generous research donations I was able to help this other man co-pay for his WGS test at YSEQ in January of 2022.
Thanks for Participating in our J2b-L283 Research Community
Thanks for all who have contributed to advancing the research into the origins of our J2b-L283 lines.
I try to keep an open mind in how I determine whether a sample from a given region is going to be likely to advance our understanding of the deeper geographic origin of a line or not.
I am very thankful how, in the course of my amateur research, I have been able to learn more about the geography, culture and history of many parts of Europe, especially but not limited to Italy, Central Europe and the Balkans.
Let's Get These Interesting WGS Candidates Funded!
I intend to order the WGS test at YSEQ for these four samples, followed by analysis at YFull that will grow the research tree with their samples.
If you would like to help contribute to funding these candidates please donate to my PayPal account with note "J2b-L283 Research" - https://www.paypal.me/phylogeographer