I asked several members of different families that I’ve mentioned here in the past like the Coens, Damerons, Elmers, Knowltons, Emery and Winnes if they have DYS458 with a microallele of .2 (like 15.2, 16.2, 17.2). So far everyone who has gotten back has returned true. Their results vary though. Several of us have 16.2 that reports as 16 at FTDNA. One has 15.2 that reports as 16. That was unexpected. 15.2 is a very rare value. I’ve heard that a mutation of a 458.2 up or down would still carry the .2 so 16.2 might mutate to 15.2…but not 15.

At SMGF 16.2 results make up 0.150% of their database. For reference the value of 16 at DYS458 is 24.022% of the SMGF database. So with that marker alone you drop from roughly a quarter of men to below 1% of men in their database. That gives you an idea of how narrow the playing field gets when you take this into account. We seem to be a fairly small group of men, but really wide spread. At SMGF and Ancestry.com the 458.2 men in my match lists are from Pomerania, Germany, England, Denmark etc…in a map it would roughly match my cluster (labelled Cumberland) at the Z18 and subgroups project where we have men from Poland to Wales and possibly Ireland.

We have fairly similar STRs with a good pattern of markers in common, but a really broad range that seems to hug the South Baltic. It’s not such a surprising concept. I’ve spent a long time with these different results and made a lot of maps. I’m just always struck by how far apart geographically we are. Every time I think I can zoom in on a location, I’m forced to zoom out again.