For reference, the Y DNA reads I’m talking about are from this study which recently released BAM files, which Ewenn at the U106 group was able to analyze for subclades: Notes on R-Z18 in Steppe Ancestry Pre-print
The study left a great number of ancient samples at R-Z19 (R-Z18). The oldest samples of R-Z18 seemed to be in Denmark and Southern Sweden, really between Zealand and Southern Sweden. That study concluded that R-Z18 looked like a local variant of R-U106. At the time, there was no information about further subclades.
Breaking up CTS12023
A lot of haplogroups represent multiple SNPs in blocks. CTS12023 has a large block of SNPs after it split from the rest of R-Z18. Everyone alive today (so far) has all the SNPs in that large block. That means we’re all related to a single branch going back a thousand-plus years until R-CTS12023 begins to break out into other branches. This represents the likely death of all the branches that would be there, but became extinct.
That big dark blue block represents generations of men in a single line. We’re all related to Mr. ZP86. Other branches of the tree are gone. Well, they were gone until the release of those ancient results from Zealand, Denmark.
Today. The block tree for CTS12023 looks like this:
Two values are missing from the long chain: R-CTS3624 and R-A19698. R-Z18 now looks like this:
This seems to be FTDNA mapping out the information that was also found by the U106 group. Three of the samples from Karlstrup Tune, Zealand in modern Denmark are positive for R-CTS3624, and at least one is positive for R-A19698. All have negative calls for many of the downstream SNPs.
That means we can put at least two SNPs of that large block in some order. We know that R-CTS3624 and R-A19698 are the oldest branches of what would become R-CTS12023/R-DF95. One of the samples had a mixed read for R-DF95, which is interesting, but currently inconclusive.
This is what the new branch R-CTS3624 with its child branch R-CTS12023 looks like:
The samples in question are CGG106705 and CGG106706, both listed as Bell Beakers born roughly 2100 to 1900 BCE, and CGG106708, born roughly between 2000 and 1900 BCE. CGG106705 and CGG106706 are listed as Bell Beakers, while CGG106708 is listed as Nordic Bronze Age. All are from Karlstrup, Denmark.
Random Thoughts
This is really early, and I look forward to seeing what happens at Family Tree DNA as they look at the samples. There are many other R-Z18 samples in this group. I focused on CTS12023 because, well, I’m me, but there is more there to go through. There are other R-Z18 brethren in the mix and more to explore.