Until recently, tracing your ancestry usually meant connecting the dots through common relatives, family bibles, census information, and birth and death records added to family folklore. Within the past ten years, scientific discoveries from studying the human genome have spawned tremendous advances in medicine and human identity testing for paternity
and forensics.

These DNA techniques are also extremely powerful for measuring ancestral lineage markers in human populations. Ancestral lineage markers are passed down from generation to generation without change, except for rare mutational events. There are two principal types of ancestral lineage markers, paternal and maternal. Paternal lineage markers are located on the Y chromosome, while maternal lineage markers are found in mitochondrial DNA.

The lack of recombination within the Y chromosome has resulted in the chronological accumulation ancient DNA point mutations, or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), that are associated with population development and the peopling of the world. The entire male population can be classified into 20 major haplogroups; A through T. Additional mutations within each of the major haplogroups further define subclades that typically illustrate more localized distribution reflecting recent human migrations.

 

DNA testing, including ancestry applications has taken great strides in recent years.
Today, it has given us a roadmap for the many migrations that have occurred prior to recorded history.  Fossil and skeletal evidence suggests that archaic humans, such as Homo erectus, roamed Asia and Europe as much as one million years ago and Neanderthals around 250,000 years ago. Neanderthals were successful at adapting to the colder European climate, and adapted well physically. Although we are sure that modern humans lived along side Neanderthals, it remains unclear whether we out competed them for resources or drove them out. It is largely believed the Neanderthal had no contribution to the modern European gene pool.  There are still some researchers that dispute the fact that the most recent ancestor living today was a man who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago, although most DNA research points to this. New information on the journey of man continues to unfold with technological advances.

 

The early migrations were not well planned events. Early migrations of hunter gatherer communities primarily following food supplies and took the path of least resistance.

Coming out of Africa, it is believed that man initially followed a southern coastal route, exiting Africa at either the southern or northern section of the Arabian Peninsula, hugging the shoreline out around what today is India and reaching as far as Australia some 40-60,000 years ago. However, the Bradshaw Foundation places the early eastern migrational path from Africa across the mouth of the Red Sea approximately 20,000 years earlier. If accurate, it would place Homo sapiens into the east coast of Asia prior to the eruption of Mt. Toba, 74,000 years ago, isolating a population of individuals far from our earliest genetic ancestor thousands of years before his birth.