French L21 Testing

[rms2]

The R-L21 Plus Project began recruiting men of French ancestry for testing this past July, thanks to generous donations from project members. Central to the effort, and one of its chief financial backers, was an archaeologist who currently wishes to remain anonymous. Another person who deserves a lot of credit is Doug Miller, the Group Administrator of the French Heritage DNA Project, who helped get the word out to his project members.

Anyway, here are the results.

N=24

L21+ (L21 Positive)= 14

L21- (L21 Negative)= 10

Percentages

L21+= 58%

L21-= 42%

I will go back through the list of test subjects, try to break things down by geographic region, and post that information here.

We still have a couple of French subjects awaiting L21 results in our project's "L21 Pending" category. I was going to wait for them but became impatient, so I am going ahead and starting this thread.

I cannot claim this as a truly scientific research project (I'm not a scientist, for one thing), but it did turn out to be pretty much random testing of R1b1b2 men of French descent. I started out by looking for men who were likely to be L21+, based on their matches in YSearch. I could only find one of them, so the rest were a roll of the dice. In the end we just looked for men of French descent who were predicted by FTDNA to be R1b1b2 and who were not obviously L21-. That last was tough, since nobody had a 67-marker haplotype and only one had any prior SNP testing, and so much of western R1b1b2 looks alike. I remember screening out just one guy because he belonged to the R1b North-South Cluster. Although we paid for most of the testing, some of the men paid for their own testing, which helped out a lot.

I think what we can glean from our efforts is that L21 is very well represented in France.

Currently the L21 test is no longer available as a stand-alone on FTDNA's Advanced Orders menu, but I have been advised an IT bug fix is underway that could bring it back to that menu sometime in the near future. The bug has nothing to do with the testing itself. It has to do with the effects of a negative result on a subject's haplogroup listing.

I would like to encourage all R1b men to order FTDNA's Deep Clade-R test or Deep Clade-Extended test, but especially men of French and other continental European descent. L21 is also doing very well among Germans, Netherlanders, and Scandinavians, especially Norwegians.

[rms2]

Here are the results for Northern France versus Southern France.

Northern France (N = 18)

L21+ (L21 Positive) = 11 (61%)

L21- (L21 Negative) = 7 (39%)

Southern France (N = 2)

L21+ (L21 Positive) = 1 (50%)

L21- (L21 Negative) = 1 (50%)

Four of the subjects have ancestry in France but cannot name the exact
location. Two of them were L21+ and the other two were L21-.

Here is a further breakdown by region.

NW France (N = 13)

L21+ = 8

L21- = 5

North Central France (N = 1)

L21+ = 0

L21- = 1

NE France (N = 4)

L21+ = 3

L21- = 1

SW France (N = 1; this one was close to Central France, near the Limousin
border)

L21+ = 1

L21- = 0

SE France (N = 1)

L21+ = 0

L21- = 1

Those are the results. Once again, I'm not claiming this was a truly scientific study. Our sample population was pretty obviously determined by North American immigration patterns (most of our test subjects are French Canadians). I don't think L21 is 60% of French R1b1b2 overall. I suspect it's more like 30-40%, but it could run as high as 50-60% in Northern France, especially Northwestern France.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post: I purposely excluded men with ancestry in Bretagne (Brittany) from this recruitment/testing project. I have nothing against them; in fact, I hope they all test L21+ and join my project. I excluded them to avoid the claim that any of our test subjects was ultimately of British ancestry, which would have been the immediate objection to Breton results, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

[Cambrius (The Red)]

What are you finding in Galicia, Northern Portugal and Asturias?

[rms2]

What are you finding in Galicia, Northern Portugal and Asturias?

Thus far, no one with ancestry in those areas has joined the R-L21 Plus Project or submitted his ancestral information so that I can add it to the R-L21* European Continent Map.

[Cambrius (The Red)]

For whatever reasons, some people are hesitant to participate. i suspect there may be more than a few people up in my region that are R-L21*

[rms2]

For whatever reasons, some people are hesitant to participate. i suspect there may be more than a few people up in my region that are R-L21*

If you give me the name of your most distant y-dna ancestor, his approximate birth date, his place of birth or hometown, and let me know with which company you tested L21+, I will add your data to the map. Your privacy won't be compromised at all. Only your ancestor's name will appear on the map, not your name.

If you can join FTDNA projects, please join the R-L21 Plus Project.

[Barantes]

For whatever reasons, some people are hesitant to participate. i suspect there may be more than a few people up in my region that are R-L21*

ME! I don't think many northern portuguese get their genealogy tested as much as people in Britain or North America

[adamo]

On continental Europe, the insular Celtic Irish R-L21 subclade is found at its highest frequencies predominantly in the Brittany province of Atlantic, extreme western France. It can also be found at low trace frequencies, MUCH lower in northern Atlantic regions of Spain, Portugal, in isolated cases. Overall, R-L21 is characteristically insular Celtic, even one can say, "Irish".