How do I start understanding results?

[Heatherwells]

Hello,

I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. I just received My Maternal grandmothers MTDNA. It says we are W1
I don't know how to figure out the letters and numbers. I am quite confused, my 5 x great grandmother was abandoned as a baby along a wagon trail, in Shawnee Territory in Ohio 1808. She was thought to be full Shawnee Native American. An indian agent told the family who adopted her, that she was probably a twin, and that the weaker twin would often be abandoned because they were considered to be a bad omen. I can't see how this would fit within group W.

Thanks,
Heather

[adamo]

Well she was not Native American according to the mtdna results (most likely not).
Haplogroup W appears in Europe, West and South Asia. It is everywhere found as minority clade, with the highest concentration being in Northern Pakistan. A related unnamed N* clade is found among Aboriginal Australians. Found in the Svan population of the Caucasus (Georgia) W* 8,3%. Quintana-Murci et al. 2004, analyzed the mtDNA of Kurds from Iran and found 10.0% W.

In Europe it seems most frequent among Finns, belarussians, Slovaks, southern poles, Macedonians and Romanians, all this at 5-10% with a 10% high among Finns. Then we find it in 10% of Iranian Kurdish females and highest levels found in Pakistan/Afghanistan region (15%); so honestly I don't even know what to say about it's origins XD

[English Lad]

I just sent my MTDNA genome results to the guy Mark, who runs thecid website on MTDNA W.

His response;

You're a W1g, as shown on the attachment tree.

W1g is defined by the 16320 mutation in HVR1. This extends from the
Ukraine through Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Germany, and France
to Portugal. This arose 4,000 years ago and the timing and the
distribution suggest the lineage arose in the upper Danube Valley among
the first agriculturalists in Europe.

You have only one match in HVR1/2 .. forensic data from Germany. This
indicates your line originated in central Europe, and then came to
Britain with the Celts.

[adamo]

I guess it's pretty downstream, I don't know at all; W and I are the most difficult mtdna groups to attempt to analyze due to sir rarity and sketchy global distribution; they're almost like the y-DNA T of mtdna lineages.