The FTDNA L24 Project's administrator gives a considerably older date for PF5456 (3600 ybp) than Yfull (2800 ybp). I suppose that is the age of PF5456's appearance, not the TMRCA? In any case, the TMRCA is younger, and Yfull says only 2500 ybp. Even if it is 600 years older, that is 3100 ybp, which is after Italic tribes invaded Italy. It's very hard to see how it would have come from Anatolia and spread over all Europe within that time frame - unless PF5456 originated with the presumed Anatolian ancestors of the Etruscans. But in that case it would still have spread around western Europe and North Africa with the Romans.
If you look at the map of PF5456 (+ the STR results, as not all of them are indicated on the map) only (not all L70) on FTDNA, there are members in the following countries/regions:
- Scotland : 6x
- Ireland : 1x
- Wales : 2x
- England : 5x (Cornwall, Devon, Lincoln, Kent)
- Netherlands : 1x
- Belgium : 2x
- France : 1x
- Denmark : 1x
- Sweden : 1x
- Germany : 7x
- Italy : 3x (including Piemonte, Campania)
- Spain : 1x
- Portugal : 4x
- Slovenia : 1x
- Bulgaria : 2x
- Tunisia : 1x
- Lebanon : 1x
Obviously commercial tests have a strong bias toward northern Europe, and especially the British Isles, so the proportions are not representative. But I find it interesting that within Britain, the PF5456 is limited to Cornwall/Devon, Wales and Lowland Scotland, three regions where the Romano-British population sought refuge from the invading Anglo-Saxons. There is also a sample from Lincoln, which was one of the main Roman cities in Britannia, and one sample from Kent, close to London (already the capital of Roman Britain). In Germany, 4 out of 6 samples are from the south, which was for centuries under Roman control, with heavy garrisons. There is even a sample in Tunisia, and within the last 3000 years the only Europeans who settled there were the Romans or the French (+ a brief passage of the Vandals). Ditto for the sample in Lebanon.
There is also a Jewish cluster (BY268 subclade) in central and eastern Europe. Ashkenazi Jews are thought to have originated in Italy before moving to Germany in the Middle Ages, then eastward from the 16th century. A minority of Ashkenazi Jewish Y-DNA lineages could actually be of Roman/Italian origin (for example the R1b-U152>Z56>L4). I think that may also be the case for J2-PF5456.
The Z2177 subclade has a higher proportion of samples from Italy.
- Scotland : 1x
- Ireland : 1x
- England : 1x
- Germany : 2x
- Switzerland : 1x
- Italy : 7x (including Trentino, Latium, Sicily)
- Greece : 1x
- Romania : 1x
- Turkey : 1x
- Syria : 1x
Yfull.com has additional samples from Sardinia and Tuscany, so Z2177 really is strongly Italy-centred.
Considering that only some deep subclades are found in the Near East, I very much doubt that PF5456 originated in that region.