Iberomaurusian and E-L618* enigma

[Sophax]

I've been searching for information about origin and migration routes of mypaternal haplogroup, E-L618, and I've read it's associated with Mechta-Afalou / Iberomaurusian culture, mostly.
This culture is known as the "paelo-berber" but Mechtoid men carried mostly E-78 (and subclades) haplogroups.
Meanwhile, the "Berber marker" is known as E-M81 haplogroup.
So what's the main difference between theese two branches ? Is it like R1a/R1b ?
Which one is concidered mediteranean and which is the continental-african ?
If E-M78 is not related to the "berber marker", how would you classify or describe it ? Even it's not hard science, usually we see R1b as continental celtic, R1a proto slavic and so on...is E-m78 and E-L618 proto-lybian ? proto-egyptian ?

 

[Riverman]

I've been searching for information about origin and migration routes of mypaternal haplogroup, E-L618, and I've read it's associated with Mechta-Afalou / Iberomaurusian culture, mostly.
This culture is known as the "paelo-berber" but Mechtoid men carried mostly E-78 (and subclades) haplogroups.
Meanwhile, the "Berber marker" is known as E-M81 haplogroup.
So what's the main difference between theese two branches ? Is it like R1a/R1b ?
Which one is concidered mediteranean and which is the continental-african ?
If E-M78 is not related to the "berber marker", how would you classify or describe it ? Even it's not hard science, usually we see R1b as continental celtic, R1a proto slavic and so on...is E-m78 and E-L618 proto-lybian ? proto-egyptian ?

Most of the E-L618 was spread in Europe by Neolithics. The best guess currently is like this:
Natufian-relative -> PPNB -> Impresso-Cardial (proven) -> Lengyel and Michelsberger (proven)

Impresso-Cardial settled throughout the Mediterranean, including Iberia.

What's your paternal ethnicity?

Most E-L618 are simply Europeans and I guess most derive from the Michelsberger group. We have on FTDNA 2 Italians, 1 French and one Swede. Are you the French?

E-M81 has a completely different path into North Africa and separated from E-M78 a very long time ago.

 

[Sophax]

Really interesting thank you, my father's ethnicity is from berbers in Aures region (east part of algeria), that's why I found it quite surprising

 

[Riverman]

Really interesting thank you, my father's ethnicity is from berbers in Aures region (east part of algeria), that's why I found it quite surprising

Well, there were some E-M78 among Iberomaurusians, some might even have been E-L618. So its possible that you are the living proof for these lineages being there since pre-Neolithic times and surviving in the regions. This makes your case pretty interesting actually. What are your closest matches? Europeans, North Africans? How close?

Did you test on FTDNA?

The estimated age for E-L618 based on the current samples on FTDNA is about 10.000 years, both going by simple SNP count and the general calculatoin on scaledinnovation:
http://scaledinnovation.com/gg/snpTracker.html

This would mean secondary Near Eastern origin, rather. But again, your case is really fascinating. You could as well be from the Stone Age expansion, from Neolithic Cardial-Impresso settlements (they did reach North Africa too) or any later settlement of Europeans.

 

[Hawk]

Not neccessarily Iberomaurusian, but similar cultures for sure, there was even archeological similarity between Iberomaurusian and Natufian, quite a lot of shared things between each other.

Proto-Berbers are more of a 3000-4000 year phenomena, so they were nowhere when these Paleolithic-Mesolithic groups were roaming, and probably all of them spoke interrelated languages, one of them was probably Proto Afro-Asiatic.

 

[Sophax]

Thank you for the precision Hawk !

Riverman, unfortunatly I did the 23&me test, my closest relatives are:
#1 - 0.58% DNA shared, Algeria, no more informations.
#2 - 0.56% DNA shared, French, comparable autosomal (68% from MENA, 31% european, 1% other). Maternal haplo H1
#3 - 0.51% DNA shared, American, he's 60% ashkenazim, 35% NW euro, 5% S euro, E-M183 Yhaplo, H4a mtdna.
This last one is the most surprising since he didn't show any north african ancestry (well, I don't really know what ashkenazim ancestry means to be honest)
I wish I could do the BIG Y on ftdna but it's a big too expansive to me at this time. I think the main issue is that most of the people living in MENA area are not interested, or can't reach informations and tests easily maybe.

 

[Riverman]

Thank you for the precision Hawk !

Riverman, unfortunatly I did the 23&me test, my closest relatives are:
#1 - 0.58% DNA shared, Algeria, no more informations.
#2 - 0.56% DNA shared, French, comparable autosomal (68% from MENA, 31% european, 1% other). Maternal haplo H1
#3 - 0.51% DNA shared, American, he's 60% ashkenazim, 35% NW euro, 5% S euro, E-M183 Yhaplo, H4a mtdna.
This last one is the most surprising since he didn't show any north african ancestry (well, I don't really know what ashkenazim ancestry means to be honest)
I wish I could do the BIG Y on ftdna but it's a big too expansive to me at this time. I think the main issue is that most of the people living in MENA area are not interested, or can't reach informations and tests easily maybe.

Actually some MENA-related people have some of the highest testing rates of all, but its primarily Jewish people and Gulf Arabs. All others are severely underrepresented indeed. The closest relatives autosomally don't really help, because I don't get close autosomal matches with people from the same haplogroup which are about 3.000 or 2.500 years away from me, and most of your E-L618 matches might be 10.000 years from you. FTDNA or YSeq is the only way to go for a good yDNA result I guess. I would suggest FTDNA, if you are interested and can afford it at some point. If you did just 23andme, you might be even assigned to a rare downstream group, who knows.
Did you use some yDNA predictor with your raw data?

 

[Sophax]

Yes I used ySeq predictor, Geneanet and Morley. Both gave me E-L618 as terminal subclade (or synonym in the case of Morley) which confused me a lot as I thought it's pretty high in the philogenetic tree.
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge.