MTDNA M - DNAGENICS
MTDNA M - DNAGENICS
www.dnagenics.com
There is a debate concerning the geographical origins of Haplogroup M and its sibling haplogroup N. Both lineages are thought to have been the main surviving lineages involved in the out of Africa migration (or migrations) because all indigenous lineages found outside Africa belong to haplogroup M or haplogroup N. Scientists are unsure whether the mutations that define haplogroups M and N occurred in Africa before the exit from Africa or in Asia after the exit from Africa. Determining the origins of haplogroup M is further complicated by an early back-migration (from Asia to Africa) of bearers of M1.
Its date of origin in absolute terms is only known with great uncertainty, as reconstruction has yielded different (but overlapping) ranges for the age of M in South Asia and East Asia.The same authors give an estimate for t of L3 as 71.6+15.0−14.5 kya, later (2011) narrowed to the somewhat younger 65±5 kya. Thus, haplogroup M would have emerged around 10,000 or at most 20,000 years after L3, around or somewhat after the recent out-of-Africa migration event.