Helena, the (mt) H Haplogroup That Covers Half of Europe

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                     

  

  My maternal grandmother's first daughter, Dorothy, carries  Grandma's H2a1 mt haplogroup from Sweden.  She died of appendicitis when 6 years old.  She was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1903 and died in 1910, an Olson to a Swedish immigrant.  Grandma had 2 daughters, the required amount, says Sykes, to spread the genes.  Grandma was from Lumsheden, Sweden, a small village. 

My mother's mt Haplogroup is H2a1 for Helena as Bryan Sykes has named them. "Helena lived 20,000 years ago at a time when the last Ice Age was at its most severe.  Glaciers and permanent ice fields covered all of Scandinavia and stretched as far south as the present-day cities of Berlin and Warsaw.  The Baltic Sea was permanently frozen, as was the North Sea from Denmark to the Humber.  " Within the last glacial period the Last Glacial Maximum was approximately 22,000 years ago." Behar says that our H2a1 is from 6,000 years old to 9,500 years old, whereas Helena is much older.  We're a branch of her.                                                 

    Modern Europe-The CIA use this one.  

In the winter the Atlantic froze and there was pack ice as far south as Bordeaux, France.  Britain, still joined to continental Europe by dry land, was buried under ice down to what are now the English midlands, central Wales and southern Ireland.  Every year the tundra, a thin layer of soil and vegetation above the permafrost, advanced further south, almost reaching the Mediterranean Sea.                                  

Freeing temperatures and heavy snowfall made the tundra uninhabitable in winter, and the hunting bands who roamed across most of  northern Europe were pushed up against the mountains of the Pyrenees and the Alps.  Many bands had been funnelled down the wide valley of the River Rhone and spread out along the low-lying lands that bordered the Mediterranean.  As now, lagoons indented the coast, but the shore was many miles away from its present position.  Tons of water was locked up in he great ice sheets that the sea level was over a hundred meters lower than it is now.  

"On the basis of the new compilation, the geologists have constructed a series of maps showing how ice sheets grew and retreated across northern Europe, Russia and the Barents Sea 40,000-10,000 years ago. This reconstruction shows how the ice sheets varied in size over time. A similar synthesis has not been conducted since 1981, when only a few handfuls of dates were available."                      

Helena helped her mother look through the woods for wild mushrooms and toadstools or looked in the lagoons to search for oysters.  Her father went through the woods alone looking for small deer and other mammals.  In late summer they would get ready for The Great Gathering by packing their camp and moving inland towards the hills, travelling light.  Many other bands were also doing this at the same time.  It took them about 6 weeks to reach the valley of the Dordogne where the great river flowed between high cliffs of yellow grey limestone.  There was a very big cave there used by hyenas, lions and huge cave bears.  However, when they all arrived, it was empty.  They  gathered there to catch reindeer. 

Helena's clan was the most successful in Europe and reached every part of the continent. 47% of modern Europeans are member of her clan."  

Besides the four haplogroup K and N1b founders, the major haplogroup in Ashkenazi Jews is haplogroup H, at 23% of Ashkenazi lineages, which is also the major haplogroup in Europeans (40–50% in Europe, ~25% in the North Caucasus and ~19% in the Near East)²⁸.Oct 8, 2013

H:  21% of Jewish women are H (Helena) haplogroup. There are unique characteristics in H among Jews not found in non-Jews. However, this is found in half of European women’s ancestry besides being common in North Africa and the Middle East. It’s linked to population expansion about 20,000 -30,000 years ago and originated in the Caucasus or Europe. As Jewish men journeyed, they married non-Jewish women who converted, especially in the beginnings of their wanderings. H is 47% European and originated in Southern France. It is the largest haplogroup for women. added 6/15/11: I've found an Ashkenazi Jewish woman who is H7, and feels she is 100% Ashkenazi.  This may be the line mentioned above with the unique characteristics.  I'm not sure. 
HV: 40,000 years ago in the Near East  HVO  4.1% to Jewish group: Daughter-in-law is HV.  

H6a1a (H1b1-T16362C)
H: over 35,000 years ago in the Near East or southern Europe, 20.5% to Jewish group
H1b: 13,000 years ago in Europe
H3:10,000 years ago in western Europe
H2a1 is my mt haplogroup.  My grandmother came from Lumsheden, Sweden, not Jewish.  Mom converted.    

N: 75,000 years ago in NE Africa;  N1b:  10% of Jewish women are N1b., one of the NE African lineages and thought to have originated in Africa 50,000- 60,000 years ago. It’s common in the Middle East and main source of various European female groups including B,F, H, J, R, T, and U.
N:  75,000 years ago in NE Africa

The discreet Origin of H2a1 MtDNA and its sudden Eurasian Expansion offer a unique Testimony about what remained from the Natufians, the Neolithic Revolution in Near East and Chalcolithic in Lesser Caucasus-on Acadamia-below. 

                                                               

   A recent study has shown that a group of hunter-gatherers had survived the last Ice Age while living in the modern location of Europe, only to unexpectedly disappear about 14,500 years ago.

Update: 10/15/20  

Dr. Mehmet Oz (b. 1960), a Turkish-American cardiothoracic surgeon, author, and television personality hosting the The Dr. Oz Show, belongs to haplogroup H2a1 according to the PBS TV series Faces of America.

Reference: The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes (2001) who is a professor of genetics at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University and editor of The Hiuman Inheritance:  Genes, Language and Evolution.  Both men and women carry this mt haplogroup but only women can pass it onto her children.  A man can test for both the mt and the Y (male line) haplogroups.  

https://phys.org/news/2016-03-picture-ice-age.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period

https://haplogroup.org/mtdna/rsrs/l123456/l23456/l2346/l346/l34/l3/n/r/r0/hv/h/h2/h2a/h2a1/https://www.familytreedna.com/public/mtDNA_H2?iframe=mtresults

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html

https://www.academia.edu/35491026/The_discreet_Origin_of_H2a1_MtDNA_and_its_sudden_Eurasian_Expansion_offer_a_unique_Testimony_about_what_remained_from_the_Natufians_the_Neolithic_Revolution_in_Near_East_and_Chalcolithic_in_Lesser_Caucasus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgmdI1Xr3hQ ice age animals