R-Z8

Hi Richard,

I'm no expert, but since R-Z8 was formed around 4000 years back, it may pay to narrow down your haplogroup with further SNP testing to get the most recent off-shoot downstream (unless R-Z8 is your terminal Y haplogroup)

Sean: I was tested positive for R-Z8 at FTDNA. I however had only a handful matches with my DNA-Y111 STR's, among which FGC17519, which is one of the 6 main subclades of R-Z8. ISOGG.ORG mentioned for the Z8 group surely more than 60 persons who tested the Big-Y. Someone from the FTDNA mentioned even more than 1100 Big-Y testers, positive for Z8. I have no way to contact these people. But I find it useful to try it via this discussion. Can we find some commonalities among the Z8? I myself has as ancestor: Henrick Gijsbertsz Duycker, born around 1540 and died in 1615 in VIANEN, Netherlands. This Henrick might be a descendant of Henrick Duycker, mentioned in Cleve (present NRW in Germany) in 1227. Does that sounds familiar to anyone??

I too initially tested down to R-Z8 through a R1b - M343&M269 Backbone SNP Pack from FTDNA after doing a Y-DNA37 test, then going on I tested further with the R1b - Z8 SNP Pack (this was much cheaper than going on with further with Y-DNA as I had no matches at Y-DNA37). This gave me a terminal DNA of R-CTS1747, (I understand there are very few of these tested). Where I did gain more a great deal of additional close relatives (and indeed a connection to my birth father, siblings, cousins etc), was through Gedmatch, by uploading my raw results.

The most recent YFull estimate for Z8 TMRCA is 3000 years ago (but perhaps formed 3700 ybp) based on some 150 participants. FTDNA is now showing over 1817 participants that have tested positive for Z8 as of 9/01/19 (half of which are from Z1 [957] and another quarter from Z338 [508]). Half of those participants do not report a location for their oldest known ancestor, but of those who do, a third say their oldest known ancestor was from England, increasing to over 70% when you add in all UK countries and USA. That said, a significant minority are claiming Scandinavian/Germanic countries (i.e. Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Finland, Denmark). The FTDNA database inherently has a huge data bias toward English speaking countries and Colonial American immigrants, so the real numbers will vary significantly. To really get a solid picture, large scale testing of rural areas are needed, such as the wonderful studies starting to show up from parts of Spain (on DF27 branches) and UK (needing an SNP update).

Carroll and Fitzpatricks are showing R-Z8 haplogroup - just one in the Carroll project and one in the Fitzpatrick FTDNA project.

Again results may be skewed due to testing company, but I did read somewhere that the highest number of R-Z8 came from around Blackburn Lancashire.