Brought to you by the Ewing Surname Y-DNA Project (Home Page, Results Directory)
provided by the Ewing Family Association.
Ewing Surname Y-DNA Project Results as of September 13, 2009
Notice: The number of participants in our project has finally reached the point that we have had to completely reorganize our Groups. This will not be much of a problem for those of you not familiar with the old system, but may be confusing to anyone who had become familiar with it. Please see the endnote for a conversion table.[i]
The value of the Ewing Surname Y-DNA Project depends on correlating the conventional genealogies of participants with their Y-DNA results. [For an introductory discussion of Y-DNA testing in genealogy, have a look at David Ewing's Y-DNA Project Articles.] On this website, we report both conventional genealogies and Y-DNA results, but our main goal is to display the correlation between them as clearly as possible, and our hope is that this will foster more focused and productive conventional genealogical research. We have divided our participants into Groups in a way that is meant to show both “DNA relatedness” and conventional relatedness. Group names consist of a numeral followed by a lower case letter. Loosely, the numeral refers to the DNA results and the letter to conventional genealogy.
Perhaps the most striking finding of the project so far is that over two thirds of our participants have DNA results so similar that we have concluded that they are related to one another within a genealogical time frame. Admittedly, “genealogical time frame” is rather vague language, but the probabilistic nature of DNA evidence requires us to be a little vague. We think that all of the men in this group had a common Ewing ancestor who lived about four hundred years ago, probably in the Lowlands of Scotland in an area still sometimes called Strathclyde, not far from the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond of legend and song. We have conventional genealogical data on a few good-sized Ewing families and several more families with a few representatives each that all fall within this large group. The earliest known progenitors of these families were born in the mid-seventeenth century, sometime after their common ancestor lived. At least three of the families lived near one another in county Donegal, Ireland, and though we can tell that they are related on the basis of the DNA results of their descendants in our project, we do not have conventional proof of their genealogical connections.[ii]
To facilitate discussion of our results, we have divided project participants into five Groups numbered 1 through 5 on the basis of Y-DNA results that are in some sense similar.[iii] The best way to see the relative genetic distances between and within the Groups is to have a look at Network Diagram - Overview. The Ewings in the large cluster are so closely related that they are piled on top of one another in the overview diagram and you will need to have a look at Network Diagram - Detail to see a graphical display of the genetic relationships among them. There is a fairly clear division of the large closely related group based on one marker, DYS 391. There is nothing intrinsically special about this marker, but it happens that about a third of the men in the large closely related group have DYS 391 = 10, and the others have DYS 391 = 11. We think that the mutation that created the difference at this marker must have happened quite a long time ago, perhaps not so long after the common ancestor of the two groups lived. We have put our project participants with DYS 391 = 11 in Group 1 and our participants with DYS 391 = 10 in Group 2. Keep in mind as you look at the bar graph below that the men in Groups 1 & 2 are more closely related to one another than the men within any of the other Groups. Indeed, Groups 5a & 5b are less closely related to one another than all of the men in Groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 are related to one another. So far, the only man in Group 5* is in Haplogroup G, which is even more distantly related. This Haplogroup occurs in Britain, but only accounts for a percent or two of haplotypes there. It is thought to have originated in Central Asia, and maybe to have come to Britain 2000 years ago with the Roman legions, which included soldiers from the far reaches of the Roman Empire.
So look again. Groups 1 & 2 are in the Ewing cluster, while Groups 3, 4 & 5 are not. Even though Group 3 is not in the Ewing cluster, it is still M222+. Groups 1, 2, 3 & 4 are all in Haplogroup R1b1, but Group 4 is M222-. Group 5 will include all haplogroups except Haplogroup R, but so far, it has five men in Haplogroup I and one in Haplogroup G. Look again at Network Diagram - Overview, which will give you an idea of the relative genetic distances involved within and between the Groups. This diagram is difficult to prepare and though it is accurate as far as it goes, it is not completely up to date. For example, it does not yet include our Haplogroup G participant, who is the only member of Group 5* so far.
These five main Groups are defined strictly on the basis of the Y-DNA results of the participants in each of the Groups, and the Groups are further subdivided based on the conventional genealogy of the participants. Each known conventional kindred of two or more participants is designated with a different lower case letter. So, for example, Group 1a consists of the descendants of John Ewing of Carnashannagh; Group 1b consists of the descendants of James Ewing of Inch; Group 1c consists of the descendants of James Ewing b1720/25, and so on. These Groups (or subgroups, if you like) are so closely related that we cannot distinguish them on the basis of their Y-DNA results. Indeed, there are men in each of these Groups that have Y-DNA that exactly matches the Ewing modal haplotype, so they are at genetic distance zero from one another, even though they are in different subgroups. Similarly, Group 2a consists of the descendants of “William?”, Group 2b consists of a group Karen Avery considers to be descendants of Alexander b. ca1731, etc. Again, the subgroups of Group 2 cannot be reliably distinguished from one another on the basis of DNA results alone, and some men with identical results are in different subgroups. In each of the five main Groups there also men who do not know their genealogical connection with any of the others; we have put them into subgroups designated by the Group number followed by an asterisk. Men in Group 1 who do not know their conventional genealogic connection with the others are in subgroup 1*; men in Group 2 who do not know their conventional genealogic connection with the others are in subgroup 2*, etc.
Subgroup Descriptions
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group1aRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group1bRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group1cRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group1dRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group1eRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group1fRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group2aRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group2bRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group2cRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group2dRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group3bRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group4aRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group4bRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group4cRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group4dRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/Group5aRelationshipDiagram.pdf.
The Group Results Tables compare the results of men within each Group to a modal haplotype. Groups 1 & 2 are compared to the Ewing modal haplotype. Group 3 is compared to the R:M222 modal haplotype. Group 4 is compared to the Atlantic Modal Haplotype, which is basically the modal across all men in Western Europe, where Haplogroup R1b1b2 constitutes a large majority. Group 5 is compared to the modal of Group 5a. On the Group 3, 4 & 5 Results Tables, the Ewing modal haplotype is also compared to the reference modal for each Group. To see a comparison of the Groups themselves, or rather a comparison of the Group modals and an explanation of what this means, go to Modal Haplotypes.
Go to the website of the Ewing Surname Y-DNA Project at
http://www.ewingfamilyassociation.org/DNA_Project/index_Y-DNA.html, and click on the “Results Directory” link at the top of the page. You can also reach the Results Directory directly by going to
http://www.ewingfamilyassociation.org/DNA_Project/SiteMap_YDNA.html. This will allow you easy access to all of our results pages from one directory, including those for which the links in the pdf version of this document do not work, such as the Network Diagrams and Modal Haplotypes.
Old Groups |
New Groups |
1 |
1*, 1d, 1e, 1f, 3a, 3b |
2 |
5b |
3 |
1b |
4 |
1a |
5 part 1 |
2a |
5 part 2 |
2*, 2b, 2c 2d |
6 |
4a |
7 |
1c |
8 |
4*, 4b, 4c |
9 |
5a |
[ii] The large group of closely related Ewings constitutes a very distinctive sub-cluster within the M222+ branch of Haplogroup R1b1. What I am calling here M222+ used to be called Haplogroup R1b1c7, and has been associated with the Uí Neill lineage of Northwest Ireland. Detailed discussion of this is rather interesting, but would only be a distraction at this point in the discussion, and is available elsewhere on the website, including a little toward the end of the next endnote.
[iii] [Note that the links to the Network Diagrams in the pdf version of this document do not work. You can reach these from the Results Directory on the website at http://www.ewingfamilyassociation.org/DNA_Project/SiteMap_YDNA.html, or directly by going to http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/NetworkDiagramOverview.pdf and http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/431003/NetworkDiagramDetail.pdf.]
We want to keep technical language in the footnotes of this introductory page, but to understand the diversity of Ewing families, we must speak at least a little of the Y-DNA tree. The Y-DNA tree of all men on planet Earth (http://www.isogg.org/tree/) is subdivided into 18 haplogroups, each named by a letter from A through R. Europe is dominated by Haplogroups R & I, which are account for nearly 80% and 20% of European men, respectively. We have one man in Haplogroup G, five in Haplogroup I and the rest are in Haplogroup R. The common ancestor of Haplogroups R & I lived something like 40,000 years ago, probably in the Middle East. That is quite a long time, and men in these haplogroups are separated by genetic distances on the order of 50. Haplogroup I is thought to have been present in Europe before the last Glacial maximum and perhaps to have originated there. It divided into two main branches about 28,000 years ago; these are separated by genetic distances on the order of 30 to 40. The men in our Group 5a are in one branch, and the man in Group 5b is in the other. Haplogroup R emerged in Central Asia about the same time that the two branches of Haplogroup I split, but we think that it moved into Europe much later—exactly when remains controversial, but it seems to have been after the last Glacial maximum about 10,000 years ago. You can see some hypothesized migration patterns from this time period at https://www.familytreedna.com/y-dna-haplogroup.aspx?kit=26605&ecode=et6hjm3Jpz4%3d. We think that all the Haplogroup R men in our project are actually in one of its branches, R1b1b2, and are separated from one another by genetic distances of up to 20 or so, and had a common ancestor maybe only 6,000 years ago, though this is controversial. The men in our project in Haplogroup R1b1b2 who are not in the M222+ sub-branch comprise our Group 4. The large group of closely related Ewings is in a branch of Haplogroup R1b1b2 once known as R1b1b2e (and before that R1b1c7), but its name changes about every fifteen minutes, and maybe most recently it has been called R:M222 or M222+, after its defining SNP. The common ancestor of this group probably lived 1500 or 2000 years ago; its members are separated by genetic distances of on the order of 10. Our Groups 1, 2 & 3 are in this branch. The closely related group of Ewings is separated by genetic distances of half that much, and their common ancestor probably lived 400 or 500 years ago. Only Groups 1 & 2 are in this cluster.