Female line information: mitogroup U6

All members of mitogroup U6 can trace their mitochondrial DNA to one woman who is thought to have lived about 50 thousand years ago, probably somewhere in the Near East. This woman belonged to a group of hunter-gatherers that initially colonized parts of southern Europe thousands of years before the agricultural revolution that occurred about 10 thousand years ago. It is thought that descendants of these people then expanded into North Africa from the Mediterranean area about 40 thousand years ago.

Today, mitogroup U6 is mainly observed in northern Africans, where about 10 percent of people belong to it. Mitogroup U6 is also found in eastern Africans and was typical of the Guanches, the indigenous population of the Canary Islands. Members of mitogroup U6 are rare but present (less than 1 percent) in Spain, Portugal, France and the rest of Europe.