Female line analysis: Your mitogroup is H

All members of mitogroup H can trace their mitochondrial DNA to one woman who is thought to have lived about 30 thousand years ago, probably somewhere in the Near East. This woman belonged to a group of hunter-gatherers that colonized Europe thousands of years before the agricultural revolution that occurred about 10 thousand years ago. This was part of a series of human migrations that are thought to be associated with the spread of the Upper Paleolithic (Stone Age) Aurignacian culture. Around 20 thousand years ago, cold temperatures during the last Ice Age led early Europeans to retreat to the warmer climates of the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and the Balkans. Beginning about 15 thousand years ago, after the ice sheets began to retreat, the descendants of these groups moved north again.

The legacy of the female ancestor of mitogroup H is quite astounding, as almost half of all contemporary European populations are members of mitogroup H and therefore are descendants of this woman in the direct female line. Moving eastward from Europe, the frequency of mitogroup H members decreases gradually to less than 20 percent in Central Asia, the Near East, India and Central Siberia, but becomes very low beyond Pakistan and India.