"The vast majority of R1b1a2 men who are deep clade tested fall within the two big supergroups P312+ and U106+ so it's quite unusual to find men who fall outside these big groups. I wonder if it might mean that your dad's ancient ancestors were amongst the original people who settled in Devon after the Ice Age. We will no doubt learn more as more research is published. Tibor Fehar, the admin of the R1b project might be able to tell you more.
Today I received an email from Tibor Fehar, an expert in DNA, with further interesting information:
"Hello Linda,
Your Dad's results are very interesting, he definitely belongs to the R-L11* group, so you qualify for joining the Ht35 project [which I have done], as Debbie suggested.
L11* is a very interesting group, "brother" clade of U106 and P312, which are widespread in Central and Western Europe. However, L11* is very rare, and it likely arrived to England at an early stage of the Bronze Age (Bell Beaker folk maybe).
Tibor" [Note: Italics are mine.]
This, of course took me to Wikipedia to find the period that the Bronze Age occurred in Britain and discovered that it spanned a period from about 2500 to 800 BC!!! The Bell Beaker folk referred to in his email were prevalent during the Early Bronze Age 2500 to 1700 BC and as quoted from Wikipedia,
"Beaker culture is defined by the common use of a pottery style — a beaker with a distinctive inverted bell-shaped profile found across the western part of Europe during the late 3rd millennium BC. The pottery is well-made, usually red or red-brown in colour, and ornamented with horizontal bands of incised, excised or impressed patterns. It has been suggested that the beakers were designed for the consumption of alcohol, and that the introduction of the substance to Europe may have fueled the beakers' spread. Beer and mead content have been identified from certain examples." Copyright Wikipedia, website accessed January 17, 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_culture
Obviously our ancient ancestors were connoisseurs of the alcoholic beverages very early!!!
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