Author: Surfman374
Druze village in Israel.
Haplogroup X is particularly common among the Druze of the Levant; they exhibit much higher levels of both X1 and X2 than nearly any other population in the world. This unique and isolated ethnic group of no more than a few hundred thousand individuals can be found in the mountainous regions of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. They practice a very specific religion related to Islam, which is usually closed to outsiders and rarely marry non-Druze.
Scholars used to believe that the high levels of X were due to the fact that the Druze are so genetically isolated from neighboring peoples and thus have unusual levels of this haplogroup. Instead, it appears that the presence of X at these levels is simply a genetic remnant of how common X used to be in the region. Over the past several thousand years, as haplogroup X dwindled among the people of the Middle East, its presence among the Druze remained relatively unchanged. It turns out that the Druze serve not only as a window into the cultural history of the Middle East, but a window into the genetic history of the region as well.
X2
19,000
Years Ago
Origin and Migrations of Haplogroup X2
Your maternal line stems from a branch of haplogroup X called X2, an offshoot that has spread far and wide. Members of X2 can trace their maternal lines back to a woman who lived during the peak of the Ice Age approximately 19,000 years ago, somewhere in the Middle East or the Caucasus region of western Eurasia. As the climate warmed and the massive continental glaciers covering much of the Northern Hemisphere began to retreat, people on the X2 branch joined a rapid northward expansion into the previously ice-covered zone.
One group of women and their families headed west, hugging the Mediterranean coastline of Europe. That group seeded the higher levels of X2 that can be found today in southern European countries like Spain, Italy, Greece,and Turkey. A second group carried X2 eastward into Central Asia. The X2 haplogroup occasionally appears among people even farther east in Asia, such as the traditionally nomadic Altai of southwestern Siberia. However, the few Altai individuals who do belong to X2 stem from a branch that perfectly matches one found in the Caucasus, suggesting a second X2 migration less than 6,000 years ago.
Its current distribution stretches from Scotland to Morocco and eastward to Siberia. One particular branch, X2a, is found exclusively in North America.
