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FTDNA have 18 clusters, used in the new myOrigins/PF.
Each person is shown a description of the cluster that they have in their results.
(You have to click on the percentage bars that show your 'Ethnic Makeup' to get a breakdown of the clusters, then click on those "sub" percentage bar to see the description.
(They have maps to go with these clusters, with the colour deepening/lightening depending on your percentage.)
Here are 17 of the 18 cluster description that we have come across so far.
European Northlands
The European Northlands centers on the people of Scandinavia. They thought of their homeland as an island because it is relatively isolated from the rest of the world by the Baltic and other seas. This isolation and later association with the Finnic peoples, however, have changed them in ways that are genetically clear. A sister cluster to European Coastal Plain and European Coastal Islands, the European Northland has developed in moderate seclusion, influenced by the arctic heritage it shares with those from the North Circumpolar cluster.
Its history is rooted in the original hunters of Europe and the late arrival of farmers only about 5,000 years ago. Members of this cluster are kin to other Europeans of the north. The migrations of the Norse spread the European Northlands west and east. As the Vikings expanded from the south of Scandinavia, European Northlands absorbed Lapps and other people who were exemplars of North Circumpolar. An expansion over the past 2,000 years has brought this heritage from the nearer shores of continental and Atlantic Europe, all the way to the plains of the Dakotas in the United States.
European Coastal Plain
The European Coastal Plain combines nearly all of the threads of European genetic history into one. This cluster goes from the Bay of Biscay near Spain, toward the Pripet Marshes of western Russia, to the coastal plain of Northern Europe. The hunter-gatherer, farmer, and intruder from the steppes were forged together as one people. The French and the German were created by the intersection between the civilized and the barbarian during antiquity. With this diverse ancestry across the uniform plain, a relatively unified cluster was born.
European Coastal Plain represents the diverse groups brought together over the past 5,000 years, as Germans, Celts, and Slavs have moved in with their cattle, and the Romans brought their mills and cities. This cluster is common among many populations with Northern European heritage. Germanic migrations after the fall of Rome guaranteed its presence in the south. The people on the European Coastal Plain are at the heart of recent history. Being the engines behind the Great Powers of the age, they became the dominant actors in colonization of the world.
European Coastal Islands
European Coastal Islands is typical to the British Isles, especially Ireland. Its reach includes all European Islands from the far north and down south to the Azores Islands off the coast of Spain. The continuous mixing of European populations means that this group is also present in lesser amounts on the mainland. Genetically close to European Coastal Plain and European Northlands, European Coastal Islands has had an impact on the demography of the world because of the explosion of population in the Anglosphere over the past few centuries.
The farmers came to Britain late, but when they came they brought great change. The hunters were assimilated by the farmer. This admixture caused the European Coastal Islands as we know it to become a hybrid of farmer and hunter. Perhaps due to its isolation and strategic placement, the major powers in the world and throughout history have wanted to rule the islands. From Caesar to the Irish king Niall of the Nine Hostages, we see the wide variety of genetic influence from the Celts, Picts, Vikings, Normans and French.
North Circumpolar
The world is not such a wide place at the top and the bottom. The North Circumpolar cluster began around the arctic as hunter-gatherer peoples. They have carried their genes down to the modern era. The North Circumpolar stretches from Lappland east to Greenland. Though genetically diverse, the root of many of these populations is a genetic signature found most often in Finnic peoples.
These are the descendants of hunter-gatherers who withstood the push of the farmers. They adapted, and flourished, in a new age. Like the Bering Expansion, this cluster goes beyond conventional divisions, and has clear connections with both east and west. Even the New World is connected to North Circumpolar due to their shared kinship with ancient Siberia.
Humans pushed into the deep north only within the last 30,000 years, going where no Neanderthal had dared. With connections to populations in the south, the northerners maintained long term lateral connections and developed a coherence as the ice retreated. North Circumpolar has its roots with Saami hunters and fishers, as well as Uralic, Russian, Swedish, and even Scandinavian ancestries.
North Mediterranean
The North Mediterranean cluster is a distinct European cluster. It is situated in the southwest of Europe from Spain to Greece. Its people are a mix of the first hunter-gatherers to reach Europe and later migrations from Western Eurasia. There were two waves into the area: first the farmers of the Middle East and later the Roman Empire.
A long history of traveling merchants and seafarers shaped this group. The great empires of Rome and Greece brought it to distant lands. They also brought a second wave of Western Eurasian influence into the cluster. Its modern geography speaks to the history of those who moved, either willingly or in chains, under the Roman Empire. Because of this, the cluster's signature is strongest in the western part of the Mediterranean. It is particularly strong on the isolated island of Sardinia. It reaches upwards to the British Islands, as well as east into modern Turkey.
They have the same genetic origin as those who reached north to what is now Sweden. While the culture survived there, the genetic signature was largely replaced by later migrations.
Trans-Ural Peneplain
The Trans-Ural Peneplain is the dominant group between the tundra and the steppe in Eurasia’s northwest. They come from the area where the North European Coastal Plain joins the forests of Central Siberia. This ancestry is seen across many Eurasian groups. It is most often associated with Slavic and Baltic cultures. It has deep connections with the migrations of nomads from the steppes in Iran, who also carried evidence of the Eurasian Heartland. It is fundamentally European as it faces east, and expands outward from there.
Trans-Ural Peneplain are mostly the same hunter-gatherers who moved north and became the North Circumpolar people. Their ancestors married and had families with the farmers who pushed out of the Near East, and associated with the Anatolian Crossroads cluster. The Trans-Ural Peneplain is a combination of Middle Eastern farmer, Western European hunter, and Siberian nomad.
Recorded history tells us that many cultures have a part in this cluster, such as the Slavs, Germans, Polish, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Russians, Scandinavians, and Finnish.
Jewish Diaspora
The Jewish Diaspora cluster has been scattered around the world because of the demands of history. Their ancestry is rooted in the ancient Near East, but the Jewish Diaspora has combined during its history with a European heritage.
While Judaism is a religion, the Jewish people are also a nation. Modern Jews have diversified into numerous branches, such as the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi, as well as odds and ends such as the Bene and Beta Israel. Unifying many of these populations are genetic commonalities, likely resulting from a common Middle Eastern ancestry. This combination of Middle Eastern and European is found in other groups, and many of them exhibit signatures of Jewish Diaspora, but it is not common descent.
The Jewish Diaspora puts a particular focus on the Ashkenazi Jews, who are the majority of the world’s Jewish population today. Derived from populations located within Central Europe, these Jews are now scattered across the world, with the largest concentrations in Israel and the United States.
Eurasian Heartland
Eurasian Heartland can be found across a large band in the center of the Eurasian continent. It travels from the north of Europe south toward the narrow base of the Indian subcontinent. Within South Asia, it is the partner to the Indian Tectonic cluster. Across the center of Eurasia, it highlights the ancient influence of the Iranian nomads, Scythians, Sarmatians, and Cimmerians.
As early farmers moved west out of the hills of the Levant nearly 10,000 years ago, they mostly went into Europe and North Africa. The ancestors of the Eurasian Heartland, however, cautiously explored their possibilities to the east. They came into the light of history as the Persians, Sogdians, and Afghans, and have always had a hand on the turning points of history between the west and the east.
With the movement of millions from the Indian subcontinent, Eurasian Heartland has appeared in the Pacific, the New World, and Southeast Asia. Millions of displaced Afghans have also brought it west into Iran, and reinforced it in Pakistan.
Each person is shown a description of the cluster that they have in their results.
(You have to click on the percentage bars that show your 'Ethnic Makeup' to get a breakdown of the clusters, then click on those "sub" percentage bar to see the description.
(They have maps to go with these clusters, with the colour deepening/lightening depending on your percentage.)
Here are 17 of the 18 cluster description that we have come across so far.
European Northlands
The European Northlands centers on the people of Scandinavia. They thought of their homeland as an island because it is relatively isolated from the rest of the world by the Baltic and other seas. This isolation and later association with the Finnic peoples, however, have changed them in ways that are genetically clear. A sister cluster to European Coastal Plain and European Coastal Islands, the European Northland has developed in moderate seclusion, influenced by the arctic heritage it shares with those from the North Circumpolar cluster.
Its history is rooted in the original hunters of Europe and the late arrival of farmers only about 5,000 years ago. Members of this cluster are kin to other Europeans of the north. The migrations of the Norse spread the European Northlands west and east. As the Vikings expanded from the south of Scandinavia, European Northlands absorbed Lapps and other people who were exemplars of North Circumpolar. An expansion over the past 2,000 years has brought this heritage from the nearer shores of continental and Atlantic Europe, all the way to the plains of the Dakotas in the United States.
European Coastal Plain
The European Coastal Plain combines nearly all of the threads of European genetic history into one. This cluster goes from the Bay of Biscay near Spain, toward the Pripet Marshes of western Russia, to the coastal plain of Northern Europe. The hunter-gatherer, farmer, and intruder from the steppes were forged together as one people. The French and the German were created by the intersection between the civilized and the barbarian during antiquity. With this diverse ancestry across the uniform plain, a relatively unified cluster was born.
European Coastal Plain represents the diverse groups brought together over the past 5,000 years, as Germans, Celts, and Slavs have moved in with their cattle, and the Romans brought their mills and cities. This cluster is common among many populations with Northern European heritage. Germanic migrations after the fall of Rome guaranteed its presence in the south. The people on the European Coastal Plain are at the heart of recent history. Being the engines behind the Great Powers of the age, they became the dominant actors in colonization of the world.
European Coastal Islands
European Coastal Islands is typical to the British Isles, especially Ireland. Its reach includes all European Islands from the far north and down south to the Azores Islands off the coast of Spain. The continuous mixing of European populations means that this group is also present in lesser amounts on the mainland. Genetically close to European Coastal Plain and European Northlands, European Coastal Islands has had an impact on the demography of the world because of the explosion of population in the Anglosphere over the past few centuries.
The farmers came to Britain late, but when they came they brought great change. The hunters were assimilated by the farmer. This admixture caused the European Coastal Islands as we know it to become a hybrid of farmer and hunter. Perhaps due to its isolation and strategic placement, the major powers in the world and throughout history have wanted to rule the islands. From Caesar to the Irish king Niall of the Nine Hostages, we see the wide variety of genetic influence from the Celts, Picts, Vikings, Normans and French.
North Circumpolar
The world is not such a wide place at the top and the bottom. The North Circumpolar cluster began around the arctic as hunter-gatherer peoples. They have carried their genes down to the modern era. The North Circumpolar stretches from Lappland east to Greenland. Though genetically diverse, the root of many of these populations is a genetic signature found most often in Finnic peoples.
These are the descendants of hunter-gatherers who withstood the push of the farmers. They adapted, and flourished, in a new age. Like the Bering Expansion, this cluster goes beyond conventional divisions, and has clear connections with both east and west. Even the New World is connected to North Circumpolar due to their shared kinship with ancient Siberia.
Humans pushed into the deep north only within the last 30,000 years, going where no Neanderthal had dared. With connections to populations in the south, the northerners maintained long term lateral connections and developed a coherence as the ice retreated. North Circumpolar has its roots with Saami hunters and fishers, as well as Uralic, Russian, Swedish, and even Scandinavian ancestries.
North Mediterranean
The North Mediterranean cluster is a distinct European cluster. It is situated in the southwest of Europe from Spain to Greece. Its people are a mix of the first hunter-gatherers to reach Europe and later migrations from Western Eurasia. There were two waves into the area: first the farmers of the Middle East and later the Roman Empire.
A long history of traveling merchants and seafarers shaped this group. The great empires of Rome and Greece brought it to distant lands. They also brought a second wave of Western Eurasian influence into the cluster. Its modern geography speaks to the history of those who moved, either willingly or in chains, under the Roman Empire. Because of this, the cluster's signature is strongest in the western part of the Mediterranean. It is particularly strong on the isolated island of Sardinia. It reaches upwards to the British Islands, as well as east into modern Turkey.
They have the same genetic origin as those who reached north to what is now Sweden. While the culture survived there, the genetic signature was largely replaced by later migrations.
Trans-Ural Peneplain
The Trans-Ural Peneplain is the dominant group between the tundra and the steppe in Eurasia’s northwest. They come from the area where the North European Coastal Plain joins the forests of Central Siberia. This ancestry is seen across many Eurasian groups. It is most often associated with Slavic and Baltic cultures. It has deep connections with the migrations of nomads from the steppes in Iran, who also carried evidence of the Eurasian Heartland. It is fundamentally European as it faces east, and expands outward from there.
Trans-Ural Peneplain are mostly the same hunter-gatherers who moved north and became the North Circumpolar people. Their ancestors married and had families with the farmers who pushed out of the Near East, and associated with the Anatolian Crossroads cluster. The Trans-Ural Peneplain is a combination of Middle Eastern farmer, Western European hunter, and Siberian nomad.
Recorded history tells us that many cultures have a part in this cluster, such as the Slavs, Germans, Polish, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Russians, Scandinavians, and Finnish.
Jewish Diaspora
The Jewish Diaspora cluster has been scattered around the world because of the demands of history. Their ancestry is rooted in the ancient Near East, but the Jewish Diaspora has combined during its history with a European heritage.
While Judaism is a religion, the Jewish people are also a nation. Modern Jews have diversified into numerous branches, such as the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi, as well as odds and ends such as the Bene and Beta Israel. Unifying many of these populations are genetic commonalities, likely resulting from a common Middle Eastern ancestry. This combination of Middle Eastern and European is found in other groups, and many of them exhibit signatures of Jewish Diaspora, but it is not common descent.
The Jewish Diaspora puts a particular focus on the Ashkenazi Jews, who are the majority of the world’s Jewish population today. Derived from populations located within Central Europe, these Jews are now scattered across the world, with the largest concentrations in Israel and the United States.
Eurasian Heartland
Eurasian Heartland can be found across a large band in the center of the Eurasian continent. It travels from the north of Europe south toward the narrow base of the Indian subcontinent. Within South Asia, it is the partner to the Indian Tectonic cluster. Across the center of Eurasia, it highlights the ancient influence of the Iranian nomads, Scythians, Sarmatians, and Cimmerians.
As early farmers moved west out of the hills of the Levant nearly 10,000 years ago, they mostly went into Europe and North Africa. The ancestors of the Eurasian Heartland, however, cautiously explored their possibilities to the east. They came into the light of history as the Persians, Sogdians, and Afghans, and have always had a hand on the turning points of history between the west and the east.
With the movement of millions from the Indian subcontinent, Eurasian Heartland has appeared in the Pacific, the New World, and Southeast Asia. Millions of displaced Afghans have also brought it west into Iran, and reinforced it in Pakistan.
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