In 1997, a study was published in the Journal Nature, which demonstrated that a startling % of Jewish males who shared an oral tradition of being Cohanim, also shared the same Y chromosome signature. The males that matched this "Cohen Modal Haplotype" are found within Haplogroup J on the Tree of Homo Sapiens. Haplogroup J is commonly referred to as 'Semitic' or 'Mediterranean' because of its elevated % in those areas. However Haplogroup J is found at its highest frequency (and greatest diversity) in Iraq, or possibly in the Zagros mountain range found in Western Iran.
The 1997 study used 6 markers, and allowed a maximum of 1 'step' change on any of these 6 markers to be included in the group. Your results are based upon 12 markers, the original 6, plus an additional 6 markers, and for the reasons described below we allow a total of 3 'steps' from the 12 marker 'modal' (the most common values in each position for the group).
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We have doubled the number of markers.
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Some of the additional markers have a faster mutation rate.
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The original study rounded the allowable mutations down (in this case from at least 1.5 to 1), to error on the conservative, which we applaud.
Therefore if you have an oral tradition of being Cohanim, then you most likely are genetically a Cohen. If you have no oral tradition of the Cohanim, and if your ancestors were Jewish, then you certainly appear to come from the same genetic Gene Pool, and while not being directly from the line of Aaron, you could be descended from one of his numerous male relatives. The CMH is found in 3% of Jews who identify as Yisrael.
If you have no oral tradition of either being a Cohen, or of being Jewish, your Y chromosome is still part of Haplogroup J, or perhaps a subset, J2, and most likely your deepest ancestor was part of the Neolithic farming expansion that began about 9500 years ago from the Fertile Crescent.
We believe that our 25 marker test is providing enough 'signal' to separate Neolithic farmers from more recent migrations of Jews out of the Middle East and into Europe and North Africa, which happened in the last 2,000 years.
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