Haplogroup L3

Haplogroup L3 is a human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup. The clade has played a pivotal role in the prehistory of the human species. It represents the most common parent maternal lineage of all people outside Africa, and for many people within the Africa continent as well.Phylogenetic tree of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups Haplogroup L3 is a human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup. The clade has played a pivotal role in the prehistory of the human species. It represents the most common parent maternal lineage of all people outside Africa, and for many people within the Africa continent as well. Haplogroup L3's exact place of origin is uncertain. According to the Recent African origin of modern humans (Out-of-Africa) theory, the clade is believed to have arisen and dispersed from East Africa, initially thought to have occurred between 84,000 and 104,000 years ago. An analysis of 369 complete African L3 sequences placed the maximal date of the clade's expansion at around 70,000 years ago. This virtually rules out a successful exit out of Africa before 74,000, the date of the Toba volcanic super-eruption in Sumatra, thus making an origin and expansion around 70,000 years ago most likely. The Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor for the L3 lineage has also recently been estimated to date to between 58,900 and 70,200 years ago, around the time of and associated with the Out-of-Africa expansion of the ancestors of non-African modern humans from Eastern Africa into Eurasia around 70,000 years ago, and also with a similar expansion within Africa around that time also from the East of the continent. Phylogenetically, haplogroup L6 and L4 are the closest to L3 out of the L lineages. Both L6 and L4 are primarily distributed and have their greatest diversity in Eastern Africa. L4'6 (L3'4'6) has a TMRCA of 114,288 years before present while L3'4 link at 95,240 ybp in the middle paleolithic. An Asian center of origin and dispersal for haplogroup L3 has also been hypothesized based on the similar coalescence dates of L3 and its Eurasian-distributed M and N derivative clades (~71 kya), the distant location in Southeast Asia of the oldest subclades of M and N, and the comparable age of the paternal haplogroup DE. According to this hypothesis, after an initial Out-of-Africa migration of early anatomically modern humans around 125 kya, fully modern human L3-carrying females are thus proposed to have back-migrated from the maternal haplogroup's place of origin in Eurasia around 70 kya along with males bearing the paternal haplogroup E, which is also proposed to have originated in Eurasia. These new Eurasian lineages are then suggested to have largely replaced the old autochthonous male and female North-East African lineages. According to other research, though earlier migrations out of Africa of anatomically modern humans occurred, current Eurasian populations descend from a later migration from Africa dated between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago.A study (by Vai et al. 2019) on a novel and basal branch of maternal haplogroup N found in early Neolithic North African remains, suggests that haplogroup L3 may have originated in Africa between 60-70,000 years ago, with haplogroup N diverging from it soon after (between about 50,000-65,000 years ago) either in Arabia or possibly North Africa, and haplogroup M originating in the Middle East. L3 is common in Northeast Africa and some other parts of East Africa, in contrast to others parts of Africa where the haplogroups L1 and L2 represent around two thirds of mtDNA lineages. L3 sublineages are also frequent in the Arabian peninsula. L3 is subdivided into several clades, two of which spawned the macrohaplogroups M and N that are today carried by most people outside Africa. There is at least one relatively deep non-M, non-N clade of L3 outside Africa, L3f1b6, which is found at a frequency of 1% in Asturias, Spain. It diverged from African L3 lineages at least 10,000 years ago. According to Maca-Meyer et al. (2001), 'L3 is more related to Eurasian haplogroups than to the most divergent African clusters L1 and L2'. L3 is the haplogroup from which all modern humans outside Africa derive. However, there is a greater diversity of major L3 branches within Africa than outside of it, the two major non-African branches being the L3 offshoots M and N. L3 has seven equidistant descendants: L3a, L3b'f, L3c'd, L3e'i'k'x, L3h, M, N. Five are African, while two are associated with the Out of Africa event.