Haplogroup I is found almost exclusively in Europe where it is represented in about 20% of the population, second only to R1b.  I1 is the most common subclade of Hg I, and, geographically, it is highly concentrated in northern Germany, Denmark, and southern Norway and Sweden.  I1d is most common in Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.   It is not unusual to find an I1 in Spain or Portugal as the Iberian peninsula was a refugium during the last glacial maximum.

We do not have a lineage for this individual, only the fact that he is a living CARRIÇO residing in Portel, Alentejo, Portugal.  He is of the Norse-ultraNorse variety of I1d, which is today most common in Norway.  He has no significant matches in the FTDNA, Ysearch, or SMGF databases.  A deep SNP test shows his most downstream positive SNP is L22. 

The J2 subclade of Haplogroup J (see entries at Wikipedia and ISOGG) arose in the northern Fertile Cresent, roughly 18,500 ±3500 years ago.  It then spread westwards around the Mediterranean and broadly eastwards throughout central Asia and south into India.  It is most common in Anatolia (about 25% of Turks are J2).

Our J2 CARRICO's fall into three subclades:  J2a4, J2a4b, and J2a4b1.  These subclades have not shared a common ancestor for thousands of years.

This individual is a resident of Queluz (near Lisbon), Portugal.  He has no significant matches in the FTDNA database.

Most of these individuals are paper descendants of the American progenitor, Peter CARRICO, 1674 immigrant to Maryland, including one surnamed BLAINE who has a deliberate surname change in his patrilineal line.  The rest are presumed descendants of Peter (see below), including the PHELPS who appears to have an NPE in his patrilineal line.

The haplotypes of those tested to 67 markers match each other at high levels, with none having a genetic distance of more than 3 from the family's modal haplotype, solidly establishing that they have a near common ancestor.  Several have undergone deep SNP testing, with the result that they are Haplogroup J2a4b (= J-M67).

Their haplotypes are unique, which is not particularly unusual (about 40% of individuals tested have no match "out of the gate"); however, their haplotypes are so unique that their distance to their nearest common ancestor, even within their own J2a4b subclade, is calculated to be some 3210 to 4530 years.  They have a value at one marker that is so unusual, I'm told no one else so far tested has it (viz., DYS425=10t).  These unusual results have attracted the attention of Haplogroup J researchers, which is very much to our benefit as we can rely on their interest to help sort out our deep origins.

The mutation defining J2a4b (M67+) occurred an estimated 11.6 ± 2.6 thousand years ago.  Today, individuals of this subclade can be found throughout southern Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa, but the highest concentrations are in Italy and the countries surrounding the eastern Black Sea (viz., Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, and southern Russia). 

This member descends from Joaquim Anastor CARRICO, who was born in Portugal and emigrated to Brazil.  His haplotype is unique, so he has no matches with anyone at any level, though his haplotype is not as unusual as that of the CARRICOs above.  His deep SNP test shows him to be M92+,  and his haplotype includes the characteristic null value at DYS425, which indicate he is subclade J2a4b1 on the FTDNA haplotree.

The mutation defining J2a4b1 (M92+) arose an estimated 8.8 ± 2.3 thousand years ago.  Today, individuals of this subclade can found in southern and eastern Europe, the Middle East, central and southern Asia, northeastern Africa, and India.  It is most concentrated in southern Italy, southern Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and India.

Haplogroup L appeared about 30,000 years ago and while most common in southern India (as L1) and Pakistan (as L3), it is spread thinly westwards across central Asia, southwestern Asia, and southern Europe (as L2).  Haplogroup L, along with Haplogroup J2, is thought to have been a founding population of the civilization of the Indus Valley.

These two individuals have no known paper connection, but both have an origin in Bursa Prov., Turkey.  Currently, one lives in France, the other in the United States, and one is a practicing Sephardic Jew.  Their haplotypes are rare, with no full matches with anyone else, including with each other.  They match at the level of 33/37, which means they have a 95% chance of being related within 18 generations, some time in the 1400s.  By upgrading to 67 markers, we could have a better approximation as to the nearness of their common ancestor.

Orthographically, surname CARACO appears Spanish, not Turkish, and the surname is most common in Spain.  It is known that, in the 1490s, Sephardic Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition by migrating to Turkey, so it appears this family was among them.

Subclade L2a is sometimes called the "Mediterranean" subclade of L because it occurs (at a low frequency) across southern Europe in the countries bordering the north coast of the Mediterranean Sea, from Turkey to Portugal.  One of these individuals has been deep SNP tested (gratis by FTDNA) showing his most downstream positive SNP is M349.

R1b is the most common haplogroup in western Europe (see map), the most common subclade being R1b1a2 (= R-M269 — old R1b1b2).  R1b is the group believed to have populated Europe from an Asian refugium when the last glacial ice sheet retreated about 10-13,000 years ago.  Ancestral R1b1* is quite rare.

Two CARASSOs have been tested at FTDNA, although only one has joined the project.  Both have a proximate origin in Salonica (=Thesaloniki), Greece, and they are a DNA match.  Like the Haplogroup L2a CARACOs (above), this Jewish family originated in Spain, but fled during the Spanish Inquisition, only they fled to Greece, rather than Turkey.  They are now also to be found in Europe, especially Switzerland; the United States; and Argentina.  They have a near match to several other largely Jewish families with a Spanish origin, and I have included them in their table even though they are of other surnames and not officially members of the project.

This individual lives near Lisbon, and his grandfather was from Monte do Trigo, Portel Municipality.  I had rather expected him to match the other individual from Portel (see above), but they are not remotely matching, nor does this individual have a significant match with anyone in the FTDNA database.

This individual lives in Albufeira, Portugal.  He has no match in the project or in the FTDNA database.  His "deep" SNP testing stopped short at P310, so I've ordered a P312 test, which is pending.

This individual has a rare haplotype, with no near, much less full, matches at 25 or more markers.  Deep SNP testing shows his most downstream positive SNP is P312.

The two brothers are descendants of Charles CARRICO of Sullivan Co., IN, presumed descendant of Peter CARRICO I, the immigrant, through Charles's son, Reason CARRICO (1794-1878).  While they match each other, they do not match the other descendants of Peter CARRICO I, including descendants of Reason's brothers, Basil and Josiah CARRICO.  It appears these brothers have an NPE, a "non-paternal event" (i.e., a hidden adoption or illicit paternity), in their patrilineal line, somewhere upstream of their father and downstream of Charles.  The NPE strongly points to Reason having been adopted because, if so, it would resolve the long-standing issue of his birthdate being too close to that of his next younger sibling. 

One of the two brothers has been tested to 67 markers, and he has a 62/67 match with a descendant of Farrell LITTLETON, immigrant from London, England, to Virginia, which is only barely close enough for him to be a direct descendant of Farrell, but does support that they may have a common ancestor, possibly back in England.  This LITTLETON has joined the project.  This brother has also been deep SNP tested, with the result that his most downstream positive SNP is L21.

At FamilyTreeDNA, two introductory levels of Y-chromosome STR testing are offered to new project members:  37-marker and 67-marker tests.  Every level of testing tells you something, but I have standardized my projects on 67 markers because that level allows for confident estimations of relatedness in virtually all cases.  Advanced testing to 111 or more markers is available to refine relationships (e.g., for distinguishing branches of the same family).

STR testing measures relationship in a time frame of hundreds of years, making the distance to the MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) sufficiently close to be genealogically useful.  And "useful" is an understatement.  STR testing is a powerful tool for determing whether people do or do not share a recent common ancestor, and it is the foundation for Y-DNA surname projects.

There is another form of Y-chromosome DNA testing called SNP testing — the acronym stands for "Single Nucleotide Polymorphism" and is pronounced as a single word, "snip."  Results of SNP testing are expressed as + or - (positive or negative) to indicate the presence or absence of a particular mutation.  Each suspected mutation requires a separate test.  Results of SNP testing determine a person's haplogroup, and deep testing (meaning exhaustively testing all known SNPs for the haplogroup) can identify subgroups, called "subclades."

The haplogroup (sometimes abbreviated, "Hg") is a measure of deep ancestry.  The MRCA may be thousands of years in the past, which places the individual's ancestry in a paleoanthropological time frame.  The chronological appearance of SNP mutations has been used to order the branching of the "Y-DNA Haplotree," and a SNP test will determine a male's position on the tree.

A decade ago, I would have said SNP testing was merely "interesting" in its ability to correlate haplogroups and their subclades with the paths of human migration over the millenia, and I did not press my project members to be SNP tested.  I considered it of minimal use to the genealogist, beyond the fact that being in different haplogroups totally rules out having a near common ancestor (in genealogical time) — and because haplogroups strongly separate families, they are a convenient way for me, as project administrator, to organize surname project member results.

As each individual has just one evolutionary path on their patrilineal line, so their SNP-based haplogroup should correlate with their STR-based haplotype, and it does.  If the haplotype is reasonably common (or similar to one that is), it can be used to deduce the basic Y-DNA haplogroup, without the added expense of SNP testing.  If the haplotype does not unequivocally indicate the haplogroup, FamilyTreeDNA will do a "backbone" (basic) SNP test without charge to securely determine the basic haplogroup.  Deep SNP testing would still be needed to determine the haplogroup subclade, and if your haplotype is rare, I recommend deep SNP testing simply as an aid to researchers because their research on your haplogroup ultimately tells you more about yourself.

At this writing (2012), the number of SNPs found has greatly increased, and the rate of their discovery is increasing due, in part, to FTDNA's "Walk through the Y" program.  We are reaching the point where they are of use to the genealogist, especially in the common haplogroups, as the Y-DNA haplotree turns into a finely divided bush.  For that reason, I now urge that Y-DNA project members,  especially those who are Haplogroup R1b1a2 or I1 — the two most common haplogroups in western Europe — be deep SNP tested and that they continue to test new SNPs as they are discovered.

As the number of people STR tested increases, SNP testing will become important in separating "borderline" STR matches that are merely coincidental, that is, not indicative of real relationship, from ones that do indicate real relationship.  The problem of ambiguous coincidental matches, particularly in Haplogroup R1b1a2, is going to increase as more people are tested.  Thankfully, deep SNP testing gives us a method for detecting them.

The bottom line is that, while SNP testing is not a requirement for participation is a Y-DNA STR surname project, I encourage it because, while I once thought deep SNP testing was merely "interesting," it has now become actually useful to the genealogist.