Ocampo

/oʊˈkɑːm.poʊ/

From the Galician o campo — the field.
We come from people who planted seeds
and gave them time to grow.

This little corner of the internet is our family's field.
Each of us keeps a garden in it.

Our Roots

Our name traces to Lugo, in the green northwest corner of Spain they call Galicia — a Celtic land of rain, granite, and the Atlantic.

From there it crossed an ocean to Colombia,
and from Colombia to California.

where
  • Beringia · A2, B2d (the mothers' lines)
  • West Africa · E-M180 (our father's line)
  • Iberia · I-P109 (our mother's father's line)
  • recorded history · the crossing, Colombia → California
  • shared prehistory · out of Africa
when

The trunk180,000 – 275,000 years ago

Two people in Eastern Africa.

Follow any mother's line back far enough and it meets one woman, L. Any father's line meets one man, A. All four of ours start here.

The crossing≈ 60,000 years ago

Out of Africa, at the narrow strait.

A few families crossed the Red Sea at the Bab-el-Mandeb into Arabia. On our mothers' tree, L3 → N. On our fathers' tree the trunk forks: DE turns back west; F goes on to become nearly every man outside Africa.

The men who went west≈ 17,000 years ago

Ice-Age West Africa.

E-M180 arose in the habitable pockets of Ice Age West Africa; later spread with agriculture and iron-working. Up to 90% among the Mandinka and Yoruba. Shares an ancient line (E-V38) with the Pharaoh Ramses III. Our father's line — Ocampo.

The Middle Passage≈ 400 years ago

West Africa to Cartagena, in chains.

The last road of our father's line. Almost every West African line in Colombia came this way — across the Atlantic in chains, through Cartagena, into the gold mines of Antioquia. Nothing in our reports says who; the road says how.

The men who went north≈ 48,000 → 30,000 years ago

Ice-Age Europe, then Scandinavia.

I-M170 were among the first people in Ice-Age Europe. I-M253 settled the north; in parts of Scandinavia nearly half the men still carry it.

The men who came back south≈ 1,300 years ago

Scandinavia to Italy, then Iberia.

I-P109 is barely fifty generations old — a Scandinavian branch that Lombard migrations carried south into Italy and, later, Iberia. Our mother's father's line — Tabares.

The Spanish crossing≈ 500 years ago

Iberia to Antioquia.

Our name from Lugo and the Tabares line from the south of Spain crossed with the Spanish and climbed into the mountains of Antioquia — where our two paternal roads meet.

The women who went east≈ 24,000 years ago

Across Asia, to the land bridge.

Our two maternal branches leave Arabia and cross the whole of Asia. N → A goes north through Siberia; N → R → B4'5 → B2 goes through China and up the coast. Both arrive at Beringia — the land between Asia and America when the sea was low.

The wait≈ 24,000 → 16,000 years ago

Beringia, through the glacial peak.

Ice shut the way south for thousands of years. The people who waited on the land bridge became something new: A2 arose here, and nowhere else.

The first to go south≈ 16,000 years ago

A2, down the Pacific coast.

When the ice opened, A2 ran the coast — 13,000 km to southern Chile in about two thousand years — and one branch turned inland to the Andes. Our father's mother's line.

The second road≈ 3,000 years ago

B2d, the same coast, later.

B2 took the same road a few thousand years behind. B2d arose in the Americas; in some places every mother's line carries it. Our mother's line — both her parents carry it.

ConvergenceToday

Our four lines. One department in Colombia.

Every report says the same recent place: Antioquia. West Africa, Beringia, Scandinavia and Iberia met there — and from there our name went to California, where the seeds were planted.

Our blood

Roads are one thing. Blood is another.

Our name tells one story. Our DNA tells a wider one — three continents, written in a language we only recently learned to read.

Below: what three people's reports add up to, in you — and the two lines in each of them that pass down unchanged.

Where our blood comes from, and where it goes.

Hover a ribbon or a node.

What that adds up to, in expectation

Half of your autosomal DNA comes from your father and a quarter from each maternal grandparent — on average. The shuffle is random, so the real numbers differ; but this is the centre of the distribution, and no report has computed it for you.

Sources