Rich’s DNA Results
Rich had a Y-46 DNA test performed by Ancestry.com and it concluded that he belongs to Haplogroup J1, a broad haplogroup with many branches. Ancestry.com said that Rich’s ancestors came from the region known as the Fertile Crescent and they can be found in Yemen, Israel Palestine, Jordan, Dagestan and other countries. It doesn’t identify when ancestors from this area migrated to Europe but keep on reading.
The DNA test showed the rather unique marker of DYS388=14. This marker exists in other male Barbieri’s whose ancestors came from Cerreto Sannita. Michael J. Barberi, who recently published his book Not Forgotten about the history of the Barbieri family from Cerreto Sannita, also has this marker. In his book he has an extremely informative chapter named Scientific Origins of the Barbieri Family. Drawing on a deep-clad haplogroup test Mike had conducted, it showed that a person with Y-DNA J1 with DYS388=14 comes from haplogroup J1*. Studies showed that this haplogroup branched off from J1* with DYS388=13 about 5,500 years ago and may have occurred in a man who lived somewhere in the Taurus or Zagros mountains of Southeastern Turkey.
As for the time that our ancient Barbieri ancestor migrated to south-central Italy, based on further genealogy and social history analysis, Mike concluded that they likely came to Italy sometime between 800 B.C. and 1200 A.D. If we were to narrow this time range, a reasonable estimate would be 300 B.C. to 700 A.D. during the Greek and Byzantine eras. The mid-point of this period is about 500 A.D or around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire.