And in the middle of the Siberian winter,
At the deepest lake on earth,
Haplogroup P arrived.
Lake Baikal.
The deepest lake. The oldest lake.
Five thousand feet deep at its deepest. Twenty-five
Million years old. A rift lake. A sub-continental
Crack in the earth, slowly widening, slowly filling,
Slowly accumulating the fresh water that would become
The largest reservoir of fresh surface water on the planet.
Twenty percent of all the fresh liquid water on earth
Is in this one lake. The lake of the siberian taiga.
The lake of the taimen and the omul and the nerpa,
The only freshwater seal in the world.
The lake that freezes to a depth of several meters
Every winter. The lake of the Evenki and the Buryat
And the Yakut and the reindeer-herders of the
Surrounding taiga. The sacred lake of multiple
Indigenous traditions. The shaman's lake. The ice-
Thick cathedral of the Siberian frozen mirror.
This is where P arrived.
Haplogroup P.
P is the divergence point. P is the father of
Q and R. And P is, for this chapter, the figure
Of the place itself—the lake, the crossroads, the
Bifurcation where the road forked and one branch
Went east toward Beringia and the Americas,
And the other branch turned back west toward
Europe and the steppe and the eventual Yamnaya
Expansion that would remake half the world.
P is "Paikal." The pun that the Gaiad cannot
Resist. The haplogroup of the lake. The Y-chromosomal
Signature of the men who, having migrated the length
Of Eurasia from the Bab al-Mandab crossing many
Thousands of years before, have reached the deepest
Lake on earth, and have paused there, and have looked
At its frozen surface, and have asked themselves
Where next.
There are two answers to that question.
The first answer is east. Continue east. Cross the
Land bridge that exists, at this time, across what is
Now the Bering Strait. Beringia is a walkable continent
In the Late Pleistocene. The sea levels are low. The land
That is now underwater is above water. You can walk from
Siberia to Alaska without crossing a significant body
Of water. And some of the P-descended population
Does exactly this. That branch becomes Q. Q crosses
Beringia. Q enters North America. Q spreads, over
The next ten or fifteen thousand years, across the
Entire Western Hemisphere—from the Aleutians down to
Tierra del Fuego. Every indigenous population of the
Americas, from the Inuit of the Arctic to the Fuegians
Of the southernmost tip of South America, is descended
From the Q-carrying branch of P that crossed Beringia.
That story—the peopling of the Americas—is the Book
Of Leo's material, chapters 221 through 252. Not this
Chapter. Not yet. Q's chapter is later.
The second answer is west. Turn back west. Retrace the
Steps of the earlier migration in reverse. Go back across
Central Asia, toward the steppes, toward what will become
The Pontic-Caspian grasslands, toward the place where, in a
Few thousand years, the domestication of the horse will
Change everything. That branch becomes R. R is the
Boomerang. R is the lineage that went east as far as it
Could, all the way to Baikal, and then turned and came back.
R will, in later chapters, become the Yamnaya. R will
Become Manu and Yemo. R will become the Indo-European
Language family's Y-chromosomal carrier. R will become
R1a and R1b, the Indic-Iranian-Slavic eastern branch and the
Celtic-Germanic-Italic western branch. R will become the
Signature of most of modern Europe's men. R will ride
Horses. R will make chariots. R will invent the wheeled
Vehicle and the solar wheel and the sky-father religion.
But that is in later chapters. In this chapter, R is
Still P. Still at Baikal. Still looking at the frozen
Lake and waiting to decide which way to go.
And the image—the core image of this chapter—is the
Lake itself. The moment of bifurcation. The moment when
A single lineage, having reached the deepest lake on
Earth, turns and goes both ways at once. One son goes
East to the Americas. The other son goes west, eventually,
To every corner of Europe and Central Asia and South Asia.
And the father—the P-carrier himself—stands on the
Frozen surface in the gathering twilight of a long Siberian
Night and watches both sons disappear into the dusk.
This is the divergence point. This is "Paikal." The
Haplogroup of the crossroads. The haplogroup whose
Own story is brief, because what P did was make
Q and R, and the stories of Q and R are two of the
Biggest stories in the entire haplogroup tree. Q is the
Americas. R is everything else—or at least the biggest
Everything-else. The two sons of P carry between them
The peopling of half the world.
The Mal'ta-Buret' culture, an Upper Paleolithic
Culture of Lake Baikal and the surrounding region
From roughly twenty-four thousand years ago, is
The archaeological signature of this moment. The
Mal'ta boy—a four-year-old child whose skeleton was
Found near Irkutsk in nineteen twenty-nine, and
Whose DNA was sequenced in twenty thirteen—carries
Ancestry that contributes both to Native Americans
And to Europeans. The child is the genetic missing link
Between the two branches. The child is the ancestor
(In a statistical sense) of both the Navajo and the
Lithuanian, the Cherokee and the Swede, the Inca and
The Irishman. One child at Lake Baikal whose DNA
Contains the seeds of both the peopling of the Americas
And the peopling of Europe by the Indo-European expansion.
The Mal'ta boy is P in the flesh. The Mal'ta boy is
The child at the crossroads, the one whose descendants
Would go both directions at once.
And the landscape, the actual landscape of Lake Baikal,
Endures. The lake is still there. The taiga is still there.
The Buryat shamans still drum at the edge of the water.
The nerpa seals still surface through the ice to breathe.
The lake was there before P arrived, and the lake
Will be there after the haplogroup names have been
Forgotten. But for the length of this chapter, the lake
Is the divergence point. The geographical anchor of the
Bifurcation. The place on the earth where a single lineage
Looked east and west and chose both directions.
P is Paikal. The haplogroup of the deepest lake on earth.
The father of Q and R. The ancestor, at one remove, of
The Americas and of Indo-European Europe. The quiet
Paternal haplogroup whose own distinct narrative is short
Because his sons' narratives are long.
But the lake remains. The lake is the symbol of the
Chapter. The frozen surface of the oldest lake reflects
The Siberian stars. And the stars reflect back. And the
P-carrying men of the Mal'ta-Buret' culture, twenty-four
Thousand years ago, looked up at those stars and decided—
Or the long slow tide of their populations decided, without
Any single decision, over the following thousands of years—
That some would cross the land bridge into the new world,
And some would turn around and go home, back to the
Steppes, back to the grasslands, back to the places
Where, in a few thousand more years, the horse would be
Domesticated and the wheel would be invented and the
Language family that would become Indo-European would
Be born, and from that fire, half of the modern world
Would take its inheritance.
But all of that is later. Here, at Baikal, in the
Siberian winter, P stands at the edge of the frozen
Water and looks both ways. Here, in the depth of the deep
Past, is the crossroads. Here is where the lineages fork.
P. Paikal. The lake. The crossroads. Stand.
And the rest of this chapter is the lake. The silence.
The stars. The ice. The two silhouettes disappearing
In two different directions. The father watching them go.
Q goes east. R goes west. The lake remains.