My Y-111 Upgrade - What Does it Mean?

I took advantage of the ongoing sale at Family Tree DNA to upgrade my Y-DNA test from 67 markers to 111 markers. (I have already done Big-Y.) These results were due on 5 September, so good for FTDNA for being quick.

At sixty-seven markers, I had perfect matches with two other Pikholz descendants from Skalat. One goes back to an ancestor (Mordecai) born ~1805 who is probably the brother of my second great-grandfather (Izak Fischel). The other goes back to an ancestor (Nachman) born ~1795 who is probably an uncle or cousin to Mordecai and Izak Fischel. Both of those have tested only at sixty-seven markers.

I have seven matches at 111 markers and they and the two Pikholz are my closest matches at 67. (There are some other close-ish matches at Y-37, but I'll ignore most of them for now.)

I was surprised to see the increase in genetic distance across the board, from three to six of the forty-four additional markers. That seems a lot. The most important matches are the two Spira matches which are perfect or nearly perfect with me at Y-67 and now are significantly further away. (There is another Spira - the one we call the Z-Man - who is perfect with me at Y-37, the limit of his test.)

The question is do the new mutations represent a distinction between the Pikholz group and the Spira group, or is this something at least partially particular to my personal line. Perhaps it will tell us something about the distance between Izak Fischel and Mordecai on one hand and Nachman on the other.

I suppose I shall have to upgrade the other two Pikholz kits in order to answer that question. The sale continues for another two weeks.

There are others who match me at a genetic distannce of five or six at Y-67 and are now beyond the match criteria, so they too would represent increases of six or more.

In the meantime, I have submitted this new data to the project managers for their consideration and comments.