OT: Who do you think you are?

[The Natural Philosopher]

I stumbled across this: a huge DNA studyy to identify geographical ancestry of British populations..

Remarkably un spun, given the source.

[Mark Allread]

UK-Anglo-Saxan-DNA

So, historically mainland Europe then. Good to know. :)

Actually quite an interesting article as you say.

[Chris Hogg]

A couple of years ago, to round off my family history research, I had my distant ancestry done using a DNA spit test. On my father's side (Y-chromosome DNA) I come from Scandinavia, i.e. a Viking, and on my mother's side (mitochondrial DNA) I come from the first farmers in Mesopotamia, which probably means I'm related to Cursitor Doom. OMG!

[John #9]

UK-Anglo-Saxan-DNA

The Telegraph has a different take on it:

[pamela]

The Mail had a similar article last year:

no-trace.html

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, they have a take on a completely different issue. That of who

*personally* you are descended from.

WE are almost all directly descended from William the conqueror. His genes got around a lot in a thousand years. So did Baldric's, as a glance round this NG shows.

That is a three year old report on a completely different topic. Why introduce it?

[Chris Hogg]

But it depends on what sort of DNA test you have. If they test the DNA from any of the 22 ordinary chromosomes, to confirm or otherwise that you're descended from Richard III or whoever, then I can understand why they say it's meaningless. Statistically speaking, we're all descended from King Charlemagne

and we're all related. They say in your link that almost everyone in the UK is descended from the Vikings, which I can well believe (I've read elsewhere that it is 30%, but either way it's a lot of us!).

But two types of DNA are passed down virtually unchanged from your parents. Y-chromosome DNA is _only_ inherited from your father, and he from his father, virtually unchanged back through the generations, and doesn't get amalgamated with your mother's DNA when her egg is fertilised. Similarly, mitochondrial DNA is _only_ inherited from your mother, and she from her mother, again unchanged back through the generations, and doesn't get amalgamated with your father's DNA when her egg is fertilised. Testing those types of DNA does give you information about your distant paternal and maternal ancestors, rather than more recent ones.

[John #9]

It was a response to Chris Hogg's post, as you've quoted above.

[John #9]

Interesting - thanks. Was it the

that you took? The idea of being introduced to possible relatives doesn't appeal to me at all - the ones I already know about are enough of a burden.

[whisky-dave]

Yes, and the other one really only goes back 500 years.

Oi leave wodney out of this it's not his fault.

It's interesting though to see what DNA can tell you.

Thre's still older civerlisations we are yet to fully understand and how we might be related to those that came out of africa.

[Chris Hogg]

No, it was ScotlandsDNA (because my paternal ancestry is Scotch*), but their web site is a lot more complicated and seems to offer more types of DNA test than when I had mine done, which was almost exactly four years ago.

• that'll upset the purists. They'll tell you that Scotch is the drink, and it should be either Scots or Scottish. Bollocks it should!

I think a lot of these genealogy and testing sites share results these days, but I've not followed the situation closely for a few years now. FamilyTreeDNA maintains a very extensive list of DNA types

As I explained above, the Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA tests won't introduce you to a host of second cousins ten times removed, or whatever, but only your distant ancestors, say from 5-10,000 years ago. Anyway, how likely is it that your second cousins ten times removed have had their DNA tested to be able to match yours? Not very, I suspect.

[Chris Hogg]

Not all here came out of Africa, apparently. Some just dropped straight out of the trees!

[The Natural Philosopher]

These days depressingly, more and more likely as everybody seems to want to know who they are, in this politically correct multicultural diversity imposed world.

People don't want the police to have access to their DNA, but are happy to give it to a commercial comao0ny and even pay them to record it...

[The Natural Philosopher]

I am fairly sure many crawled out from under a stone, or were teleported from an entirely different planet.

[whisky-dave]

Stop picking on wodney ;-)

[Chris Green]

To be honest I find it totally unintersting. "I'm descended from xxx/yyy/zzz ....", so what?

[Chris Hogg]

My wife would agree with you. You exist; you're here; therefore you had ancestors, and they go all the way back to Adam or whoever. Big deal!

In my case I wanted to lay a few of the family myths about recent older generations while my elderly mother was still alive and could answer some of the questions that might come up. Like all family myths, I guess, some were true, a lot were not. I did discover a cousin in Glasgow (in fact they discovered me), with whom I now regularly correspond, but the thought of making contact with dozens of not-so-near relatives, and maybe having mass get-together's, absolutely appalls me! The DNA thing was just a way of rounding it off and putting it to bed, so to speak.

[Davey]

I did a fair amount of research into my and my wife's ancestors, to try to find out who some of them really were, and to untangle some details. It was well worth doing, I solved several puzzles, (I found details of two aunts, whom I had known many years ago, who had travelled to Oregon in 1891, not long after they would have journeyed via wagon train. They returned to the UK with their parents ten years later, but the mother died on board the ship before reaching England) and found a new puzzle, but of the entreaties of Ancestry.com to try the DNA thing, I could never understand what point would come of it.

[News]

In message , Chris Hogg writes

Chris makes a good point here. Having lost my mother a couple of months ago, I can sympathise. Talk to your parents while they are alive. Write stuff down. Annotate old photos. We (self and brother) began doing that, but there is still a lot we don't know.

On the other hand, does it matter, or will it all matter to the next generation? My brother does not have children, and I have one son, and whilst he will remember my mother, he never met my grandparents, so there is no 'personal' connection.

[Richard]

I've known who I am from a very early age. Perhaps it's the name "The Natural Philosopher" which has you confused?