Origins through DNA (General)

by Roger Griffiths @, Thursday, July 19, 2012, 10:42 (4506 days ago)

Although not immediately pertinent to family history in detail, this may interest some members.

A year ago and again a few days ago, BBC Radio4 Today had items on tracing our personal origins, male and female. In the item a year ago, one of the presenters gave a simple saliva swab and was identified, not only as an Anglo-Saxon, but an Angle from southern Denmark.

Last night, I happened to be watching A History of Celtic Britain (BBC) presented by Neil Oliver on Youtube. Neil, an apparent Scot through and through, submitted his sample. His mother came up as originating in northern Scotland, fine so far. However, Neil's origins were in Central Europe, looked like Hungary to me. He was visibly shocked. Roman auxiliary posted to Hadrian's Wall and survived the Viking and Anglo-Saxon invasions by moving into Scotland?

The company who provides this service is www.britainsdna.com. Cost for male/female £170 and for male an extra £30 for mtDNA. Be prepared for shocks

Origins through DNA

by bristolloggerheads @, Thursday, July 19, 2012, 17:48 (4505 days ago) @ Roger Griffiths

Or did his ggg grandmother have a liason with a gypsy?

Can they tell which century this Hungarian origin came from?

Origins through DNA

by Roger Griffiths @, Thursday, July 19, 2012, 18:06 (4505 days ago) @ bristolloggerheads

I don't think this is just a commercial enterprise. Probably university basis. It's interesting you mention gypsies, it's only recently that their origins have been discovered. Northern Indian singers and dancers invited to the courts of the Persian shah's, a thousand years or more ago. Eventually they were excluded and wandered westwards into Europe. As it happens their arrival in England was recorded in 14??. They were called gypsies because the nearest apparent appearance was that of Egyptians. Europeans did not go global until towards the end of the 15th Century. It was an Oxford professor of linguistics who discovered the origins of the gipsies.

Origins through DNA

by Richard Hulan @, Friday, July 20, 2012, 03:10 (4505 days ago) @ Roger Griffiths

Other companies providing the service, for a variety of prices and with a wide range of results (to be compared with databases of varying size) include Oxford Ancestry (in the UK); Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, and Ancestry dot com (in the USA); at least one in Italy, one in Russia, one in China... and so on. Once you have tested somewhere, in many cases you can enter your results into search engines independent of the testing companies, and find your best matches who may well have tested elsewhere. A few of those are Ysearch, Gedmatch, and SMGF. Your "matches" may not have been kin to you for a few thousand years (it depends on what is being matched), but if you have the same mutations you have a common ancestor -- usually quite a bit more recent than Adam and Eve.

This area of science is not a Scottish monopoly, and haplogroups that particularly interest Jim Wilson in Edinburgh aren't necessarily quite so interesting in the Forest of Dean. Read up on it, shop around, see what you get for your money. I've been involved in projects at FTDNA, and in my opinion the best value for the amount spent is there (lower initial cost, larger data base). Some companies specialize in ethnic or regional ancestry of one sort or another. Some are affiliated with big university-based projects -- most of which, however, don't test very many markers, and don't make the surnames of their tested subjects public -- so they aren't so useful, for genealogy. (These strict privacy rules have to do with medical research interests of the people who have paid for the testing, such as the Wellcome Trust.)

In the near future, look for publications from the "People of the British Isles" project. Those people know what they are about, and they have done some DNA testing in the Forest of Dean. So far, they are focused on autosomal DNA -- all of one's ancestry -- whereas the article cited for this discussion thread is about Y-DNA (surname or male-line lineages) and mtDNA (female line, your mother's mother's mother, etc.).

There is an annual WDYTYA conference, a sort of spinoff from the "Who Do You Think You Are?" TV show. That conference has good speakers and programs on genetic genealogy -- although the theme may or may not be interesting, in any given year. It's just another place to look for solid, pretty current information.

Origins through DNA

by Breny @, Saturday, July 21, 2012, 04:37 (4504 days ago) @ Richard Hulan

I just sent in the saliva sample to the Ancestry.com DNA project. I'm not sure how specific the results are but I'm very curious for the results.

I do have ancestors from England, Ireland and Germany. You can make your results public on Ancestry.com and they will match you with others. At least that's what I'm told. I do have a feeling that my English & Irish will be lumped together as British Isles and the German as Central Eurpoean. It would be great to find other data bases to share and compare my results.

Origins through DNA

by Richard Hulan @, Saturday, August 18, 2012, 14:34 (4475 days ago) @ Richard Hulan

I mentioned this earlier:

"In the near future, look for publications from the "People of the British Isles" project. Those people know what they are about, and they have done some DNA testing in the Forest of Dean."

Just for the record, this links to a photo taken by Brian P. Swann at the recent summer science exhibition at the Royal Society, where the People of the British Isles project had a booth and displayed a large map. Brian's photo shows the Forest of Dean sampling. Each blue triangle shows the mean location of the birthplace of all four grandparents of one person (whose sample is represented by that triangle).

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3746429657618&set=o.11416337921&type=1&a...

Sometime in the near future the full map will be an illustration in a scholarly article, with captions, and we can tell what all the other little symbols mean. Something about comparing the autosomal genetic profiles of different regions within the UK, anyway.

Origins through DNA

by Roger Griffiths @, Saturday, August 18, 2012, 15:17 (4475 days ago) @ Richard Hulan

Thanks for your interesting Post Richard. I pesume the cluster shown in SW Wales is Anglo-Saxon ie English. If a map is consulted, most of the place names are English. Apparently, the area was under populated and some time in the 18th Century English settlers were encouraged.

Origins through DNA

by 10noyrum @, Saturday, August 18, 2012, 22:02 (4475 days ago) @ Roger Griffiths

The term Anglo-Saxon is pre-scientific: I think it was invented by some pseudo historian called Bede writing several hundred years after the events he claims to describe. It surely has outlived its usefulness.

Origins through DNA

by Roger Griffiths @, Saturday, August 25, 2012, 18:36 (4468 days ago) @ 10noyrum

Certainly Saxon is odd. Historically, Saxony was NE Germany, Dresden, Leipzig etc. Not the case with Anglo (Southern Denmark)from which the name England derives. Another oddity is that the former Hanover, home of their Brittanic and Hanoverian Majesties until the accession of Queen Victoria (Salic Law) has been renamed Lower Saxony since WWII. Worse still, since the big Y-DNA exercise taken about 3 years ago it is quite likely that some opposing aircrew members in the Battle of Britain were descended originally from the same father.

Origins through DNA

by 10noyrum @, Sunday, August 26, 2012, 18:59 (4467 days ago) @ Roger Griffiths

English is an unscientific term. You need to judge your ethnicity by your DNA, not some line on a map.

Origins through DNA

by Roger Griffiths @, Sunday, August 26, 2012, 19:58 (4467 days ago) @ 10noyrum

With a name such as mine there is no question as to origins, Welsh Celts. Actually, a saliva test could be useful for my researches in family history, being stuck fast in Monmouthshire, early 1700's. When I have a spare £200 I will have it done. If my paternal line shows up originating in North Wales I will know where to concentrate my searches previous to 1700.

There seems to be a mounting denial that the English are Germanics. Scots never had a problem ie Sassenachs = Saxons.

Origins through DNA

by jane gould @, Saturday, January 05, 2013, 19:21 (4335 days ago) @ Richard Hulan

I had my mtDNA tested a couple of years ago. My mother's maternal line had roots in the Forest of Dean and the results show that there is a concentration of this type of mtDNA in northern India. My blood group is also common amongst Hungarian gypsies!
Apparently this type of mtDNA N1A1 is relatively uncommon and I'd be interested to hear from anyone else with connections to the Forest of Dean who shares this subgroup.
Jane Gould

Origins through DNA

by Richard Hulan @, Wednesday, January 09, 2013, 01:18 (4332 days ago) @ jane gould

You are a rare bird. That may not come as news to you -- but if it's of any use, here is the best article I could find easily:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_N1a_%28mtDNA%29

Mostly I follow forums based in the USA or the UK, where people post in English -- but your haplogroup is uncommon, either place, so they rarely if ever mention it. Here's one thread from a more continental European forum that's conducted in English:

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/25930-mtDNA-N1a-how-rare-are-we

None of that tells you anything about why your genetically rare ancestresses were in the Forest of Dean, though.

Origins through DNA

by bonnie1man @, Friday, August 10, 2012, 19:25 (4483 days ago) @ Roger Griffiths

My husband has his DNA test via Ancestry.com's new autosomal test that covers both the mother and father's lineage. While his father's lineage comes from Germany, his mother's lineage via the Voyces and Thomases has been traced back to Coleford, UK and shockingly he had 92% central Europe with only 8% unknown. So I wonder whether these Coleford lineages came from central Europe and that's why the the British Isles part of his lineage was missed (unless of course the 8% unknown becomes linked to the British Isles once more people take the test).

Origins through DNA

by Roger Griffiths @, Friday, August 10, 2012, 22:12 (4483 days ago) @ bonnie1man

Your husbands origins are unexceptional. English ie Anglo-Saxon. A big DNA exercise was undertaken about 3 years ago comparing much of England with western Germany, southern Denmark and Holland. 65% of the English sample were related to the Danish/German/Dutch sample. A very high percentage considering the cross migration within the UK in the last 200 years and more.

Origins through DNA

by Richard Hulan @, Sunday, August 12, 2012, 04:04 (4482 days ago) @ Roger Griffiths

Autosomal results are very general, since every ancestor you have is treated with equal weight. For those interested in the Isles in general, and in the Forest of Dean more specifically, there are usually more fruitful results from surname research, following straight line Y-DNA. This is transmitted from father to son -- girls don't have Y-DNA, but all their paternal ancestors did; and it's the line through which British surnames have been transmitted for as long as the Forest has had written records.

I recommend the recent book by George Redmonds, Turi King, and David Hey, Surnames, DNA, & Family History (Oxford University Press, 2011) as a good place to start learning why this sort of testing is useful and rewarding. The part about British surnames and their origin is entertaining; and the science of genetic genealogy is very clearly explained, though it's a complicated subject. That's on pages 148 and thereafter -- but don't neglect the color plates, between pp. 116-17.

And it's not entirely beside the point that the Hulin family from the FoD is mentioned, as one of the numerous English surnames found in Wales... p. 89. (Although they spelled it Hullin, and didn't mention the Forest of Dean.) Anyway, that's the local family that I wish was testing Y-DNA -- and joining some public database -- so I could see whether we match.

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