Posted on 05/27/2003 3:49:55 PM PDT by Pharmboy
I believe it's just the opposite. The Mitochondrial DNA line is preserved in the females. So if an invader came in and killed all the males and took their women as wives exclusively, then the DNA record would show their descendents as having 100% DNA of the conquered people and no DNA from the invaders.
Coincidentally, I am half Scot and half Dane.
well, not really -- the immigrants are only about 5% of the UK's population and the Indian immigrants still outnumber the Pakis
well, the picts seem to have become the Highlander folks while the lowlander Scots are descendents of the Scotti tribe that came over from Ireland around the 1st century.
You're very welcome. But, for fairness sake, I dabble--Blam is the pro on this stuff. Perhaps he can add you to his ping list.
Ha! I'm a retired chip-maker...This is just a hobby, I dabble too.
FReeper Coyoteman is our practicing archaeologist...PhD I believe. (He's the pro...)
ping.
bookmarked
Fathers can be influential tooBiologists have warned for some years that paternal mitochondria do penetrate the human egg and survive for several hours... Erika Hagelberg from the University of Cambridge, UK, and colleagues... were carrying out a study of mitochondrial DNAs from hundreds of people from Papua-New Guinea and the Melanesian islands in order to study the history of human migration into this region of the western Pacific... People from all three mitochondrial groups live on Nguna. And, in all three groups, Hagelberg's group found the same mutation, a mutation previously seen only in an individual from northern Europe, and nowhere else in Melanesia, or for that matter anywhere else in the world... Adam Eyre-Walker, Noel Smith and John Maynard Smith from the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK confirm this view with a mathematical analysis of the occurrence of the so-called 'homoplasies' that appear in human mitochondrial DNA... reanalysis of a selection of European and African mitochondrial DNA sequences by the Sussex researchers suggests that recombination is a far more likely cause of the homoplasies, as they find no evidence that these sites are particularly variable over all lineages.
by Eleanor LawrenceIs Eve older than we thought?"Two studies prove that the estimation of both when and where humanity first arose could be seriously flawed... The ruler scientists have been using is based on genetic changes in mitochondria, simple bacteria that live inside us and control the energy requirements of our cells. Mitochondria are passed from mother to daughter and their genes mutate at a set rate which can be estimated - so many mutations per 1,000 years... However, these calculations are based upon a major assumption which, according to Prof John Maynard Smith, from Sussex University, is 'simply wrong'. The idea that underpins this dating technique is that mitochondria, like some kinds of bacteria, do not have sex... Two groups of researchers, Prof Maynard Smith and colleagues Adam Eyre-Walker and Noel Smith, also from Sussex, and Dr Erika Hagelberg and colleagues from the University of Otago, New Zealand, have found that mitochondria do indeed have sex - which means that genes from both males and females is mixed and the DNA in their offspring is very different... Prof Maynard Smith and his colleagues stumbled over mitochondria having sex in the process of tracking the spread of bacterial resistance to meningitis... For the 'out-of-Africa' theory to hold water, the first population would have to have been very small. Sexually rampant mitochondria may put paid to this idea. Maynard Smith thinks that the origin of humanity is much older - may be twice as old - which, according to Eyre-Walker, means we are likely to have evolved in many different areas of the world and did not descend from Eve in Africa."
by Sanjida O'Connell 15th April 1999
I'm a former pro--MA and 10 years of fieldwork, but all here in the US. I find this Euro stuff more interesting as a hobby like you, though I think you have a lot more energy devoted to it. I've just read a few books on the Celts and know my Iberian history pretty well.
Now that I am a code monkey, I find myself having less time to research all these interesting tidbits. *sigh* Living in an apartment makes it tough to practice my flintknapping skills too.
>>I'd love to get my Y chromosomes tested
I know this is an oldish article (resurrected recently) but there are testing services that do this very thing. They will also take a look see at your mtDNA to look at your mother's side as well. Of course all this genetic evidence loses a lot the further back you go--you can not see any influence from your paternal grandmother or your maternal grandfather for instance.
http://genealogy.about.com/cs/geneticgenealogy/a/dna_tests.htm
>>I have traced my own ancestry back to the mid-1600's due to the strict church records kept by the Lutheran Church in Sweden. It is not as accurate as the study of DNA
Probably more accurate in some ways because of the limitations of genetic studies. They only follow the outer branches of your family tree, while your document research filled in all the detail in the middle. A combo of the two would be great fun.
Wow till the mid-1600s, that is impressive. I think my very limited research goes back 4 generations at most. Sadly on my mom's side we have very little information as she was orphaned at a very early age.
It has been a lot of fun...time-consuming, but fun. Sweden is probably the easiest country to trace records in. The church records were very strict since the reformation and everyone had to report everything that went on in the family to the church for census keeping. It was the state law and you were punished if you did not.
This has been a boon to genealogists today and a lot of Swedes have their family history going back to the 1600's right at their finger-tips. A few lucky families have been able to trace back to the 1400's if their own families kept the records and handed them down. This is especially true if families stayed in the immediate area for all of this time.
I am sure that most of the information is accurate as everything was so strictly managed. It would be interesting to couple the findings with DNA studies. I have found dozens of distant cousins through my searches. They are always interested in learning about a branch of the family tree that emigrated to America.
Thanks for the ping. Interesting link between the Celts and the Basques. Most Anglo-Saxon descendants should be in East Anglia, not Ireland or Scotland or the south or west of England. Maybe y-DNA testing will eventually find the difference between Angles and Saxons, instead of lumping them together.
How does this explain Prince Charles' elephant genes?
Was that an African elephant or an Asian elephant? The Brits were in India for a while, eh?
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