I've ordered the Big Y, more than 10 million positions are tested looking
for newly discovered SNPs (mutations). The Y-STRs we've looked at are
great for determining general family groupings. We now know without
reservation, for example, that our Cooley clan is not related to the
Benjamin clan. But they don't tell us to what degree the Pennsylvania
CF01s are related to us. We know from the Hackett results that the
connection may go back several hundred years, perhaps more than a
thousand.
I've provided a graph I hope will aid in the understanding of this:
http://ancestraldata.com/staging/cooley-hackett-SNP.html
Just like genealogical trees, every point branches out, eventually
resembling a tangled network than a hierarchical tree. But here we're
following one branch down to about 1250 AD when the Cooley/Hackett line
splits into two.
The SNPs in the pink box were unknown until the Cooley/Hackett tests. More
testers from other lineages are needed to discover how they are to be
arranged (did YP4249 mutate before or after YP4210?). From all that we
know about the relationship between Don and myself, I will have those same
SNPs.
But here's the good part: Most of the SNPs above Don's name also came to
him through John, having came to John, in turn, since the development of
the "pink" SNPs. (We know that because the Hackett tester has none of
them.) When I test, most of my SNPs that are other than the pink and above
will look like Don's unknown SNPs. Those we share will be given names and
will be assigned as having belonged to John. We will then have a long line
from way back to the birth of John. What's left will have come down to Don
or me since the birth of John's sons James and Edward, respectively.
What will this mean to our research? We'll have a list of markers from
1950 (my birth) and 1952 (Don's birth) going back to the literal Dawn of
Man. Once one of the "Pennsylvania" Cooleys tests, we'll be able to place
him along that continuum of SNPs. It wouldn't be a precise measurement,
but it should tell us whether they are closely related (meaning what, I'm
not sure) or displaced by X number of centuries.
ONE UNRELATED ITEM: I made some changes to my email filters. I'm now
getting a lot less spam but, it seems, fewer personal emails, too. I'd
like some of you to respond to this, especially to my personal email
address, to get a sense whether things are working correctly.
-Michael
- Administrator or Co-Administrator for the following family DNA projects:
Akins, Ashenhurst, Bishop, Eldridge, Fisk, alt-McDowell, Cooley,
McDougall, Pickens, Strother - B.A. Humboldt State University, History,
2013 - Instructor, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at HSU
Received on Sat Aug 08 2015 - 20:35:33 CDT