Please ignore mtDNA and Y chromosomal haplogroups

[Solothurn]

There was talk of an X browser when the FF first came out.

Just talk though

ftdna needs to find a way to use xdna

[PDHOTLEN]

Fair enough - but out of curiousity, what has mtdna told you about your long range family tree? Has it told you who they are (by tribe) or where they lived (by region) or more importantly, at WHAT TIME were they part of that TRIBE or living in THAT region? Just curious to know what some people have learned from mtdna & Ydna haplogroups?

My mtDNA is basically all I have to hang on to. All the other family tree threads run into brick walls. But comparing my U5 with others with related haplotypes helps point to the NW Europe geographical area. And my expensive Ancestry.com membership lets me put together a tree, although I've had to change aspects of it as new insights arose. My Y-DNA line is also interesting. But it looks quite limited to Norway before my g-granddad came over from the old country. I don't have living relatives to take DNA tests. Anyway, it's a pastime or hobby.

[madman]

Yes all tests provide some meaning. But each of us are the net result of hundreds, thousands of maternal & paternal lines. To focus on only 2 of them and place some disproportionate value doesn't "seem" sensible to me. However, I am curious about whether people do think there is some disproportionate value to their paternal & maternal lines? In my opinion, many hold this disproportionate value simply because they have nothing else to grasp onto, as autosomal doesn't provide much beyond several generations!

Mine is not an indictment of mtdna or ydna - I actually like those tests BECAUSE they do offer me something to chase - BUT, he is correct in that they represent an insignificant portion of one's genealogy and thus they should be remembered in such context.

Ydna is very useful but mtdna is a joke ftdna needs to find a way to use xdna

[djknox]

Nope. I think he is wrong. People can find meaning in getting a certain haplogroup especially if it is a rare haplogroup. Look at how he was addressed in the comments on that issue of say a person who get 100% European on autosomal, but gets the Native American haplogroup. That speaks volumes. His answer to that also rests this issue for me.

Sorry people I think it is sad how quick people can be to discount the direct maternal and paternal lines as if they are meaningless. These, as PDHOTLEN pointed out are not going to recombine or mutate so fast, so in most cases you have a clear picture. Actually a big turn off for me has been reading the folks on the 23&me forums bash the yDNA and mtDNA tests as if they are useless. Wow, even with the autosomal you are not getting 100% of all of your ancestors. And I do look at my Family Finder cousins that have done Y or Mito testing and ponder if it can be significant part of my ancestry. I have some lines that I will never be able to test for Y or Mito or autosomal for sure because they are a brick wall. This would be the case of my father's father's mother. So unless I can learn more if she had a sister with descendants then there is no one to test from that line.

Anyway I think all tests have useful meaning in them. Even my having mtDNA H, even just knowing it is H (and a ridiculously bushy branch) told me that I needed to continue looking for my direct maternal line in Europe not America.

Yes all tests provide some meaning. But each of us are the net result of hundreds, thousands of maternal & paternal lines. To focus on only 2 of them and place some disproportionate value doesn't "seem" sensible to me. However, I am curious about whether people do think there is some disproportionate value to their paternal & maternal lines? In my opinion, many hold this disproportionate value simply because they have nothing else to grasp onto, as autosomal doesn't provide much beyond several generations!

Mine is not an indictment of mtdna or ydna - I actually like those tests BECAUSE they do offer me something to chase - BUT, he is correct in that they represent an insignificant portion of one's genealogy and thus they should be remembered in such context.

[djknox]

If you go back 1,000 years, your autosomal DNA has been diluted to the point of irrelevance. But your mitochondrial haplotype is still going strong. It all depends on what you are interested in. I'm not especially looking for living relatives. I'm more interested in my long-range family tree, at least at this point.

Fair enough - but out of curiousity, what has mtdna told you about your long range family tree? Has it told you who they are (by tribe) or where they lived (by region) or more importantly, at WHAT TIME were they part of that TRIBE or living in THAT region? Just curious to know what some people have learned from mtdna & Ydna haplogroups?

[djknox]

So I should ignore my Y and Mt results because they tell me a lot about a small number of distant ancestors. Instead I should only bother with autosomal testing so that I can learn very little about a slightly larger number of closer ancestors?

ah! There's the rub! Genetic Genealogy offers very little about most of one's ancestors, and a little more about a few of them. Well summarized!

[djknox]

Looking at my son for example, he knows his paternal grandfather is R1B (DF27) and his maternal grandfather is I1. His MTDNA heritage is T2 from his paternal grandfather, V from his father, H from his mother (the MTDNA he carries himself) and J from his maternal grandfather.

More distant 6th and 8th cousins descended from his Brough and Plant ancestors have tested so that information is also known. As more people test more and more of the picture builds. All you need to do is keep an eye on the surname projects for your ancestral surnames the picture will slowly develop.

Earl - you're right but the logic is self defeating in the sense that one cannot access the mtdna or ydna of their ancestors past a couple of generations. So regardless, the vast majority of your son's ancestors are completely ignored by mtdna and ydna testing. So ultimately, only the maternal and paternal lines of the tested can be studied. AND, most of us doing this don't have grandparents to test.

[PDHOTLEN]

With me, I can put my maternal ancestry into separate blocks. The colonial block has been the most rewarding, since it has been easier to trace. My Austrian block quickly is a dead end. Then there is a "Pennsylvania Dutch" blocklet that also comes to a brick wall. And a segment that goes back to the Pensylvania area that is separate from the PA Dutch segment, and includes connections to that old Swedish colony, with some Dutch (and apparently Welsh) in there. Then there is the Falconbury threads that go back to New Jersey in the 1600s, with a connecting thread that is a mystery (NC). Those are all family tree lines and segments. And all of the above is on my maternal side. But how to connect all the Family Finder matches to those segments is a problem.

[fbirder]

The problem is, many people are getting autosomal testing, and then are only wanting to follow or contact others who have the same y or mt DNA.

Really? There are many people doing something so obviously stupid? I'd really not noticed.

[Táltos]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gn...l-haplogroups/


Is he right? ???

Nope. I think he is wrong. People can find meaning in getting a certain haplogroup especially if it is a rare haplogroup. Look at how he was addressed in the comments on that issue of say a person who get 100% European on autosomal, but gets the Native American haplogroup. That speaks volumes. His answer to that also rests this issue for me.

Sorry people I think it is sad how quick people can be to discount the direct maternal and paternal lines as if they are meaningless. These, as PDHOTLEN pointed out are not going to recombine or mutate so fast, so in most cases you have a clear picture. Actually a big turn off for me has been reading the folks on the 23&me forums bash the yDNA and mtDNA tests as if they are useless. Wow, even with the autosomal you are not getting 100% of all of your ancestors. And I do look at my Family Finder cousins that have done Y or Mito testing and ponder if it can be significant part of my ancestry. I have some lines that I will never be able to test for Y or Mito or autosomal for sure because they are a brick wall. This would be the case of my father's father's mother. So unless I can learn more if she had a sister with descendants then there is no one to test from that line.

Anyway I think all tests have useful meaning in them. Even my having mtDNA H, even just knowing it is H (and a ridiculously bushy branch) told me that I needed to continue looking for my direct maternal line in Europe not America.

[mixedkid]

I tend to find autosomal DNA evidence to give me the best overall picture of my ancestry. (My first Family finder results brought up the ancestral name of my 2x great-grandmother and I repeatedly get many matches associated with her extended family, as does my mother.)

My Y DNA haplogroup points towards a Jewish male ancestor -- my great grandfather was supposed to be Jewish -- but I receive few Ashkenazi matches (my father receives slightly more than me and he fares better on the J-test on GEDmatch). My direct maternal line was German, but most of my mt DNA matches appear to have little to do with Germany (except for my one exact match who has never replied to a message). My mt matches' largest percentages point towards people in Greece, Slovenia, etc. and I believe my mt haplogroup originated in that general area. In some respects, for me anyway, mt DNA is more important in determining possible migration routes of ancient ancestors that it is in determining recent ancestry. Still, I have to admit (for what it's worth) my great-grandmother, a child of German immigrants, looked very little like other German people I have associated with in my life (I am from the Midwest).

[R Walker]

The problem is, many people are getting autosomal testing, and then are only wanting to follow or contact others who have the same y or mt DNA. Completely missing the point of the autosomal testing---that it can connect you with cousins and relatives from many other branches of your family than just the direct y or mt lines. I tried to explain this to our computer genealogy group recently, some of whom have done some DNA testing. Since the y and mt testing came first, many people have it ingrained in their brains that they can ONLY find ancestor connections by following the y and mt DNA. One woman insisted over and over that she wanted to know why she couldn't get her father's yDNA from her testing. It didn't matter that we told her that she did not have a y chromosome to test. BUT that autosomal testing would show the half of her DNA that came from her father.

This is getting to be a big problem, where some people refuse to reply to queries about shared ancestry because "we don't share the same y or mt DNA", when they do share a good piece of atDNA, and are probably close cousins.

[MoberlyDrake]

As far as mtDNA testing goes I haven't gotten anything out of it and I doubt that I ever will, but it can be used in certain circumstances to find which of two women was the mother of an ancestress, provided you can find a direct line female descendant to test. I don't thing I'd recommend it to new genealogists.

The Y-DNA test I would recommend considering the number of people who have discovered non-paternity events this way. There is no use spending years researching the wrong line if you can avoid it. Been there, done that. But in my case, it took me about 5 years to persuade a cousin to do the test.

It's surprising how often you read about Y-DNA tests turning up unexpected non-paternity events.

These tests can also be used to prove or disprove rumors and family traditions about adoptions, etc. So, in my opinion, they do have their usefulness with regard to recent genealogy. You just have to know what each test does. And it appears that a lot of people who purchase them don't have a clue!

[Earl Davis]

Looking at my son for example, he knows his paternal grandfather is R1B (DF27) and his maternal grandfather is I1. His MTDNA heritage is T2 from his paternal grandfather, V from his father, H from his mother (the MTDNA he carries himself) and J from his maternal grandfather.

More distant 6th and 8th cousins descended from his Brough and Plant ancestors have tested so that information is also known. As more people test more and more of the picture builds. All you need to do is keep an eye on the surname projects for your ancestral surnames the picture will slowly develop.

[Earl Davis]

He is wrong.

He assumes the individual is only looking at their own test results. If so his warning is fair. However If you look at the results of your 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 16th etc, etc cousins you build up a rich picture of a much wider ancestry.

Earl.