DNA and Ancient Genealogy

[Richdream]

I'm a Chinese and my family possesses Genealogy Records which trace our lineage to back to a Chinese man who lived in 9th century AD, during the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907), and whose descendants are believed to number several millions today.

We are interested to confirm our lineage from this man and are very interested in DNA Genealogy but we are not sure which test to take. Could someone please advise.

Thank you.

[Paula]

With records like that, your family would be a boon to science. I would wonder if Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (www.smgf.org) might not be willing to test your family for free, for the information it would provide. And they could well advise you what tests need be done, and by whom.

[Jim Denning]

[QUOTE=Paula]With records like that, your family would be a boon to science. I would wonder if Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (www.smgf.org) might not be willing to test your family for free, for the information it would provide. And they could well advise you what tests need be done, and by whom.[/QUOTE

i have heard very bad stuff about sorenson which i took part in
but the geneome project would be interetsed contact spencer wells
but be advised not all paper trails are supported by ydna there are things like infidelity and adoption to deal with
but that aside go for it

what you need is to test three people in your documentation as far apart as you can find if all there test and match then bingo

the principle is called trianglization remember the movies where the nazis were looking for the british spy and used recievers to find the source by line where the lines met thats the location of the spy

the same priciple applies to dna if the paper says all three of the people are male cousin very distant of the same surname and they match then you have the ydna of the common ancestor and the paperwork connecting the people should be concidered proven

spencer now is going the national geo project and might find all your suff very interesting as would i

[EBurgess]

I would recommend for the purposes of this kind of project that you go for the y-DNA 25 marker test as a minimum. 37 would be ideal, but it is expensive.

In all likelihood you will get different genetic results for people who claim to be descended from this famous ancestor. It is not realistic to expect every male line to come down unbroken to the present day. The additional markers will help identify the major groups who could potentially be the founding line.

If you setup a website for this project I will certainly be a frequent visitor. The potential for a project like this is huge! The key will be getting the participation and identifying modern day descendants to test who have good documentation.

I am curious what is the family name? Or Person?

[bob_allison]

Before rushing in, be aware that the tests available only relate to the male (Y-dna) i.e. father - grandfather - great-grandfather ... line or the female (mt dna) i.e. mother - grandmother - great-grandmother ... line.

If your wonderful genealogical records do not document either of these two lines then they cannot be tied in with the current DNA technology.

Bob

[Jim Denning]

Before rushing in, be aware that the tests available only relate to the male (Y-dna) i.e. father - grandfather - great-grandfather ... line or the female (mt dna) i.e. mother - grandmother - great-grandmother ... line.

If your wonderful genealogical records do not document either of these two lines then they cannot be tied in with the current DNA technology.

Bob

thats why spencer wells might be the best way
he goes to the places theremight be people left of this line and their decendents.

[Richdream]

Thank you all for your advice and support.

Our ancestor was Huang Qiaoshan (872-953). My website is located at this www.geocities.com/bx_huang , the only website which has attempted translations into English.

Chinese genealogy only traced the direct paternal line. In ancient China, there was a rule on adoption. When the eldest has no son, the adoption must be of the eldest son of the younger brother, if the younger has no son, the adoption must be of the youngest son of the elder brother. The rule is to find an adoption son within the family first and if its not possible, the search will goes to the first male paternal cousins, same-generation relatives and so on within the kinship system. It is very rare to adopt from outside the Clan. Some who have only daughter will have their son-in-law "married into the family", and their children will continue the surname.

Huang Qiaoshan is the 117th generation ancestor in the Genealogy. He had 21 sons, 155 grandsons and 334 greatgrandsons. His descendants are estimated to be 10 million today, which is about a third of Chinese with the surname Huang. (The genealogy is considered more reliable from 113th generation onwards because there are different versions of the pre-113th generation genealogy).

When I visited Shaowu (the birthplace of Huang Qiaoshan), Fujian Province, China in 2003, I meet several clansmen who belonged to lineage of Huang Qiaoshan's other sons (belonging to different generation rankings- one was 37th and one was 39th- and whose families have been living in Shaowu for over a thousand years!). They are older than me in age but I'm more senior than them). I also know of other branches of the clan who are descended from 113th generation ancestor.

When I came across Family Tree DNA website, I was thinking, this is a very interesting way to find out more about our genealogy and verify our lineage! I began to envision a project to collect DNA data for the Clan, which is an enormous and very costly task (If I were a very richman, I would finance this project!).

But I still don't know how my clansmen would think about this idea, one problem is it is quite costly for them in China to take this DNA test, or maybe I will begin with a small group first.

At the meantime, I still need to do more research on this and learn more about the DNA tests.


Erik Huang

34th generation direct descendant of Huang Qiaoshan