Ancient DNA of Father Abraham

[jah]

Not all Arabs are descended from Ishmael. There were other peoples in the Middle east. Such as Philistines, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elamites, Amorites, Hurrians, Hittites, Moabites, Edomites, Egyptians, Ammonites, Arabians, etc.

Ah, a great question: which of these groups provided the greatest genetic contribution to today's Arabs?

Philistines, Hittites, Moabites? Almost certainly not. Babylonians? Getting warmer.

Did the Arabic language originate in Yemen? Were there connections between Yemen & Babylon? I believe so.

[twang]

...Abraham, Issac and Jacob? What Haplogroup are they?

No one knows but God.

[twang]

Doesn't the Hebrew race come from Isaac and the Arab race come from Ismael?

Not all Arabs are descended from Ishmael. There were other peoples in the Middle east. Such as Philistines, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elamites, Amorites, Hurrians, Hittites, Moabites, Edomites, Egyptians, Ammonites, Arabians, etc.

[twang]

Science can sometimes disprove paper and I was always taught in Hebrew school they came out of Africa. Who's teachings are right?

Your Hebrew school was wrong.

[twang]

Exactly!! OK the Kohan priests are N African and Im sure Moses's line if ever found was N African too. The Tribe of Judah originated out of Africa.

You're confused. Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees. This is either in Iraq or Turkey.

[Daniel72]

I think what Javelins means is, give the customer more possibilities to chose from.

Like for example "oracle"...
one of the possibilities it tells about my results is:

95% German average + 5% Lithuanian average = roughly my results

Interestingly I am a German who knows about a Lithuanian Great Great Grandmother (mathematically responsable for 6% of the anchestry)

that would fit very well.

On the other hand, even knowing that German is the main anchestry gave me a lot of possibilities including:

85% German + 15% Finnish
95% German + 5% Lithuanian
95% German +5% Polish
94% German + 6% Russian
96% German + 4% Belorussian
95% German + 5% Chuvash
85% German + 15% Swedish
90% German + 10% Norwegian

(at least they all agree that the X that is added to German is from North, Northeast or East of Germany. No other direction.)

Family Lore is about the Lithuanian GGGMom.
But if you dont have Family Lore, what to do?

My longest DNA blocks I share with a Norwegian, the second longest with a Dutch. These would lead to false conclusions (or not? hmmmm)

The third longest with a Belgian and the 4th longest share a German and a Pole. 5th longest is a German and a Ukrainian.

No Lithuanian so far but at least 2 Germans in the top 5.

If I go for the anchestry finder top, the problem is, so more testers there are from a country so more the results are twisted toward that country....Thats pushed UK to place 2 I believe.

Now imagine, what if I wouldnt know anything, like an adoptee for example? Hmm.

[nathanm]

Many possibilities:

(1) You have tested one or both parents, or other relatives.
(2) You have succesfully identified the common ancestor.
(3) You have sponsored a known relative.
etc.

Right, but again, the dataset who'd meet these criteria would be ridiculously small. It definitely wouldn't justify the time and expense to design and develop a new system to track these blocks. However, nothing's stopping a third party from creating such a system. And when you said "it's a simple IT change"; that's the understatement of the month.

[Javelin]

But how would you know which block came from which parent, grandparent, etc?

Many possibilities:

(1) You have tested one or both parents, or other relatives.
(2) You have succesfully identified the common ancestor.
(3) You have sponsored a known relative.
etc.

[nathanm]

This doesn't need phasing: it's a simple IT change. Allow customers to make blocks clickable, and choose the country/population from a pulldown menu.

But how would you know which block came from which parent, grandparent, etc? Unless you have matches for each block, and can both trace your descent from a common ancestor, it wouldn't do any good. The proportion of people who could reliably assign blocks to a specific ancestor, country, or even region would be a tiny fraction of FTDNA's pro-active customer base, to say nothing of the people who've tested and seemingly do nothing with it.

[Javelin]

This doesn't need phasing: it's a simple IT change. Allow customers to make blocks clickable, and choose the country/population from a pulldown menu.

[nathanm]

The weakness in any such analysis as you describe is that it is impossible to identify the age of these mixtures with single SNPs. Even blocks of 1-5 cM are likely to be identical by state.

If Population Finder also looked at the same longer identical-by-descent blocks we use to find cousins, and was somehow able to anchor these blocks to countries or regions (perhaps with user input, the way we can do with degress of relation), it could be much more useful, and get beyond many of the problems of proxy populations.

That would be great if it was possible, but I think it's several steps removed from where we are with current science and technology. In the last issue of the Journal of Genetic Genealogy (JoGG), there was an article called Phasing the Chromosomes of a Family Group When One Parent is Missing. Even with the best technology on the market, you either need to test yourself and both parents, or one parent and three children (four is better), just to determine which parent a specific segment was inherited from.

Going from that knowledge to matching segments with more distant relatives, and inputting accurate information about your common ancestors, is quite a tall order. Paper trails for some ancestors might simply not exist. Plus, the size and complexity of such a database, cost of testing so many people, and reluctance of some to genetic testing will not be inconsequential barriers. Someday, once the $1000 genome is a reality, science and technology have advanced far beyond today's infancy, and genetic testing is far more common, it might be feasible to attempt something like you describe. But it's a long way off in the future.

[Javelin]

But which one of those ways is most likely? That's the hard part. Probably most of their customers are "Europe (Orkneys)" crowd (i.e. typical white Americans), and the second largest group is "Middle East (Jewish)". So you can see why these are used, i.e. statistical likelihood.

The weakness in any such analysis as you describe is that it is impossible to identify the age of these mixtures with single SNPs. Even blocks of 1-5 cM are likely to be identical by state.

If Population Finder also looked at the same longer identical-by-descent blocks we use to find cousins, and was somehow able to anchor these blocks to countries or regions (perhaps with user input, the way we can do with degress of relation), it could be much more useful, and get beyond many of the problems of proxy populations.

[Daniel72]

There is a lot of weakpoints in the current way to interpret aDNA.

If one looks at dodecad Oracle results one sees a lot of ways to interpret "German" for example.

German can be decribed as (just some examples):

68.8% Dutch + 31.2% Polish
84.4% Orcadian + 15.6% Russian
65% Scandinavian + 35% Southeast European

And now watch up...

96% Orcadian + 4% Egyptian
97% Orcadian + 3% Ethiopian

Well, even
97% Orcadian + 3% Indian Brahmin

All this is, kind of correct, but the reason is not "recent" admixture but bases on admixture that is centuries or even thousands of years old.

Its just very rough to explain a German as "Orcadian + X". The "X" will be very exotic, without beeing any more recent as 8000 years ago.

And if one thinks, PF does not work like Dodecad Oracle and this kind of stuff, then look here....

I digg this here up from MY Dodecad Oracle results:

6% Bedouin + 94% Orcadian

and thats my PF:
Orcadian 92%, Middle Eastern 8%

Pretty close. Close enough to claim, the general technology is similiar.

[Javelin]

I hear what you're saying, but if PF is going to tell someone that they're of 10% ME origin, FTDNA should have it right, with the caveat that this is all a work in progress.

I do agree with this. Without wanting to get too technical, if you run phylogenetic trees, Europe looks like a subcategory of the Near East, so it is hard to pull the Mideast out of Europe entirely. It might be helpful to users if they were able to pick from a number of options (such as about 100% English as opposed to 90 Orkneys 10 Middle East) -- or it might be more confusing, and people often identify themselves in ways that oversimplify their true genetic origins.

[vinnie]

Leaving aside Italians, most people here who show Near East will say something like:

90% European (Orkneys)
10% Middle East (Adyghei, Druze, Iranian, Jewish, Palestinian)

This averages out to a point on a map 10% of the way from the Orkneys to the Near East/Caucasus, i.e. somewhere near England or northern France, which is the area most colonial Americans, who are most of the test takers, average out to.

Human genetic overlap is continuous. Points of overlap between neighboring nationalities are usually about as great as the points of non-overlap. This means there are different forumlas you can use to reach the same map points, each with a different probability. Population Finder displays one of many possible formulas using its algorithm's highest probability.

It's not always right, but the averaged spot on the map is usually very close, even for people with complex ancestry.

If the thought of being Orkneys + Middle Eastern makes someone uncomfortable, they can take comfort in knowing there are probably also formulas to express the same person as Orkneys + East African + East Asian, with no Middle Eastern at all.

I hear what you're saying, but if PF is going to tell someone that they're of 10% ME origin, FTDNA should have it right, with the caveat that this is all a work in progress. But I've also noticed that most people don't include their margin of error in their posts, which is important to take into consideration.

BTW, there's a group of Scottish Camerons, who are supposedly a noble line, who've turned out to be J1c3d (associated with Jewish and Arabic origins) and not R1b or some other expected Celtic or North Germanic group. Additionally, as Thomas Jefferson was J2, it's entirely possible for people with family origins in the British Isles to have some ME ancestry. One of my own closest matches, sharing the same subclade, is of British origin.