how many have tested for Big Y?

[James78]

In the near term, for the poorer countries, we have to rely primarily on descendants living in more prosperous countries (e.g., the United States, Canada, Australia, and Britain).

Though some countries can be considered "poorer", though that is but subjective to American mentality, more the lack of DNA testing comes down to the simple fact the average person doesn't care in that region. Why should they?

They are oftentimes told they have lived in the same area, or near enough, for generations and oftentimes centuries. Some can prove it with concrete paper-trails. To them what is some DNA test going to prove?

They are not like modern immigrants [or more specifically colonists] who are trying to find their "roots" because such immigrants / colonists typically can't trace their line back very far.

To easterners, I would say, DNA testing is less relevant than a hole in the wall. Utterly meaningless to their family history and the here & now.

And it is likewise less relevant to older British families, not modern immigrant backtracking families, because those old British families are like the easterners under the impression they "know" where they are from. To them DNA isn't going to prove anything different - so it is a waste of money.

[LeFoeil22]

I agree with John, i guess that we are all interested in our deep origin in first instance because it is fun or it recalls us our history lessons at school ..and then we can use the SNPs as a complement to the STRs tests and start our genetic genealogy. This surely help to put on the side surname lines that are spelled in the same way, that for some lived in the same area but are genetically not related to our our paternal line. Unfortunately depending on where you live it is very often that our worst enemy is the lack of data due to the fact that dna testing is not legally and culturally accepted everywhere

[John McCoy]

The assumption that all Big Y test-takers want to know their ethnic origins is false, as are all generalizations except this one! I was only interested in finding out where my McCoy fits in the vast array of Scottish families. Big Y, as interpreted by YFull and the Big Tree, has been extremely helpful. I found out I am on the end of a little twig, separated by various SNP's from all the plausible matches that were based on STR's. So I don't have to pay attention to the McMillans or any other McCoys tested to date, they are definitely not my family!

[aughex]

can you explain more Mr W? What do you mean not on the Big Y scale? On what scale? Aren't the discovered Y SNPs all on the same scale?

I found a good reading here on ancient DNA: http://www.eva.mpg.de/documents/Gene...16_2280791.pdf and it says

"Ancient and present-day genomic data will also provide new perspectives on historically documented events such as the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Great Britain by allowing estimates of the number of migrants and the reconstruction of admixture patterns (Schiffels et al. 2016).
Now that large numbers of ancient individuals can be efficiently analyzed, genetic transects through space and time
will allow the spread of alleles to be monitored over time, allowing biological adaptations to be correlated with environmental or cultural change and with epidemics (Mathieson et al.2015). In fact, genetic studies of human remains recovered at excavations are likely soon becoming a standard tool in archaeology similar to radiocarbon dating, allowing genetics to enter into a fruitful symbiotic relationship with archaeology."

I assume this means that those with a Big Y test, thus those with a SNP tree will fit in those patterns and population movements etc in the past 2000 years will be possible to analyze ? OR do I assume wrongly? Why do a Big Y test then if we'll never find out where we came from from the paternal line in recent history, and as more people test the better idea we have? Surely not to see if they can find a 24th cousin or see if they came from whatever king?

I assume most doing the Big Y want to see where their ancestors came from, what route they took, what regions and to find out more about populations movements and how they formed, if you're part of them or not, etc. My interest is especially in the Dacian area and to see how/if they managed to survived till present day after being raided almost every century by different migratory populations, romans(100-300AD), huns(400AD), Avars(500AD), slavs(peacefully 600AD), etc. Being that the raiders armies were formed by men then all the Y DNA should contain this information.

[lgmayka]

From Eastern Europe especially since in the Dacian zone there will be very few people testing for Big Y and that area was the centre of major population movement in ancient times so without more people testing in that area how will there ever, or in a timely manner of say in our lifetime, determine the population migration routes from 2000 years ago or earlier.

In the near term, for the poorer countries, we have to rely primarily on descendants living in more prosperous countries (e.g., the United States, Canada, Australia, and Britain). This is not a perfect sampling, because emigration over the past two centuries has been patchy (more from some regions than others), but it's certainly much better than no information at all.

As national economies improve over time, and as DNA test costs drop over time, we will get more data from the source countries themselves. Poland is a good example. Ten years ago, the membership of FTDNA's Polish Project came almost entirely from Polish-Americans. Today, a large fraction of the membership comes from Poland itself and its neighboring countries.

Of course, financial assistance plays some role too. If a Polish-American has a close match in Poland, he may need to offer to contribute to the match's Big Y as well as paying for his own.

[MMaddi]

I think what you had described would require more testing of the ancientDNA. Some of that is happening, but not on Big Y scale.

Mr W

I agree 100%. It's very dicey to take the modern distribution of haplogroups and infer back thousands of years to describe where a haplogroup was that many millenia ago.

Population geneticists claimed 8-10 years ago that R1b was the haplogroup of European men that that spread north and east throughout Europe from Spain after the Ice Age. They mainly based that on the fact that the Basques of northern Spain have very high levels of R1b and there are high levels throughout western Europe.

Ancient DNA results so far have found almost no R1b in Europe, east or west, before 5,000 years ago. From ancient DNA remains from France, Italy and Germany, G2 was the dominant haplogroup. Over the last few years new studies have given firm proof that it was only after the beginning of the Bronze Age 5,000 years ago that R1b came into Europe from the Eurasian steppes, traveling from east to west.

The more ancient DNA results we have, the more accurately we can theorize about the migrations that led to what we see among modern populations. The distribution of haplogroups among modern populations will not give us much of an accurate picture of who was where 5,000 or 10,000 years ago without considering what ancient DNA results tell us.

[dna]

I think what you had described would require more testing of the ancientDNA. Some of that is happening, but not on Big Y scale.

Mr W

[aughex]

As I understand, Big Y is the definitive SNP confirmation stage, every Y STR testing are relatively meaningless without SNP verification and I've seen some posts on here how the halopgroup changed after performing the Big Y. Does anyone know how many persons have tested for the Big Y?

Also how many people will need to be tested in order to get a closer look to European map for, say 2000 years ago. From what I've read the estimated population in Europe at the time was around 50 million, so approximately 25 million men from which not all of them Y-DNA lines survived till now so lets say there are 10 million unique terminal SNPs from 2000 years ago which have at least 1 descendant living nowdays. With every mutation occurring every 90-120 years, does that mean there should be around 200 million final deepest subclades today in Europe alone?

More to the point, I understand experts can accurately claim the movement of people with accuracy for 10,000-6,000 years ago, but how many people need to be tested to know with at least 50% accuracy the movement map for Europe? From Eastern Europe especially since in the Dacian zone there will be very few people testing for Big Y and that area was the centre of major population movement in ancient times so without more people testing in that area how will there ever, or in a timely manner of say in our lifetime, determine the population migration routes from 2000 years ago or earlier.