DNA testing for ancestry

[vontar]

DNA Testing for ancestry.

 

I think I have read people here have looked in to it.  Don't jump to conclusions but check out this video if you are considering it.  Take it with a gain of salt.

 

I think the title is a bit misleading as well.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHjJJfhfRgs

Edited August 24, 2013 by vontar

[Guest TankerHC]

I have been doing this for about 7 or 8 years, participated in the National Geo DNA project and have sat in on 20 classes on DNA testing, have had at least ten tests done and am waiting on 2 to come back for two other people. After seeing the first minute I stopped because two of the 3 testing companies are known frauds in the Genealogy ranks.

 

DNA testing is nothing more than another tool in a box with a lot of tools. People think you can run a DNA test and automatically know exactly where you descend from. Not true. There is no way, withou VERY expensive tests that you can link to a single ancestor, secondly that ancestors bones would need to be exhumed and tested for a direct link, if there were even DNA left to test. Family genealogy lines run in a million different directions, even in direct maternal and paternal lines. Think NPR (number of parental relations)  by the time you reach the 7th generation you already have 128 grandparents. Thats all going to show in a DNA test. Just because one of those grandparents is from Germany for example, doesnt mean that 10 others arent from different families and different time periods. 

 

DNA testing can link distant cousins, past 5 or 6 generations it is virtually worthless. And the reason it is worthless is because there is no accuracy. The only things a DNA test is going to tell you are 1. Makeup of genetic material (Depending on what type of test you have taken). 2. Links to other relatives who have also taken the tests. and 3. Genetic migration patterns based on your DNA sampling.

 

And EVERYONE, everyone on this board, comes from "Africa", before Africa was in its current shape, we are ALL from the Super Continent.

 

Unless someone finds an Otzi in your town, your not going back as far as these companies claim. For genealogy DNA is another tool, Nothing more. 

Edited August 25, 2013 by TankerHC

[tnguy]

Think NPR (number of parental relations)  by the time you reach the 7th generation you already have 128 grandparents.

 

Eleven in Kentucky.

[vontar]

Eleven in Kentucky.

 

There might be some truth to that.  When I married a girl in KY and got got out license they really ask me if we where related.

[JAB]

And EVERYONE, everyone on this board, comes from "Africa", before Africa was in its current shape, we are ALL from the Super Continent.

 

Actually, you don't even have to go that far back.  The earliest, known modern humans originated in North Africa, likely sometime around 200k years ago, long after the break up of Pangaea.  Whether or not they replaced or interbred with archaic humans (such as Neanderthals) is still a matter of debate (I come down on the side of 'interbred with') but the North African origin of modern humans is pretty well accepted.  Remember, though, that not everyone from Africa is Negroid.  North Africans ('Arabs') are Caucasoid.  In other words, the earliest known modern humans were Caucasians.

 

Whenever I hear/read about so-called 'African'-Americans, I think not only of the fact that not all Africans are Negroid but also about Alex Haley's account of going to the African village that he believed to be the home of his ancestors.  One thing that struck him was how light-skinned he was in comparison to the dark-skinned 'natives'.

 

Oh, and in Stastical Anthropology (yeah, it is just about as boring as it sounds with the exception of a few, interesting high points) someone came up with an equation to figure just how 'related' the entire human population of the earth is.  One thing they took into account is that for every, living person there must be two (biological) parents, four (biological) grandparents, eight (biological) great grandparents and so on.  Eventually, you have too many people to account for there being very many 'separate' lineages in the human population.  Keeping in mind that I am pretty terrible at mathematics so cannot explain in more detail, the final outcome of the equation was that every, single human being currently on the planet is related to every, other human being currently on the planet at the level of at least fiftieth cousin.  That means everyone living in East Tennessee, everyone living in Tokyo and everyone living in the Sudan.  People whose families have lived in the same region for generations or who trace their origins to the same areas are likely much more closely related.

Edited August 27, 2013 by JAB

[vontar]

Going down the road JAB set forth, during some of the ice ages, the human population for the entire planet is believed by allot of scientist to have dropped to just the few thousands.  It was a massive bottle neck in the gene pool

 

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Humans-Passed-a-Genetic-Bottleneck-1-2-Million-Years-Ago-186868.shtml

this was just one source I dug up.  I remember watching something about this on history or discovery.

[Guest TankerHC]

Actually, you don't even have to go that far back.  The earliest, known modern humans originated in North Africa, likely sometime around 200k years ago, long after the break up of Pangaea.  Whether or not they replaced or interbred with archaic humans (such as Neanderthals) is still a matter of debate (I come down on the side of 'interbred with') but the North African origin of modern humans is pretty well accepted.  Remember, though, that not everyone from Africa is Negroid.  North Africans ('Arabs') are Caucasoid.  In other words, the earliest known modern humans were Caucasians.

 

Whenever I hear/read about so-called 'African'-Americans, I think not only of the fact that not all Africans are Negroid but also about Alex Haley's account of going to the African village that he believed to be the home of his ancestors.  One thing that struck him was how light-skinned he was in comparison to the dark-skinned 'natives'.

 

Oh, and in Stastical Anthropology (yeah, it is just about as boring as it sounds with the exception of a few, interesting high points) someone came up with an equation to figure just how 'related' the entire human population of the earth is.  One thing they took into account is that for every, living person there must be two (biological) parents, four (biological) grandparents, eight (biological) great grandparents and so on.  Eventually, you have too many people to account for there being very many 'separate' lineages in the human population.  Keeping in mind that I am pretty terrible at mathematics so cannot explain in more detail, the final outcome of the equation was that every, single human being currently on the planet is related to every, other human being currently on the planet at the level of at least fiftieth cousin.  That means everyone living in East Tennessee, everyone living in Tokyo and everyone living in the Sudan.  People whose families have lived in the same region for generations or who trace their origins to the same areas are likely much more closely related.

 

Interbreeding with Neaderthals is no longer a matter of debate, and has not been for some time. Everything else, almost, you do have living distant cousins through the 7th and 8th generations. The 5th number is as far as accuracy allows, barely. There is a reason for the 5th generation limit. That is as far as your going without physical documentation. You actually can go 8, 10, even 14 generations (Depending on who had who at what ages), forget DNA, that requires foot work. WHich is also why you can go out beyond 12 generations and easily find multiple people who do not share a common ancestor. The people who have ten thousand names in their GEDCOM's, that is a load of crap. If your going to do that, you might as well just frame and post a photo of the human genome. Or just add everyone on Earth. That world family tree project, another crock of sheet. Statistical Anthropology has never been used by Geneticists to accurately predict relationships. Reason being Statistical Anthropology uses not only DNA links, variable mathematics, but also verbal family histories and other stories (And tall tales) to come up with a number. There are still "tribes" and large groups of people out there who's DNA has not completely matched the mapped Human Genome. Just this past May or June Nat Geo found people on several Continents who matched no one else anywhere, the Human Genome is common, there is at least 1% of the Human Genome that comes from Neanderthal lines going back about 12,000 years (The same time blue eyes appeared), not everyone is related by blood, regardless of how bad they wish King Henry VIII was their  9th Great Grandfather. There is not one human alive who matches a pure Polynesian other than another pure Polynesian. The same with true Tibetans. We ARE NOT all related. We all just happen to decend from the same people, the people that geneticists call the real "Adam And Eve". When you discuss the Super Continent, there have been so many mutations, there a trillions of people since then who are not related. Unless you go back about to the beginning of human pre-history. Which is why the above video is a fricken joke.

Edited August 28, 2013 by TankerHC

[Guest nra37922]

Spontaneous Evolution Has Arrived!

[Guest TankerHC]

Spontaneous Evolution Has Arrived!

 

Not sure if that's in reference to we are not all related. But I will assume so. So here is what I mean. Right now Geneticists believe Homo Sapiens go back 83,000 Generations. 2 or 3 years ago Nat Geo and the World DNA project along with some other famous Geneticists tested Nucleotide mutations. First time they did it. Every Generation epxeriences on average, 60 mutations. I believe thats about 5 million mutations in the last 83,000 generations. And they dont all happen to every generation everywhere the same. Most are environmental. One person is about as related to everyone else on earth as they are related to their cat.

[JAB]

Interbreeding with Neaderthals is no longer a matter of debate, and has not been for some time.

 

Well, some level of interbreeding is pretty much a given.  What I should have said was the debate over whether or not there was significant interbreeding to say that Neanderthals contributed significantly to modern human populations.  Some folks still say, "No," while others have found both genetic and morphological evidence (by using evolved, physical traits that are 'neutral' - i.e. not of a type that can be explained by evolutionary parallelisms - particularly between modern human populations in Indonesia, etc. and 'Neanderthal' type populations such as Java man as well as European populations and European Neanderthals which support the claim that Neanderthals did contribute significant amounts of genetic material to modern, human populations - especially in Europe.

Edited August 28, 2013 by JAB

[JAB]

Not sure if that's in reference to we are not all related. But I will assume so. So here is what I mean. Right now Geneticists believe Homo Sapiens go back 83,000 Generations. 2 or 3 years ago Nat Geo and the World DNA project along with some other famous Geneticists tested Nucleotide mutations. First time they did it. Every Generation epxeriences on average, 60 mutations. I believe thats about 5 million mutations in the last 83,000 generations. And they dont all happen to every generation everywhere the same. Most are environmental. One person is about as related to everyone else on earth as they are related to their cat.

 

Or, from another point of view, maybe genetics simply isn't as 'exact' a science as we have been lead to believe.

Edited August 28, 2013 by JAB

[Guest nra37922]

We all go back to Adam and Eve.

[JAB]

We all go back to Adam and Eve.

 

If Adam and Eve were the 'only' people God ever created and all people on Earth are their descendents then when Cain was banished and went to live in Nod, where did all the other people come from?

 

Genesis 4:17 says, "And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch."

 

So, who was Cain's wife?  Did she leave with him when he was banished?  If so, as a daughter of Adam and Eve, then she would have also been one of his sisters.

 

Genesis 4:18 and 4:19 go on to say,

 

"To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael, and Mehujael begot Methushael, and Methushael begot Lamech.

 

Then Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of one was Adah, and the second was Zillah."

 

Wow.  There sure was a whole lot of knowing and begotting going on for these folks to all have been the children of Adam and Eve as they would have been brothers and sisters if that were the case.  Further, there sure seemed to be plenty of women to go around among all these guys for Cain to have been banished alone into the wilderness - even if he brought a wife with him.

 

So, who were all those people that Cain met, lived with and with whom his family interbred?  They obviously already had language and a society and that society obviously had plenty of people - enough, at least, to populate a city (by the fact that Cain founded a city and named it after his son.)  Those people are never accounted for in the Christian creation myth.  Further, their existence pretty much negates the belief that Adam and Eve were the first humans or, at the time, the only humans.

Edited August 28, 2013 by JAB

[piercedan]

If Adam and Eve were the 'only' people God ever created and all people on Earth are their descendents then when Cain was banished and went to live in Nod, where did all the other people come from?

Genesis 4:17 says, "And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch."

So, who was Cain's wife? Did she leave with him when he was banished? If so, as a daughter of Adam and Eve, then she would have also been one of his sisters.

Genesis 4:18 and 4:19 go on to say,

"To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael, and Mehujael begot Methushael, and Methushael begot Lamech.

Then Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of one was Adah, and the second was Zillah."

Wow. There sure was a whole lot of knowing and begotting going on for these folks to all have been the children of Adam and Eve as they would have been brothers and sisters if that were the case. Further, there sure seemed to be plenty of women to go around among all these guys for Cain to have been banished alone into the wilderness - even if he brought a wife with him.

So, who were all those people that Cain met, lived with and with whom his family interbred? They obviously already had language and a society and that society obviously had plenty of people - enough, at least, to populate a city (by the fact that Cain founded a city and named it after his son.) Those people are never accounted for in the Christian creation myth. Further, their existence pretty much negates the belief that Adam and Eve were the first humans or, at the time, the only humans.

Trolling pretty hard on this one. Hope you are ready for the can of worms you opened if someone bites.

[Spots]

Those people are never accounted for in the Christian creation myth. Further, their existence pretty much negates the belief that Adam and Eve were the first humans or, at the time, the only humans.

I won't get in to a religious argument online, as that leads to bad blood. But its not a myth, and to call it that is incredibly insulting to Christians who believe in it. It is a theory, just as evolution is a theory. Thats all I'll say on that, as I dont wanna lose friends on here.

Tapatalk ate my spelling.

[Guest TankerHC]

No religious arguments for me, thanks.

 

But I will say that Geneticists say we all go back to a single female ancestor around 160,000 years ago. If that is the case, how did that happen? Actually the answer is in dating. Biblical beliefs and Scientific data can and do co-exist.

 

Although JAB does have a real point. Your looking at, AT LEAST, 83,000 generations. Just a few weeks ago, and not confirmed (yet) but in a few months, we may be looking at well over 120,000 generations of Homo Sapiens.. Going back to other Hominid's that we evolved from (Or some assumptions that we evolved from), your already looking at 700-800,000 generations.

 

Even the Catholic Church agreed that evolution should be taught in schools (Pope Pious XII said that there is no conflict between religious teachings and evolution, its the Soul not the body that Christians should believe come from the creation of God).

 

A large portion of the Bible did happen. Israeli Archeologists prove it almost daily, our own Astronauts and Satellites have discovered cities mentioned in the Bible in just the last few years. We now know King Soloman actually existed and the Bible is near recorded History on that point, simply based on recent Archeological findings.

 

Personally I see no reason to argue either point. Not unless you believe the Pyramids of Giza are only a few hundred years old.

[TripleDigitRide]

I won't get in to a religious argument online, as that leads to bad blood. But its not a myth, and to call it that is incredibly insulting to Christians who believe in it. It is a theory, just as evolution is a theory. Thats all I'll say on that, as I dont wanna lose friends on here.

Tapatalk ate my spelling.

If you lose friends over a religious disagreement, they were douchebags to begin with.

[Jonnin]

Have to be precise --- sloppy wording is why people consider christians to be backwards about science.  Evolution and genetics are real, and has been observed in nature. 

 

Evolution from a lightning strike created amoeba from some sort of random slop that happened to all congeal the right way into humans (via a chain of intermediate critters) is where the theory/faith part of the religion of evolution comes to play.  

 

Even with all we know we have yet to make life from a bowl of ingredients, nor have we been able to selectively breed monkeys into cave men.  For a reason.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

This thread is interesting as I know very little about genetics.

 

I don't know theology and would never presume to instruct granny on how best to suck eggs, but have several times encountered the following idea regarding adam and eve-- Apes gradually got brighter and somewhere along the line there was a mutation that "crossed a threshold" into true self-awareness, or knowledge of good and evil, or whatever your qualification for being "human". That "smarter ape" was adam, and he bred with others of his species, and the children of adam inherited the improved cognitive abilities. Maybe adam was earlier than neanderthal. Maybe adam was a neanderthal, or perhaps adam was a homo sapiens, thousands of years after h. sapiens had begun to walk the earth?

 

Merely offering the idea as an interesting daydream. Idle speculation.

 

There may be sites which describe this idea better, but here are a couple of articles (authored by christians) which touch on the concept.

 

http://evolvingcreation.com/part-3-four-questions-were-adam-and-eve-real-people/

... As we noted, the scientific evidence does not seem to support a time at which there was only one Homo sapiens couple.  Many folks suspect that they were actual, historical people but not the only two people alive at the time. They could have been the first two Homo sapiens given a soul/spirit; the first two into which God breathed spiritual life. This would be outside the realm of scientific proofs and would not require denial of the evidence we have been given. Adam and Eve could have been two of many and the first two to have awareness of good and evil. ...

 

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p83.htm

...

Neanderthals appeared suddenly. They buried their dead starting about 150,000 years ago, so it was easy to find their skeletons. Those buried neanderthals were real humans with souls. Neanderthals before 150,000 years existed too, but they were animals and probably they were cannibals who ate their dead. So, there is a small possibility to find skeletons of neanderthals (animals) older than 150,000 years. There must exist a moment when the first funeral occurred. The first deceased must be Abel and nobody else. It is impossible to have evolution of funerals. There were two possibilities, to eat the dead or to have a funeral. From an evolutionary point of view, the invention of funerals is again a setback because without eating the dead there are more chances of dying by hunger and not to have descendants. The reason for this evolutionary setback can only be religion, or in other words, buried neanderthals were real humans with souls.

...

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church it is not explained how new humans arose after the first truly human couple (Adam and Eve). How for example did Cain find his wife? I hope that it is not theological heresy for the hypothesis of how new humans entered Adam and Eve's family tree. It must be mentioned that all children of the second generation and all other generations are really Adam and Eve's descendants. The theological problem is what about newcomers? I think that the explanation is simple. In the moment when some neanderthal recognized and understood the name of God, the meaning of the words "I am" with the help of another man, in that moment he received a soul from God and became a man. Some were perhaps not able to fully understand the meaning of "I am" but they also received a soul from God and became man because they entered Adam and Eve's family tree. I hope that this is not heresy.

For example, there are two ways to become Israeli. The first way is if someone's parents are Israeli, and the second is that someone decides as an adult to accept Israeli culture, religion and belief in one God, maybe because he finds a beautiful Israeli girl. A similar story is how to enter the Catholic Church (by birth and infant baptism, or through an adult conversion, faith and adult baptism). Maybe I exaggerate the speed at which Adam and Eve developed language, but I do this to shorten the story and to explain the problem involved in language development.

 

To conclude: this is a speculation that there was a first couple (Adam and Eve) that invented the first language, and that they were neanderthals that lived about 150,000 years ago. If Adam and Eve were a real man and woman, not "symbols for humanity," then Cain, Abel and Seth are also real and historical persons. In my speculations I found very interesting the conclusions using the equations: answer = imagination + logic + knowledge (scientific, philosophic and theologic). I tried to connect theological and scientific knowledge about human history in one imaginative but logical short story that is (I hope) consistent with scientific and theological points of view.

...

 

 

[piercedan]

This thread is interesting as I know very little about genetics.

I don't know theology and would never presume to instruct granny on how best to suck eggs, but have several times encountered the following idea regarding adam and eve-- Apes gradually got brighter and somewhere along the line there was a mutation that "crossed a threshold" into true self-awareness, or knowledge of good and evil, or whatever your qualification for being "human". That "smarter ape" was adam, and he bred with others of his species, and the children of adam inherited the improved cognitive abilities. Maybe adam was earlier than neanderthal. Maybe adam was a neanderthal, or perhaps adam was a homo sapiens, thousands of years after h. sapiens had begun to walk the earth?

Merely offering the idea as an interesting daydream. Idle speculation.

There may be sites which describe this idea better, but here are a couple of articles (authored by christians) which touch on the concept.

http://evolvingcreation.com/part-3-four-questions-were-adam-and-eve-real-people/

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p83.htm

There is so much derp in that writing, it was painful to read. I follow the idea, but it's just supposition pulled out of cherry picked information. The soul was part of the evolutionary process? Based on intelligence level? Dolphins have language, complete with names for each other, as well as self awareness, so they must have souls by now.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

There is so much derp in that writing, it was painful to read. I follow the idea, but it's just supposition pulled out of cherry picked information. The soul was part of the evolutionary process? Based on intelligence level? Dolphins have language, complete with names for each other, as well as self awareness, so they must have souls by now.

 

Yup, but tis difficult to decide what am and am not derp. Philosophy, metaphysics, theology does follow rules and maybe it fits within some kind of recognized framework of discussion.

 

There are those who consider intelligence to be a quantitative spectrum, with non-human species having basically the same properties as humans, merely having less of it. I tend to sympathize with that view. And then there are those who maintain that human capabilities are qualitatively entirely different from "animals", and make pretty good arguments to buttress the case.

 

A fella with religious inclinations who also credits evolution with human ancestry, rather than the breathing of life into a clay model, and who also believes that h. sapiens is qualitatively entirely different than any other species in cognition-- might find it necessary to propose that some time or t'other there had to be a first "true human" displaying this profound qualitative difference?

 

Though a typical onion funny, this clip works well to illustrate the "qualitative difference" argument--

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-fC9uNyhWo