mt DNA results

[gilmore]

I just received the results of my mitochondrial DNA test, and am apparently of Scottish descent matrilineally as well.

Both men and women inherit mtDNA from our mothers. It's not used much in genetic genealogy, for two reasons. We are more interested in tracing surnames, which are inherited patrilineally, usually, so Y DNA, which men get from our fathers, is more useful in that project. Also, mtDNA mutates slowly, relative to YDNA, so those whose test results match yours are much more distantly related. In other words, it doesn't tell us so much.

Nonetheless, I tested and am in mt DNA Haplogroup H, as is close to 50% of the population of Europe, especially western Europe.

However, my low resolution matches are four in number. I share the same mtDNA with 2 out of 5,699 people whose ancestry is English, but with 2 out of 2,450 whose ancestry is Scots.

What I find remarkable is that it's been some 200 to 400 years since my ancestors came to the US, for the most part, and people of Scots descent are still marrying each other.

[skauwt]

thats great news
I'm awaiting my ydna 37 and mtdna test results in the following weeks and reading your wee snippet has made me more excited of what news lies ahead
interesting you have a Scots maternal side also especially with as you say the time span since when your ancestors lived

doing my mtdna has made me search the female lines of my family tree a bit more indepth than i used to before has this been the case with you also ?

[gilmore]

thats great news
I'm awaiting my ydna 37 and mtdna test results in the following weeks and reading your wee snippet has made me more excited of what news lies ahead
interesting you have a Scots maternal side also especially with as you say the time span since when your ancestors lived

doing my mtdna has made me search the female lines of my family tree a bit more indepth than i used to before has this been the case with you also ?

No, not really. My family has been doing this for a long, long time. In most of our lines we have either hit a brick wall, or have traced it back to Charlemagne and his immediate ancestors, which is as far as one can go, reliably (unless Charlemagne's great grandmother, Bertha, was a Merovignian, as some posit. If so, credible genealogies can be traced back a further 2 or 3 centuries.)

For me DNA testing is the tool of last resort, as opposed to some others, who seem to want to be merely tested and then profit from the decades of hard work that others have done.

[Paul]

thats great news
I'm awaiting my ydna 37 and mtdna test results in the following weeks and reading your wee snippet has made me more excited of what news lies ahead
interesting you have a Scots maternal side also especially with as you say the time span since when your ancestors lived

doing my mtdna has made me search the female lines of my family tree a bit more indepth than i used to before has this been the case with you also ?

Most of the people I know from Coatbridge claim to be 100% Irish!

[skauwt]

Most of the people I know from Coatbridge claim to be 100% Irish!

lol
well i do have a fair bit of Irish on both sides of my family tree ,mainly from the famine onwards
I'm one of the lucky ones in coatbridge that has the paperwork to actually prove it though.... you`d be surprised at the amount of folk who just claim to be Irish just because there from the south of coatbridge

[Paul]

lol
well i do have a fair bit of Irish on both sides of my family tree ,mainly from the famine onwards
I'm one of the lucky ones in coatbridge that has the paperwork to actually prove it though.... you`d be surprised at the amount of folk who just claim to be Irish just because there from the south of coatbridge

haha. I also have this paperwork. 2 grandparents had 2 Irish parents and one grandparent had 1 Irish parent. I'd say that makes me 3/5... the rest of my great grandparents were highland Scots.
My great auntie was a nun in Ireland too ;)

It's ashame so many Coatbridgers (hmm? lol) are big on Irish nationalism or even patriotism but when it comes to Scotland it's a different story. Really disappoints me!

[Colonel MacNeal]

It is curious. My wife and I discovered that even though we were born thousands of miles away from each other, that our families had once lived within a stones throw of each other in Virginia in the 18th-century.

I haven't been brave enough to get my own DNA tested yet. Sent in Sammy's DNA test earlier this week to try to find out why he is the biggest Westie anyone has ever seen.

Cheers, ColMac

[O'Callaghan]

It is curious. My wife and I discovered that even though we were born thousands of miles away from each other, that our families had once lived within a stones throw of each other in Virginia in the 18th-century.

I haven't been brave enough to get my own DNA tested yet. Sent in Sammy's DNA test earlier this week to try to find out why he is the biggest Westie anyone has ever seen.

Cheers, ColMac

I haven't had mine tested either. We discovered my wife's maiden name on my side of the family tree! No, none of our family are from West Virginia! We may, nevertheless, be distant cousins.

[gilmore]

I haven't had mine tested either. We discovered my wife's maiden name on my side of the family tree! No, none of our family are from West Virginia! We may, nevertheless, be distant cousins.

We are all cousins. It's a question of degree. The most recent common ancestor of all humans lived sometime between the 6th millemium BCE and the 1st millenium CE. The most recent common ancestor of all Western Europeans may have lived as recently as 1000 CE. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_re...ommon_ancestor


Also we all descent from one women, whose mitochondrial DNA we all carry, and one man, whose Y DNA we men inherited from our fathers. "Mitochondrial Eve is estimated to have lived about 140,000 years ago. Y-chromosomal Adam is estimated to have lived around 60,000 years ago. The MRCA [most recent common ancestor] of [all] humans alive today would therefore need to have lived more recently than either."

It has been estimated that every human shares at least one common ancestor with every other human who was no more than about 50 generations in the past. In other words, there is no one on earth who is not your 50th cousin, if not more closely related. At 25 years per generation, that is about 750 CE.

[Chas]

Just a quick question to anybody who has had this done. Roughly how much does it cost? Thanks.

Regards

Chas