[tied] Re: Idea of PIEan expansion - "business takeovers" on major

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "andrew_and_inge"
<andrew.lancaster@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "ehlsmith" <ehlsmith@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@>
> > wrote:
> > ..............
> > > Curiously, I myself have the J2 haplotype even though my Mc
> > Callister ancestors arrived in the US from Belfast c. 1750 or so.
> My
> > closest genetic relatives on websites, other than some other Mc
> > Callisters, are in Central Asia, the Middle East and Eastern
> Europe and
> > tend to be Kahane or Muslims.
> >
> > I'm afraid I'm being a nitpicker, but isn't it rather misleading
> to
> > say "closest genetic relatives" when comparing less than .00005 of
> the
> > genome?
>
> It is not clear whether you realise it, so I'll point it out: the Y
> chromosome, while it indeed does really show "relatedness" in the
> everyday sense (because in fact it carries very few working genes),
> is passed on in near perfect copies from father to son, and so it is
> very useful for trying to trace one ancestral line out of the
> thousands we have, and therefore it is useful for studying ancient
> migrations, especially males are felt to have played a key role.
>
> Mitochondrial DNA, similarly, is passed from mothers to children.

I'm certainly aware of the role of Y-chromosome DNA and mitochrondrial
DNA and how their atypical patterns of transmission facilitate tracing
lineages. I raised the point though because far too often this can
lead to people greatly exaggerating their significance. Yes they can
trace a line back over 10,000 years but by my calculations an
individual will have approximately 2 to the 300th power lineages going
back that far. Tracing only 2 out of that vast number is not
guaranteed to give you a very full picture of what really happened.
And it is misleading to describe someone as a closest relative on the
basis of such a tiny sampling- the odds against *any other* genes
having come down that same lineage to the present are astronomically high.

Regards,
Ned Smith