Re: DNA - Can you enlighten?

So then how is it that lets say my ancestors came from Scotland and where Gaels, how can DNA show this if most of the marriages where say Saxons?
Terry L. Mair
Mair's Photography
158 South 580 East
Midway, Utah 84049
435-654-3607
www.mairsphotography.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "Todd A. Farmerie" <farmerie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 8:50 PM
Subject: Re: DNA - Can you enlighten?


Terry wrote:
Ok this raises a question for me, in my fathers side of the family we connect to the Lindsay family, in the last 4 generations three ways, and on my mothers side more remotely several times, so statistically would I have more Lindsay DNA then Mair or not?, if that makes sense.

Umm. It really doesn't work this way. Other than, perhaps, the Y chromosome, there is no such thing as "Lindsay DNA" or "Mair DNA" - it is remixed and exchanged each generation.

If you have three lines of descent from a single person x generations back, then you are more likely to have that person's DNA (and likely to have more of that person's DNA) than of anyone else in his generation (except the male and female line ancestors if you are far enough back).

However, depending on how distantly related they are, three Lindsays may share little DNA in common among all three of them (the amount shared being reduced by 1/2 each generation in each line, so if they were third cousins - 5 generations in each of their three lines, that would be 1/2^15, or 1/32,000). The important point is that this is what would be 'shared' DNA derived from their most recent Lindsay ancestor, but that is an arbitrary point at which to label the DNA as 'Lindsay DNA': half of it came from that common ancestor's non-Lindsay mother.

taf



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