Haplogroup testing

A Read-only Archive of the old forum. Many useful messages and lots of family data!
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Kyle2 MacLea

Haplogroup testing

Post by Kyle2 MacLea »

Dear Andrew, Rob, and others -- After getting 37 markers tested, is there any point in having the haplogroup SNP test?  Family Tree will do it for you, to verify, for instance that you should be R1b, like they predict for me.  Would that provide any useful information? Kyle=
Andrew Lancaster4
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Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2005 8:34 am

Haplogroup testing

Post by Andrew Lancaster4 »

Hi Kyle Normally SNPs are useless for genealogical purposes, but they can be interesting for trying to work out where your really ancient ancestors lived. This is not normally the case for R1b, because most males in Britain are R1b1c (that means they have SNP mutation M269) and this is also common all over Europe. There are however now new SNP mutations being found, which will give some more recent and detailed information. For example there is a company called Ethnoancestry which has discovered an SNP called S21, that only about one third of people with M269 have. That is still a long way from helping with genealogy though. Most of the people getting this test done are doing it because they are interested to be part of the discoveries that will come out of this. For example it is not yet clear whether S21 will be more common in any particular part of Europe or Britain. S21 may be the first SNP though where it seems that the STR markers will be more vague than the SNP mutation. This is because S21 seems to apply to some but not all people who are near the "West Atlantic Modal" (the most common STR signature in Europe). People who have this signature are often overwhelmed with the number of seeming matches they have with people. S21 might narrow things down. If you are S21 but your seeming matches are not, then you are definitely NOT closely related. Best Regards Andrew
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