tracing your roots through DNA

[silvery]

My husband's 7x Great Grandfather was illegitimate and given his mother's surname in around 1700.

Thanks
Erin 

Frankly, by the time you get to your 8 x great grandfather you share 0.09 % of a bloodline anyway.  (That is getting on for less than one hundredth of one percent.)  Not a lot.

[supermoussi]

Yes, that's great if you want to go back 15,000 years, but I doubt whether anyone had surnames back then.  I would be grateful to go back more than 200 years with parts of my family tree, and with the very small numbers of people on DNA databases, the chances of DNA being of any use to me are very slim indeed.

Your family have been around for millions of years so the time when they have been using surnames is only an extremely small part of your history! It depends on what you are interested in I guess; the DNA Haplogroups I was talking about reveal things about your pre-surname history, not whether X was the son of Y or Z.

[supermoussi]

Frankly, by the time you get to your 8 x great grandfather you share 0.09 % of a bloodline anyway.  (That is getting on for less than one hundredth of one percent.)  Not a lot.

True but most cultures, and hence people, still attach a lot more significance to the paternal line than the others. In addition there is no guarantee that you actually have any DNA in common with any of your non-paternal and non-maternal ancestors, whereas you definitely do share DNA with your paternal and maternal ancestors, albeit only a small amount.

[Necromancer]

Thanks supermoussi  - found that most interesting  

[Nick29]

Yes, that's great if you want to go back 15,000 years, but I doubt whether anyone had surnames back then.  I would be grateful to go back more than 200 years with parts of my family tree, and with the very small numbers of people on DNA databases, the chances of DNA being of any use to me are very slim indeed.

Your family have been around for millions of years so the time when they have been using surnames is only an extremely small part of your history! It depends on what you are interested in I guess; the DNA Haplogroups I was talking about reveal things about your pre-surname history, not whether X was the son of Y or Z.

Yes of course my ancestors go back millions of years - if they didn't, I would not be here !   Most of us like to know quite definitively who our forefathers were, and names and dates on paper are all we have.  Prehistoric DNA will give me neither.  Yes, one day I may pay to find out where my "tribe" came from, but I don't really think that's part of my current quest.

Also, in such a tiny island (the UK), there will have been much interbreeding over the years (it's a mathmatical certainty), so many of us will have shared DNA anyway.

[supermoussi]

For those interested in their pre-surname history the following is an interesting summary of European haplogroups that is reasonably up to date.

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/origins_haplogroups_europe.shtml

[Necromancer]

Many thanks for that.   

[corisande]

If you want to learn something about your recent ancestry, then you have to be proactive. And if you are proactive you can learn a lot with dna.

I have done my own DNA project. Having researched my GRANT family in Ireland, there were a lot of branches that I thought, but could not prove, were connected.

I have had my own dna tested, but none of the other Grants on my trees had. So I went out and got dna tests done for particular ones (I paid for it, they just had to agree to do the test)

I have got the tests in now, and so was for example able to prove the postulated common root to a man shipped to Australia as a convict in 1811, by getting a swab from a known descendant in Australia.

You do need to know what you are doing with dna, or could could waste a lot of money!.

The reason you have to be proactive is that by and large the people doing the tests have little idea as to their roots beyond a few generation (for example Americans) and who are looking for dna to be an answer. And on the other hand those whose family have lived in the same place for years (say in a small town in Ireland for generations) have no need for dna tests as they know their roots. That in short is what you have to overcome

It needs some perseverance to find subjects. For example I have failed to find a living male Grant descendant of a Jasper Grant who was a pirate in Ireland in the 1680s. If I could get a known descendant then I could see if the link existed or not.

Before anyone adds it, there is a small chance each generation of what is known as a "non paternal event" (second marriage, illegitimacy, adoption, etc) so surnames can change.

[redkop]

I have had my DNA researched on Ancestry. I haven't discovered anything new or any relatives either. However, I do have 3% Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Germanic Europe 2%. Can I assume I have Vikings as ancestors or is that my romantic imagination?

As far as I know, I have no Scandinavian relations.