Ancient Brits

[Malcolm33]

   The main thing to remember if you want to test your ancestral dna is that only males can test for both YDNA and MitoChondrial DNA.     YDNA traces back through every father which makes it useful for tracing recent paternal parentage.     Mitochondrial is passed on through the maternal line and males do have it from their mothers.   But they cannot pass it on.    So if a female wishes to know their paternal line they need to have a brother or father tested for YDNA.

    To give everyone an idea of how this works when tracing recent ancestry take a look at the Grant project here - http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~grantdna/dna_results.html
     Using the inner scroll bar on the right, go down until you find 141765  This is the dna markers of my cousin Peter Grant (my gt.gt.gt.grandfather William Grant is Peter's gt.gt.gt.gt.grandfather).  I cannot trace my father's mother's mito dna but since our respective fathers lines look very solid then I am reasonably sure that I have the very same haplogroup through my grandmother.
      You will see that with the limited number of markers tested - you need to go to about a 100 for a 99% certainty - there are variations.   However Peter's dna is very close to an Edinburgh person, even though Peter and myself are from Notts and Derby ancestors.

[Malcolm33]

   The link in my previous comment may not get you to the correct page even though it does when I click on the very same address from my favourites.     In this case click on 'Y-Dna results' over on the left.  Then on Y-Dna Results on the dark blue band and then select 'Colorized'.   This should then give you the Grant YDna results.

[Malcolm33]

    Once you have your dna results you can enter them into the mitosearch - http://www.mitosearch.org/search_results.asp?comparison_type=Standard&uid=DWZ2P or ysearch pages and the programme will then find people who are the closest dna match to yourself.  The ysearch page doesn't seem to be active at the moment.

[supermoussi]

I have been looking at the 'Ancient Brits' and am sure that my mob were of the Catuvellauni tribe in the South East of England

http://www.roman-britain.org/tribes/tribes.htm
http://www.celtnet.org.uk/brythonic-tribes.html

[roopat]

Thank you, Malcolm, your explanation of DNA & its testing was easy to follow for a scientific numbskull like myself. I remember the Cheddar Man & Ice Man tests, I find it all very fascinating.
   

[Malcolm33]

Thank you, Malcolm, your explanation of DNA & its testing was easy to follow for a scientific numbskull like myself. I remember the Cheddar Man & Ice Man tests, I find it all very fascinating.
 

   So glad I can help because I know how difficult it was for me to try and understand what goes on with DNA.    Though it costs a bit, I just had to get tested myself as it kept nagging away at me all the time.    The very odd thing is that mitochondrial dna is really a parasite which kicked off all advanced life on earth.   Now it cannot leave the human carrier nor can we live without it.   It works completely differently from other dna of which ydna is only another small part.   But I do recommend reading The Seven Daughters of Eve and you can often pick this book up very cheaply from Abe Books - just google them and enter the title and then Sykes in the author box.   Sykes has made the seven women come alive by recreating their lives - fictionally of course - but probably close to what did happen.

[bykerlads]

Malcolm, thank you for explaining this in such an understandable way. Much appreciated. it's really fascinating.

[Malcolm33]

Malcolm, thank you for explaining this in such an understandable way. Much appreciated. it's really fascinating.

  Ah well ye see, it's aall in the Consett watter.   Doon in Byker thee'd rather buy another gill.  Ye've only got te look at another Consettonian, namely Mr. Bean.

[SPARHAM]

Malcolm, thank you for your useful information set out in terms that I can understand.   I also remember the Ice Man and Cheddar Man dna tests.  I remember people being told that they could trace back to the Cheddar Man - awesome stuff.

Sparham