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When it comes to DNA testing, genealogy and medical testing are not the same. Both sciences are advancing all the time, but their approach and what the scientists are looking for are vastly different. For this reason, before you have your DNA tested, be sure you know why you want this procedure done.

The testing of a person’s DNA for genealogy purposes involves the identification of nucleotides and where they are located on the sample DNA strand. This identification process, when looked at as a whole, can tell the examiner many things about the samples genetic ancestral past.

In the Y-DNA samples that are examined, the order and composition of the identified markers is how it is determined what family line the sample comes from. This DNA strand is passed on from father to son and is a continuous marker of the family lineage. A scientist can compare two different samples and can determine if they are ancestrally linked genetically.

This same type of matching up of like samples can be done for the female DNA strand or the mtDNA. By identifying matching sequences in the sample, an ancestral match can be found.

Neither of these tests will give a person any medical information. The reason is because of what the scientists are looking for. There is some association between haplogroupgs and diseases or certain characteristics like longevity of life. This is only because further testing has already been completed. This includes the association of particular markers that are missing or present from a DNA strand and disease.

For this reason, DNA testing, genealogy, and medical testing are different and the results from one cannot be used for the other, in most cases.

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… Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction…

(Excerpted from “The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less” by Eric Schulman
© copyright 1996-1997. by Eric Schulman)
Located on the web at: http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/hist/hist.html

Can Genealogy DNA Testing take us back to the beginning?

As of today scientists, historians and genealogists have fairly reached the conclusion that the following list of bi-peds are in the evolutionary chain of human like creatures that inhabited earth and that evolved in to modern day Homo Sapiens.

Here are some fairly acceptable date ranges for various Hominid species.
Homo Habilis – 2.2 to 1.6 million years BCE (Before Common Era 2010)
Homo Erectus – 2 to 0.4 million years BCE
Homo Sapiens – 400,000 to 200,000 BCE
Homo Sapiens Neandertalensis – 200,000 to 30,000 years BCE
Homo Sapiens Sapiens – 130,000 years BCE to present.
(Washington State University)
http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/timeline.html

Apparently most of us, at least Americans, resemble some of our ancestors as depicted in this sculpture known as the Venus of Dolni Vŭstonice, one of the earliest known figurines depicting the human body. Dates back to about 29,000 to 25,000 BP. (Before Present 1950,) or say, about 27,000 BC.  (courtesy wikipedia)

Oldest figurine of human body

Humans are noted for their desire to understand and influence their environment, seeking to explain and manipulate natural phenomena through science, philosophy, mythology and religion. This natural curiosity has led to the development of advanced tools and skills, which are passed down culturally; humans are the only animal species known to build fires, cook their food, clothe themselves, and use numerous other technologies.
(From wikipedia/humans)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens#Human_evolution

Seems I recall that we along with apes and monkeys have and use opposable thumbs that are able to  articulate which is a pretty handy feature for climbing trees and other tasks.  I know that I am a super being in the eyes of my three dogs.  They trust me for their next meal.  I make light appear magically when I enter a room, and best of all I can turn a door handle.

Ultimately researchers will not fully agree on exact times and dates but through the use of DNA testing we can get almost all the way back to the earliest known one of three, or one of seven, female ancestors.

That is quite an accomplishment for sure.

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The DNA ancestry project of your family is the name that is generally used when a family member traces back their lineage by genetic means. Before the advent of DNA testing, when a person wanted to know about their past, they would usually start by interviewing the elder members of the family.

Families usually have one member that is like the unofficial historian of the clan. This member would be the recipient of the old newspaper articles and other clippings of events in which family members were involved.

With the discovery of DNA testing and the ease at which a person and family can utilize it now, since the costs have dramatically decreased in recent years, the search of a family’s past has been made significantly easier.

By having your family tree traced back through both the Y DNA and the mtDNA lines, a person would be able to locate the areas where their family lived in past years. With the use of the surname data bases that are on most DNA ancestral sites, it is much easier to find out pertinent information about past members of your family.

Some searches lead to more information than others, but one fact has been found out about all of the humans that are living in the modern age. We all came from Africa and a common ancestor about 65,000 years ago. It’s the path from then till present day that tells the story of a family. This is what the study of the genealogy of your family can tell you.

By knowing your past relatives, you will know more about yourself and why you live where you do. This is what a family DNA ancestry project can bring you and your other family members.

This is where you can take the simple, pain free, DNA ANCESTRY PROJECT

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Those of you that do genealogy research should enjoy this incredibly rare video of what big city living was like in the early 1900′s. A couple of weeks ago there was a huge discussion on one of the genealogy mail lists about why there were so many deaths by train in the old days.

Update: (PLEASE NOTE – This video is being resized and will be available soon.) Available NOW !

San Francisco Video Before the Earthquake

The common term you find in old newspaper articles is, “Killed by the cars”. Well when you view this video it will all become perfectly clear to you as to why so many people were killed by the cars.

Perhaps folks in the horse and buggy days were used to a horse having enough common sense to shy away from a human standing in the road. Chances are trains and electric rail cars didn’t move off the track much.

OK, so this old video does not have anything to do with DNA testing but it sure got my genealogy juices flowing. Please enjoy and if you like it as much as we do please link to it or tell your friends. Thank you.

Video of  San Francisco Before the Earthquake 1906

The following description of the actual footage is taken from the archives of the Library of Congress.

Market Street, San Francisco, California.

This rare film was shot from the front window of a moving Market Street cable car, is one of the only video records of San Francisco’s principal thoroughfare and downtown area before their destruction in the 1906 earthquake and fire.

The filmed ride covers 1.55 miles at an average speed of nearly 10 miles per hour. While there is no production or copyright information on the film, the state of completion of the Flood Building and the Monadnock Building indicate that the year is 1905.

Also, the apparent position of the sun in relation to the time visible on the Ferry Building clock point to early September as the month. Market Street, graded through sand dunes in the 1850′s, is 120 feet wide, and nearly 3.5 miles long.

The street runs northeast from the foot of Twin Peaks to the Ferry Building. Different street grids, diagonal on the northwest side and parallel on the southeast side, create several awkward diagonal intersections along Market Street, contributing to the chaotic traffic situation that is evident in the film.

San Francisco’s cable cars, which first began operations in 1873, have no power of their own, and operate by “gripping” a moving cable beneath a slot in the street. This is the origin of the name “south of the slot” for the South-of-Market Street district.

The Market Street lines, dating from 1883, merged in 1902 to form the United Railroads of San Francisco. Dark cars served westerly neighborhood lines extending along McAllister, Hayes and Haight streets, light cars served southwesterly neighborhoods, with the lines extending along Valencia and Castro streets.

The Market Street section of the lines ended at the Ferry Building, where passengers boarded ferries for Oakland, Alameda, or Berkeley, across San Francisco Bay. East of Sutter Street, horse cars ran along Market Street. Independently owned, they ran on side tracks to the Ferry Building.

A few electric streetcars, dating from 1892, are seen in the film crossing Market Street. Market Street itself reverted to electric streetcars in 1906, following the earthquake and fire. In all, the film shows some thirty cable cars, four horse cars and four streetcars. An interesting feature of the film is the apparent abundance of automobiles.

However, a careful tracking of automobile traffic shows that almost all of the autos seen circle around the camera/cable car many times (one ten times).

This traffic was apparently staged by the producer to give Market Street the appearance of a prosperous modern boulevard with many automobiles. In fact, in 1905 the automobile was still something of a novelty in San Francisco, with horse-drawn buggies, carts, vans, and wagons being the common private and business vehicles.

The near total lack of traffic control along Market Street emphasizes the newness of the automobile. Granite paving stripes in the street marking ignored pedestrian crosswalks, making the crossing of Market Street on foot a risky venture. The pedestrian “islands” for homeward-bound downtown cable car commuters are among the few signs of order visible in the film.

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One thing that DNA testing for genealogy shows is,  if you are a male, you have the same biological component as your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, your great, great grandfather and your g-g-g-g-g-grandfather.

That component is called the Y-chromosome, part of the genetic ribbon of information that makes every male, male.   When you test your Y-DNA, you can determine whether you are or are not related to another male with the same surname.  You might even want to join the growing list of surname projects going on across the country.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, exists in almost all cells and is the building block for a human being.  DNA determines genetics and whether your eyes are blue and your hair is straight.  It also predicts the risk for health disorders or diseases, so there is much to be learned through DNA testing that goes beyond ancestry.

The way genealogists approach DNA testing is they look for mutations.  In other words, a mutation is a change in the DNA sequencing.  Cells in our body increase by dividing in a process called mitosis.  An enzyme called polymerase uses the original DNA helix as a template and then builds a whole new cell using the same DNA code.

Occasionally a mutation in this process occurs and gets passed on.  It is rare; approximately 0.2% per generation, but it does signal a break in the identical ancestral code that gets passed from father to son.

There are DNA genealogy tests for women, even if they do not have a Y chromosome.  For women, scientists rely on the mitochondrial DNA which gets passed from the mother to all her offspring.

It’s fascinating that with the help of a single cheek swab DNA testing for genealogy can track the history of your surname, or even your ancient ancestors as they migrated from East Africa 80 thousand years ago.

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OK, so you know about DNA testing to discover your father and mother’s deep ancestry, now how to do genealogy research online will be covered.

Many of you will be very familiar with all of these methods, but for those of you that are just starting on creating a family tree these ideas should help to get you started.

You should always start with yourself and work backwards through your ancestors locating as much information on each generation as you can before you move on the earlier ones.  More time is lost trying to make a connection with some famous person that you were told you might be related to.

Well that may turn out to be right but in order to do this thing right you have to take one step at a time and document all of your research.  When you find something that is helpful you should record it in your journal or notebook and then enter the information into your computer genealogy program.

The notebooks should have their pages dated as you enter details that way you can always return to them at a later date when you find another piece of the puzzle.

Some of the most helpful websites that you will use are actually free and you will spend many hundreds of hours online before you will have to shell out any money for online subscription websites.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, (LDS) or the Mormon Church, owns the worlds largest accumulation of documents in digital and microfilm formats.  Their main library in Salt Lake City, Utah is free and open to the public and no one will try to convert you, it is just a library.  Millions of rolls of microfilm are at your fingertips and you will find everything from church records, civil records, local histories, census records, marriage records, cemetery records and everything in between.

LDS also has Family History Centers (FHC) in a Mormon church near you.  These smaller branch libraries have access to most of the materials that are at Salt Lake City either by computer or by your renting the microfilm to use at the local FHC.

To find out what they have available you may use any computer on the internet and go to www.familysearch.org to go to the main website.  From here you can do some actual personal name searches and see if any of your ancestors have had their information extracted from primary record collections and added to the online database.

This is only one small part of what they have available as most of the records have not been transcribed and digitized yet, so in those cases you will want to click on the library button and then go to the library catalog, and do a surname search or a location search to see what they have in their index and then you will know which film to order.

Another great resource that is free is the huge accumulation of extracted records and queries from other researchers that is online at rootsweb.com.  This site is one of the oldest on the web and was operated by volunteers at the beginning until recent years when it was purchased by ancestry.com.  Rootsweb is still free to use.

The USGenweb.com site is also free and you will find many exciting discoveries there.  My recommendation is to go down to each state/county level for the individual county Genweb sites where you will find cemetery records, maps, documents, bible records and untold wondrous things.

Do not overlook online newspaper collections.  Check for newspapers that were in operation in the areas where your ancestors lived.  Many of them have online access to the historical editions but you will have to search around and ask questions.  You will want to read the article: “21 Ways to Start to Build Your Own Family Tree” at old-newspaper-articles.com.

Later on as you become more advanced and after you have tested your Genealogy DNA you will no doubt want to subscribe to places like ancestry and genealogybank, but for now you should have fun starting with just the free information above.

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Without ancestry DNA tests, most people can only name their maternal and paternal grandparents. After that the information becomes unreliable unless great time and effort is expended to research historical records.

Science allows us to look back at our ancient family tree, to the time when humans first migrated from their early roots in Africa. To find out where your family originated, migrated and then mutated to form its own group or haplogroup, you need only take a moment to swab the inside of your cheek with a special painless device.

Genealogists today are actively gathering DNA samples to establish markers and lines of ancestry. When looking for a DNA test lab ask about the size of the database. The larger the base of knowledge, the more reliable and informative your test results will be. There are several labs that provide DNA testing; begin your search with the size of the database.

There are two kits available, the Mitochondrial or mtDNA and the Y-Chromosome. The Y chromosome passes down only through the males of a family since males have an X and a Y chromosome while females have just an X. The Y Chromosome test will determine paternal linkage, while the mtDNA will explore the mother’s line for her female and male children.

There are various DNA test kits available and depending upon the number of markers the kit looks for, the more information the result will yield, and the greater the cost for the kit. You will receive the test kit in the mail. It will house what appears to be an undersized plastic toothbrush and a sterile container to place it in for mailing it back.

Once you return the ancestry DNA tests you’ll wait 6 to 8 weeks for the results and then you are on your way to exploring the ancient roots of your family.

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With DNA testing for ancestry, the field of Genealogy has more tools than ever to discover your family tree.  Along with the genealogist research tools for digging deep into historical records and family history, you now have Genealogy DNA comparison to give solid evidence to your research.

A simple DNA test can start you on the road to discovering your ancestors from 10,000 years ago.  Men and women can both test their DNA to learn the origin of their maternal ancestry.  A specific kind of test called mtDNA or mitochondrial DNA, searches only the women along the line, no men.  Women and men both receive their mtDNA from their mother.

Men can learn the origin of their paternal line by testing their Y chromosome.  The Y chromosome test checks only the paternal line. Women do not have Y DNA and cannot be tested for their paternal line.  If they want to know their paternal ancestry they must ask a brother or their father or a male cousin to be tested.  This is one way to firm up the surname line of your ancestry.

Once the DNA sample is taken, the results will determine your haplogroup.  This is a set of a people with a common ancestor, often from 10,000 to 150,000 years ago, the time when it has been shown that humans evolved in Africa and then migrated around the world.  Men have both a paternal and maternal haplogroup; women have only the maternal haplogroup because they bear only X chromosomes while men have an X and a Y.

A fascinating result of the DNA test is to see where your ancient family members migrated across the globe.  You’ll see how mutations in early genetic lines affect your family too.   You’ll learn all the genetic influences in your ancient family tree.  You may have Asian influence you don’t know about or you may be related to Napolean or a U.S. President.   DNA testing for ancestry will provide knowledge about your unique family history you never thought possible.

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