Genealogy

[digitS']

For those of you who have the interest in genealogy ..

. I'm not sure if this will encourage or discourage you . It was a fun read, anyway:

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/11/15/author-a-j-jacobs-talks-genealogy-and-the-worlds-family-tree

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thanks for the warning Steve. I now know to be careful bringing up that subject with a couple of certain relatives. I could see then getting obsessed with that and nattering on about it incessantly.

Seriously it is an interesting read. Like any tool it can be abused or misused, and there are questions about just how accurate it is. But it does show a connectivity to others that some will find frightening and some will really like. And there are those privacy concerns. Does the world need to know how closely I'm related to Albert Einstein, Benito Mussolini, or Queen Isabella? Do I need to know that? Just something more to think about if I care to.

 

[flowerbug]

i really enjoy things like this, but like you say some grains of salt are always worth considering too.

what has always facinated me is the "bottleneck" type of studies which try to figure out what the past populations were like and where they went. how they track mutations and the various DNA changes.

now with more findings they are realizing that the population of the America's wasn't small way back when they were "discovered". the books 1491 and 1492 are both excellent.

 

[Ridgerunner]

DNA is not always as clear-cut as some people tend to think. I read something yesterday when looking at the origin of domestic chickens. They used to think that all domestic chickens came from the Red Jungle Fowl. Now they think three other types of wild chickens may have contributed to the genetics. They can't be sure though. Domestic and wild chickens have interbred so much and domestic chickens have been spread worldwide by people so they can't be sure of what the DNA may be telling them about that.

I once went to a talk by an archeologist that had spent a lot of his career on a specific dig in Texas. He cautioned about putting too much faith in DNA testing when trying to interpret the past and the movement of people. There has been so much mixing that it's easy to draw the wrong conclusions. DNA is a tool that can help but you need some type f corroborating evidence.

My wife read 1491 and 1492 and really liked them. She read them digitally, not in paper form and I don't do digital reading so I didn't. She would agree that both are excellent.

 

[digitS']

If we mean the books by author Charles Mann, I think it might be 1491 & 1493. But, what do I know? Have not read them! ( Was I even around in 2005 when the first came out ?)

I did know that conclusions like a pre-Columbus 2 million Native American population in what is now the US is now in contention. There was a huge disruption with the coming of the Europeans from a population collapse. Often, Old World epidemics even preceded the arrival of the Europeans. Maybe I am permitted to think that wherever and whatever the population, dense or sparse, it was precious and a grievous loss.

About the time Mr Mann was writing about Native Americans, I was reading a couple of Bryan Sykes books on the genetics of the people of the British Isles. That was fun and may have debunked a few myths. By the time Mr Sykes got to evaluating the genetics of North America, I was beginning to have some doubts about what DNA can show. Genetic sequencing should be of use for drawing relationships but I don't know how far back we can take this ... But then again, historical documents on births and marriages are probably even more suspect.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

they are always finding out more as time goes on. if they can find past sites of food storage they can now get enough DNA from residues on things to figure out what's up. it's very interesting.

i wish i could sleep for a few hundred years just to see what happens next... where we go... if we make it to other planets... what beans we take... what else goes along... or do we go robotic.

so many interesting mysteries.