If you want to get at the roots of your
ancestry through studies in population genetics, read the article that will take you back before there were borders or organized
religions titled, “Tracing European Founder Lineages in the Near Eastern mtDNA Pool.” Martin Richards, Vincent
Macaulay, et al. American Journal of Human Genetics, 67: 1251-1276, 2000. See where our mothers really came from. (The term
“our mothers” refers to the human race.)
You’ll
notice in the articles you read that the British often use the term “Near Eastern” and that the Americans use
the term “Middle Eastern” for the same area. Make time capsules of your DNA information for future generations
to look back at their ancestor’s medical histories and genetic data. Put in explanations of how to interpret your tests
and printouts or reports.
Perhaps you want to find out the percentage of various races in your ancestry. How do know where to begin your journey into
the past and future? What if you’re a foundling, an orphan, or have no knowledge of your own ethnicity? Can a DNA test
at least tell you how many races are in your recent or ancient past? What facts do genetic markers really tell you about ancestry?
If you want to start your ancestry search with DNA testing, first you take the DNA tests along with tests of racial percentages
if you desire. Even your DNA has a cultural component to its molecular biology. Then you interpret the results making the
complex easy to understand for yourself or your clients. Your DNA testing service can help you find answers. So can many Web
sites as well as this book and other books recommended here.
Next in your family history search, you collect letters, diaries, oral history transcriptions, home sources, artifacts, memorabilia,
Census research, wills-and-probate records, medical histories, land records, slave ownership records, if it applies to your
or your client. Pay particular attention to social histories to fill some gaps left by lack of women’s records.
Search through church, synagogue, mosque, pagoda, or temple records, vital records from the US government such as military
records, social security information, and government pensions for retired government employees, employment and tax records,
if any exist and are available. Check school records from elementary through college, if any, social histories, ethnic histories,
and religious school records.
Go to the
family history Web sites, the ships’ passenger lists. I highly recommend a book for searching women’s ancestry,
titled, Discovering Your Female Ancestors, by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, Betterway Books, Ohio 1998, ISBN # 1-55870-472-8.
The book’s subtitle emphasizes “Special strategies for uncovering hard-to-find information about your female lineage.”
Marriage records often were in different languages representing the former country or languages of the ethnic group. You may
need to translate a different alphabet to find a maiden name on a marriage certificate never registered, but obtained from
clergy.
Then you review and analyze the records. Study the social history of the times and location of this individual. Add family
history and migrations to social history, and you have the beginnings of an outline to write a biography of the ancestor as
a family history.
Learn to interpret the results of your own DNA test and expand your historical research ability to trace your ancestry. “An
interesting idea was expressed by a colleague from Canada, Dr. Charles Scriver,” explains geneticist, Dr. Batsheva Bonné-Temir.
“At a meeting which I organized here in Israel on Genetic Diversity Among Jews in 1990, Dr. Scriver gave a paper on
‘What Are Genes Like that Doing in a Place Like This? Human History and Molecular Prosopography.’
“He
claimed that a biological trait has two histories, a biological component and a cultural component.” Dr. Charles Scriver
is founder of the DeBelle Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics in Canada. He also established screening programs in Montreal
for thalassaemia and Tay Sachs Disease.”
According
to Bonné-Tamir, at the 1990 meeting in Israel on Genetic Diversity Among Jews, Dr. Charles Scriver stated, “When the
event clusters and an important cause of it is biological, the cultural history also is likely to be important because it
may explain why the persons carrying the gene are in the particular place at the time.”
The term, “when the event clusters” refers to an event when genes cluster together in a DNA test because the genes
are similar in origin, that is, they have a common ancestral origin in a particular area, a common ancestor.
“When I look at my own papers throughout the years,” says Bonné-Tamir. “I find that I have been quite a
pioneer in realizing the significance of combining the history of individuals or of populations with their biological attributes.
This is now a leading undertaking in many studies which use, for example, mutations to estimate time to the most recent ancestors
and alike.”
What lines of inquiry are used in genetics? Dr. Charles R. Scriver wrote a chapter in Batsheva Bonné-Temir’s book, titled
What are genes like that doing in a place like this? Human History and Molecular Prosopography. The book title is: Genetic
Diversity Among Jews: Diseases and Markers at the DNA Level. Bonné-Tamir, B. and Adam, A. Oxford University Press. 1992.
With permission,
an excerpt is reprinted below from page 319: “When a disease clusters in a particular community, two lines of
inquiry follow:
1. Is the
clustering caused by shared environmental exposure? Or is it explained by host susceptibility accountable to biological and/or
cultural inheritance?
2. If the
explanation is biological, how are the determinants inherited? These lines of inquiry imply that a disease has two different
histories, one biological, the other cultural. One involves genes (heredity), pathways of development (ontogeny), and constitutional
factors; the other, demography, migration and cultural practice.
Neither history is mutually exclusive. Such thinking shifts the focus of inquiry from sick populations and incidence of disease
to sick individuals and the cause of their particular disease. The person with the disease becomes the object of concern which
is not the same as the disease the person has.” (Page. 319).
Check out the chapter, “Genetics Study Identifies At-risk relatives” from Celebrating the Family published by
Ancestry.com Publishing.
Check out the Web site at: http://shops.ancestry.com/product.asp?productid=2625&shopid=128.
Geneticists
today are making inroads in new areas such as phenomics, nutritional genomics, and ancestral genetics. Batsheva Bonné-Tamir,
PhD, http://www.tau.ac.il/medicine/USR/bonnétamirb.htm or http://www.tau.ac.il/medicine/ at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, is
Head of the National Laboratory for the Genetics of Israeli Populations (with Mia Horowitz) and Director of the Shalom
and Varda Yoran Institute for Genome Research Tel-Aviv. She is also on the faculty of the Department of Human Genetics and
Molecular Medicine, Sackler School of Medicine.
Dr. Bonné-Tamir states that “One of my most impressive conclusions from the advancement in the last few years and the
accumulation of knowledge in the fields of genetics and medicine, is the molecular revolution based on immense sophistication
of lab techniques. This is really responsible for the recent increased emphasis on the human-social-anthropological aspects
that affect biological diversity.”
Bonné-Tamir explains, “At a meeting in 1973, in my paper on Merits and Difficulties in Studies of Middle Eastern Isolates,
I said that ‘The Middle Eastern isolates have emphasized again the fertile and necessary interrelationship between history
and genetics.’”
Do historical events influence genes? “Comparative studies in population genetics are often undertaken in order to attempt
reconstruction of historical and migratory movements based on gene frequencies,” says Bonné-Tamir. “The Samaritans
and Karaites offer opportunities in the opposite direction, for example, to learn the influence of historical events on gene
frequencies.”
Genomic
views of any ethnic group’s history are important for further study. Whether you are taking the skeptic’s position
or the genomic view of your cultural history, biology does have a cultural component that needs to be analyzed scientifically.
Finding flaws or benefits in research studies of any kind is the way to find inroads to truths. How else can facts change
and knowledge progress?
Molecular genealogy has joined efforts with molecular genetics.
on (SMGF) is a nonprofit organization that was founded to build
a correlated genetic and genealogical database. How can this information help you in family history
research? Ugo A. Perego, MS. Senior Project Administrator, Molecular Genealogy Research Project, Brigham Young University,
http://molecular-genealogy.byu.edu , and now with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy
Foundation at: http://www.smgf.org/ says, “I believe that DNA is the next
thing in genealogy—the tool for the 21st century family historians.
In the
past 20 years, the genealogical world has been revolutionized by the introduction of the Internet.
“An increasing number of people are becoming interested in searching for their ancestors because through emails and
websites a large world of family history information is now available to them. The greatest contribution of molecular methods
to family history is the fact that in some instances family relationships and blocked genealogies can be extended even in
the absence of written records.
“Adoptions, illegitimacies, names that have been changes, migrations, wars, fire, flood, etc. are all situations in
which a record may become unavailable. However, no one can change our genetic composition, which we have received by those
that came before us.
“Currently, DNA testing is an effective approach to help with strict paternal and maternal lines thanks to the
analysis and comparison of the Y chromosome (male line) and mitochondrial DNA (female line) in individuals that have reason
to believe the existence of a common paternal or maternal ancestor.
“A large database of genetic and genealogical data is currently been built by the BYU Center for Molecular Genealogy
and the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation. This database will contain thousands of pedigree charts and DNA from people
from all over the world. Currently it has already over 35,000 participants in it.
“The purpose of this database is to provide additional knowledge in reconstructing family lines other than the paternal
and maternal, by using a large number of autosomal DNA (the DNA found in the non-sex chromosomes).
This research, known as the Molecular Genealogy Research Project is destined to take DNA for genealogists to the next level.”
For additional reading, please visit the BYU’s Molecular Genealogy Research Project’s two Web sites. Another good
source of information is at http://
