GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

From: "Edward H. Gaulin" <>
Subject: [DNA] RE: "Deep" Ancestry
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 11:06:13 -0500

In response to Alan Savin's comments yesterday, I do agree, maybe. I
also scoff at those who claim descent from Adam & Eve or the Irish kings
who lived before Christ or even George Washington.

Although I'm not so sure it's very important for most of us at this
stage what terms are used to describe this fascinating subject. It's
not as if we need to quickly develop a citation to document why Uncle
Oscar is Uncle Oscar.

I'm still at the stage of trying to understand some of the enormous
gains recently announced by the scientists in the UK, Italy and the US.
Almost every day now there is something new on the subject on the news
wires for us to try to absorb. Biology 101 (1955) in college has
finally let me down.

My current genealogy efforts are centered on the management of a GenSoc
on the west coast of Florida. It has only been in the past few years
that many of our members accepted the computer as a genealogical tool -
in fact some still haven't. Now I'm wrestling with how to meet our
society objective of educating the membership on this subject. Ideas
would be appreciated.

So it isn't terms that are important at the moment, it's trying to
explain the concept, but perhaps even more important, to give it
relevance. Many of us were absolutely delighted when we took our
ancestry back 400 years and we could understand that. But now we are
discussing "deep" (deep, deep, really deep) ancestry of 40,000 years.
WOW! How do we do that? Can you imagine what that Ahnentafel would
look like?

A term that has gained some popularity recently might be used to help us
in this case. Does "fuzzy" genealogy work for anyone?

Ed Gaulin <>
President, Manasota Genealogy Society, Inc.

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• [DNA] RE: "Deep" Ancestry by "Edward H. Gaulin" <>