GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] mtDNA scenario
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 09:01:45 EST

In a message dated 2/28/2001 2:10:52 AM Pacific Standard Time,
writes:


> I'd agree that this *supports* your hypothesis, but is not stronger
> evidence than the migration pattern. You're referring specifically to
> mtDNA, not nuclear chromosomes, right? Well, we've seen, through the
> Icelandic data, that mtDNA remains stable over dozens of human generations.
> So the people could be distant matrilineal cousins.
>
>
I am willing to revise my opinion as more data comes in, but at the moment
I'm inclined to weight the mtDNA evidence as somewhat stronger than the
migration evidence. We're speaking of probabilities here -- what is the
probability that the families moved together because they were friends vs
family, and what is the probability that the mtDNA haplotype would be found
by chance in the local population.

But as you say, mtDNA evidence is much more powerful at ruling out
hypotheses. It's just not as much fun when that happens!

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