GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2001-03 > 0983472513


From: "Ralph Turner" <>
Subject: [DNA] proof
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 10:48:33 -0800
References: <200103010442.f214ggk13255@lists5.rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: <200103010442.f214ggk13255@lists5.rootsweb.com>


A couple of points in William Addams Reitwiesner's recent contribution:

"In other words, how should a genealogist evaluate genetic information? We (the genealogists) have, over the years, learned how to interpret other non-genealogical information (such as wills and deeds) to extract what we consider to be the appropriate genealogical data. "
In what way are wills and deeds NON-Genealogical? What definition has excluded these?

"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...If the mtDNA was noticeably *different*, then this would be sufficient evidence (in my view) to *disprove* your hypothesis. In other words, mtDNA can easily be used to exclude, but is not detailed (granular) enough to be used to build genealogical pedigrees."

Potentially, if not quite yet, the DNA material, mtDNA,Ychromosome, X chromosome, and other nuclear DNA will be the only scientific proof for any lineage. The paper stuff is all ultimately questionable and is not really hard evidence of relationships. DNA amounts to being a 'witness' and physical evidence of events. Genealogical records will be needed to tie into the physical evidence but not vice versa. Something like spectroscopic evidence. One could keep track of how an alloy was made: what mountains the minerals were taken from, records of transport, invoices at port of entries, etc. but if the alloy did not give the correct spectum it wouldn't be the proposed alloy. The samples could have been substituted in many places along the way. Now in order to get a good spectral graph to compare with the sample of the alloy in question many would have to have been made of KNOWN elements and alloys that had been shown to be true by many tests.

In a similar way genetics and genealogy will have to be built up in a new way from a combination of the paper records and samples of DNA and with the creation of standard comparison graphs. This is where we are going. But it is so new in itself and especially new to us, that we will watch the new field develop in jumps and starts. The impetus for this will probably come from outside genealogy itself. But I am amazed at how much interest there is, so maybe we can keep up! However, rejecting genetic evidence is a dead end.

RT





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