GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

From: William Addams Reitwiesner <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] proof
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 04:47:23 -0500

At 10:48 AM 03/01/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>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?


They were not *written for* genealogical purposes. They were written to
record sales of property, or bequeaths of property after death. We
genealogists come along later, and extract genealogical-type information
from these legal documents.

In other words, what a genealogist does is build relationships by teasing
genealogically significant information out of documents which were not
designed for that purpose. At least that's what a genealogist has had to
do up to now. My guess is that, at a certain point in the future, so much
will be known about the DNA of so many people that there will be no need
for genealogists (as we currently understand the term). Not that I care
much -- I'll be dead long before then.


>"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.

Which is my point. Today, it's all we, as genealogists have to go on.
There is not, today, *enough* genetic information available to make a
significant difference in how we genealogists operate.


> 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.

My guess is that this will have to start by changing the paternity laws --
"pater est quem nuptia demonstrant", or the husband is the father. Even
when the child is proved, by DNA tests, to have been concieved by the
mother's adulterous relationship with another man, the woman's husband is,
in law, the child's father. It's true in all 50 of the US states -- the
genetic evidence is not as important as the marriage certificate.


William Addams Reitwiesner

This thread:

• [DNA] proof by "Ralph Turner" <>

  • Re: [DNA] proof by William Addams Reitwiesner <>