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From: "John T. Nichols" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Is geographic or haplogroup information useful for genealogy?
Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 13:39:23 -0500
References: <4b.2b72a9fe.2b90ed91@aol.com>


I haven't a success story but rather a confusion story. On the
haplogroup page in the Country column, before it was removed, I had no
12 Marker Matches but two One Step Mutations matches both from Cameroon
with Mandara and Tupuri in the Comments field. I am supposedly R1b*. How
R1b* gets to be one mutation away from persons from Cameroon I'm not at
all sure I understand. For Two Step Mutations there are the usual
European countries England, Denmark, etc. But at Three Step Mutations
two more Cameroon matches appear-Podokwo and Tupuri this time. Perhaps
what we are seeing here are European ancestors for persons otherwise
Cameroonian?

John T. Nichols
Manassas, VA

wrote:
>
> Does anyone have stories about genealogical successes achieved by knowing
> haplogroup designations or geographic distributions of names such as you find
> in the Y-STR database or the Recent Ethnic Origins (REO) database at FTDNA? I
> don't discount the sheer intellectual pleasure of satisfying one's curiosity
> about "deep" ancestry. It really stretches our imaginations to imagine what
> paths our ancestors travelled thousands of years ago. But what about
> practical benefits for your "shallow" ancestry, AKA genealogy, where the goal
> is to forge links generation by generation back to a common ancestor?
>
> As Nancy Custer mentioned recently, it would probably be more fruitful to
> search telephone directories or IGI records to study geographic origins of
> surnames. And haplogroup designations are far broader and more generalized
> than the specific haplotypes you get with STR testing. You'd think the
> mutation rates on STRs were almost custom designed to be useful for genealogy
> :)
>
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