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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2003-04 > 1049923879
From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] American Scientist Magazine
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 17:31:19 EDT
In a message dated 04/08/03 10:22:48 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
writes:
> Even up unto a period within our own lifetimes most people found their
> spouses within a few miles of their homes.
I agree that the results seem very counter-intuitive. But you can have very
dense networks of people who intermarry primarily within their own group
(endogamy), yet it only takes a few people to connect these isolated groups
together. Rohde's computer simulation all hinges on the choice for the
migration rate between groups, and I have no idea what is historically
realistic. Dennis L. Haarsager contributed a very interesting example from
his research on a rural parish in Norway when we were discussing this late
last year. That was in the context of a column by Steve Olson. Olson seems to
think that genealogy is totally pointless since we are all related anyway
(I'm probably putting words into his mouth). At the time Olson wrote his
column, he was basing his comments on a paper by Chang, who assumed totally
random mating in his model. That's obviously unrealistic, but it's
interesting that the computer simulation ends up with "somewhat less-recent
common ancestors."
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2002-12/1040571007
I have a vague recollection that there's a technical term for this kind of
network (dense webs with thin connections) in Barabasi, "Linked: The New
Science of Networks," a book I recommended last year. I'll have to see if I
can find it in the library again, since it seems relevant to this issue.
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2002-11/1036262594
Ann Turner - GENEALOGY-DNA List Administrator
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