NEw Worlders, whose family has been here longest?

[DanS]

The male line came over from a little town near Nuremberg in 1842. There may have been some scandals to precede the trip, because what we know of part of the story after the move is pretty trippy.

Overall, geneaology and a healthy dose of storytelling is good, harmless fun.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
On the other hand, I find it quite reasonable to claim that perhaps 70% of Europeans+Asians have a single common ancestor at 10k

I said with a few exceptions in my post.
Some Natives would probably be among those (even those, youd be surprised how a little european blood crept in, all you need is one adventurous guy early on to connect them to the rest)
I thinks we would have over 90% of ppl covered.

BTW Krazyhorse I will admit it right now,
Im way too lazy to look up a source.
If you push me further well just agree to disagree.
It makes sense I think though.
If women is 70K and you assume a slightly faster spread rate through the male child line (for biological and social reasons), then you get a much shorter date, because of the exponential way this works.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Odin
Mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA is good for tracking human migrations, But all this Mt Eve and Y Adam talk is annoying, they are a result of how Mt and Y DNA is passed down, It fools people without a proper knoledge of the subject to think that other modern humans living at that time were not our ancestors, which is obviously false.

Well any concept when mis-used can brin non-sense.

It's the same principle as speciation.
If you were there to witness speciation, you would see nothing.

It's defined by what happens AFTER.

Simlarly, if you witnesse Eve's life, you would see nothing REALLY particular about her (she had at least 2 daugthers, and probably more but that's about it).

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by JimmyCracksCorn
KH and Lul:

There are tens of millions of Mayflower descendents scattered all across the United States, and probably Canada as well. A good number of these families no longer live in New England, and haven't for hundreds of years.

And yeah, I'm well aware of genetic tests which can link virtually anyone to anyone else in the world, but thats not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the general trend among North Americans to place their family histories in line with whatever "founding fathers" myths are present in their areas, despite common sense, migratory patterns and numeric evidence that would suggest otherwise.

You guys are taking the genetic approach, which is completely different. You may as well go one step further and say that we're all related to every other living organism on the planet - or the universe - because in most senses that is true. For instance, the Sun is my great (x-infinity) grandfather - did you know that?

But yeah, I know what you guys are saying, and I'm not necessarily disagreeing. I more have an issue with BS, self aggrandizing family histories. No one wants to admit (or discover) that their ancestors were most likely poor, peasant immigrants who probably changed their names anyways when arriving at Ellis Island or Halifax or wherever.

Yes but we're not just talking in very broad term.
"Everyone is related to everyone"

for example not everyone has a common ancestor 8 generations ago.

Here we have a specific event, which is not that long ago, and people easily forget how many descendants a few person can have in a short span of time (specially before the last 50 years, when the family size could be crazy).