Tuesday, January 23, 2007

It´s official, I am Irish, not Black, too bad (Ken)



I had my DNA sampled and checked to trace my genetic ancestry. You get a kit with some cotton swabs and scrape cells off the inside of your cheek. After that, they get sent to a lab in Calgary. After a few months, you get a report showing where your genetic ancestors lived. As I understand it, the Y chromosome is passed from father to son virtually unchanged. Over time, certain mutations occurred at specific times and places. If one of these mutations shows up in your DNA, you have an ancestor who lived in that place at that time.



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Above is my DNA patralinial ancestry. I am halotype R1b. It is pretty damn uninteresting. Here is what they told me:

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How the journey of your ancestors is written in your DNA:



DNA evidence has shown that every human alive today shares one common ancestor arising from Africa between fifty thousand and two hundred thousand years ago. Over time, different groups of people made a decision to embark on an epic journey to find new places to live. These perilous paths our ancestors traveled brought them to the far-reaching corners of the globe over thousands of years, from the rocky cliffs of Scotland to the sandy beaches of Thailand.


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Along these varied journeys, small changes called mutations occurred in our ancestors¡¦ DNA. These mutations act like markers, or time and date stamps, pinpointing our ancestors to a particular time and place. Each ensuing generation of our ancestors then inherited these mutations, and everyone today has these same mutations that our ancestors acquired so many years ago.


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The groups or tribal clans that our ancestors migrated around the world in are called haplogroups. Each haplogroup is defined by it's own unique set of the genetic markers, or mutations located on the Y-chromosome (Y-DNA). Y-DNA is passed down through the generations along the paternal line. These markers found on your Y-DNA allow you to follow your ancestors back in time and discover your deep ancestral roots.

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Your Results :
based on DNA testing of your 28 certified markers, your ancestral paternal line is predicted below.


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Your predicted Y-DNA haplogroup is: Haplogroup R1b
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Summary for Haplogroup R:The man who founded Haplogroup R lived in North West Asia approximately 30,000 years ago. His descendents migrated into Europe and many regions of Europe.
Sub-branches of Haplogroup R:
R1a, which is very common the Slavic populations of Eastern Europe;
R1b, which is associated with the Cro-Magnon people of western Europe; and
R2, which is found mainly in India.


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Haplogroup R1b: (Thta´s me--and my brothers)

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The founder of the R1b lineage lived over 35,000 years ago prior to the end of the last Ice Age in southern Europe and Iberia. Members of Haplogroup R1b are believed to be descendants of Cro-Magnon people, the first modern humans to enter Europe. Cro-Magnons lived from about 35,000 to 10,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithis period of the Pleistocene.


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When the ice sheets retracted at the end of the ice age, descendents of the R1b lineage migrated throughout western Europe. Today, Haplogroup R1b is found predominantly in western Europe, including England, Ireland, and parts of Spain and Portugal. It is especially concentrated in the west of Ireland where it can approach 100% of the population.This haplogroup contains the well known Atlantic Modal STR Haplotype (AMH). AMH is the most frequently occurring haplotype amongst human males with an Atlantic European ancestry. It is also the haplotype of Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish King in the Dark Ages who is the common ancestor of many people of Irish patrilineal descent.



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Damn, I was really hoping to find I was at least as black as Will Smith, or Skip Gates. But noooo. I am a white guy. How you explain my cool factor and serious musical chops is now, and will forever be, a mystery.


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I demand a retest. They MUST have mixed me up with Newt Gingrich or Ryan Seacret or Pat Boone, or somebody. I SIMPLY CANNOT be that white.

2 comments:

Chas said...

You black to me, muh bruh thuh!

Luis said...

H there!
I came across your blog while searching for information about your haplogroup.
Anyway, let me tell you that it doesn't tell you much if you are looking for your "cool factor".
It only shows your ancestry through your paternal line (that means, the genes transmitted from father to son, generation after generation).
So if you had a black african mother, your results would have been the same, because your mother's genes don't show up in the results.

As a matter of fact, many latin americans with clear indian traits belong to this haplogroup.
This is because they are a mixed race originated by spanish conquerors and indian women.

So your test results are true and accurate, but they don't tell you all the truth...

Luis