Read reviews of science articles, new research and news reports on ancestry testing, ancient DNA and popular genetics
More than 26 million DNA samples have been collected since the new field of commercialized personal genomics was announced with a big splash in the pages of the journal NATURE over thirteen years ago.
The Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians of 1734-35 illustrates a common pitfall of historical research. Clues to the big picture sometimes hide in the frame of history. Marginalized communities and fragile ethnic identities often have a role out of proportion to their small numbers.
The monograph on the third and final phase of Cherokee DNA Studies and “anomalous” Cherokees with non-ABCD mitochondrial lineages by Donald and Teresa Yates continues to be delayed.
The Savannah, Ga. poet Conrad Aiken and his wife saw a freighter in the harbor on their morning walk. The name of the ship was “Cosmos Mariner.” Looking it up in the day’s Shipping News, they learned it was bound for “Destination Unknown.”
Childhood’s a time when curiosity flourishes, exploration consumes the waking hours, and sharing discoveries with friends and family brings eager delights.
One of our most common seafaring markers is the Odin Gene. The name Odin may be related to Odysseus. The Odin Gene is centered on Scandinavia and extends to the Sea People and Phoenicians of the East Mediterranean and travels of Wotan in the Americas and Pacific Rim. It contradicts the supposition of geneticists that early man moved only across landmasses and waterways were barriers.
Genetic analysis of Mal’ta Boy and his culture has contributed to a long debate about the origins of Native North Americans. It was found that these Ice Age Siberians had deep ancestry that connected them to Western Eurasians, while they were also ancestors of Native North Americans. More surprisingly, the Mal’ta people appeared to have no direct ancestry connecting them to present-day East Asians
The oldest of our seven new markers in the revised Rare Genes from History is The Goddess Gene. It dates back to Paleolithic times and is so ancient is has mutated into two forms. We check for both of these and report whether you have it if you take the Rare Genes from History test, which is based on your Autosomal DNA Profile, the same marker set used for our DNA Fingerprint Plus ancestry test.
The Invention of the Cherokee People (continued from previous blog post, concluding part of Chapter 8 in forthcoming book Cherokee DNA Studies Volume II: More Real People Who Proved the Geneticists Wrong)
Government and university officials claim the Cherokee people are tens of thousands of years old. They deny the Cherokee include any original pre-Columbian strains but Asiatic and Amerindian. They assert that the tribal name Tsalagi (pronounced Tchah-lah-kee) is as old as their language, that it is descended from a Proto-Iroquoian language that preceded Mohawk by thousands of years. Their minds are closed to thinking that the tribe ever spoke any other language or lived in any other place in recent times but the Appalachian region, from which they were forcibly removed on a Trail of Tears to Oklahoma, leaving behind a remnant in North Carolina.
