Read reviews of science articles, new research and news reports on ancestry testing, ancient DNA and popular genetics
By and large, the genetics literature on American Indians has been confined to small, scattered samples gleaned from modern groups. This morass of information is vast, growing, and inconclusive.
Attempting to present the “peopling of the Americas” from such a reductive approach is like playing a game of Solitaire with important cards missing.
Did the Chinese Settle in Northern Mexico and the American Southwest?
We had just finished a meal of delicious fish tacos at what was to become our favorite Mexican restaurant on the Southside of Phoenix. The cook and owner was a lady from Sinaloa. She asked what I did for a living, and when I told her DNA testing, she immediately said, “I imagine our DNA in Mexico is a combination of Spanish, Indian and Chinese, right?”
We often are asked, “How does your ancestry analysis work,” and “What makes it different from other methods?” Principal Investigator Donald Yates was recently interviewed along these lines and here are his answers.
What Do Patrick Henry and Johnny Depp Have to Do With Each Other?
They are both mentioned in a new genealogy book….
Not everything you were told in school about the Pilgrims, George Washington and the other brave, white Christian founding fathers of America is true. In fact, according to Elizabeth Hirschman Caldwell and Donald N. Yates’ new book, some of the familiar figures were not even Christian. Appearing in 2012 after many years in development, Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America ($45.00) offers a fresh perspective on the early American experience, with chapters and emigrant lists on all the original colonies, from Virginia to Georgia.
It’s been a year and a half since DNA Consultants introduced Rare Genes from History. We republish here the original press release from October 2012 as a means of familiarizing new and old customers with this unique autosomal marker test, exclusive to our company.
From Teresa Yates’ work-in-progress, here is a post from eight years ago that still strikes a timely note. Yates’ new book is titled DNA and You and reprises fifteen years of the blogosphere from the early, heroic days of DNA testing. It is expected to appear this summer.
The third chapter of Donald Yates’ history of the Cherokee (Old World Roots of the Cherokee, McFarland 2012) contains the genetic story of the Cherokee Indians based on DNA Consultants’ 2009 study”Anomalous Mitochondrial DNA in the Cherokee,” but it is no easy read, being written for an academic audience.
Author’s Famous Chair Preserved by Quakers Tells All
A chapter in the new book from McFarland The Early Jews and Muslims of England and Wales: A Genetic and Genealogical History (April 29, 2014) proposes on the basis of original genealogical research by Donald Yates that Daniel Defoe (in engraving), the author of Robinson Crusoe, came from an old Sephardic Jewish family, the De Foas.
While Christopher Columbus is generally credited with having discovered America in 1492, a 1521 Spanish report provides inklings of evidence that there were, in fact, Irish people settled in America prior to Columbus’ journey.
In our continuing series of notes on colonial genealogies, we give here the the complete appendix containing all early lists of emigrants to Virginia, taken from Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America (2012). This was the second volume in a series that began with When Scotland Was Jewish (2007) and concludes this month (May 2014) with the publication of The Early Jews and Muslims of England and Wales: A Genetic and Genealogical History.
