First a little bit about DNA and testing. There are basically three different types of DNA that you can get tested for. Y-DNA, mtDNA, and Autosomal DNA. The Y-DNA is the gene that is passed from father to son and traces back along the paternal surname line. It is just one of the 46 genes that are received from both parents, but this one is the only one that remains unchanged from male to male over the generations. The female offspring do not get this gene.
mtDNA or Mitochondrial DNA is passed intact from the mother to her all of her offspring, however only the females will pass it on to their children. So, it traces the mother to mother to mother connection. Anyone related to your Mother's Mother's Mother through their Mother's Mother's Mother will have this same DNA.
In both the Y-DNA and the mtDNA the genetic material stays intact for the most part for generation after generation. The only difference being the chance of a mutation, an unintended spontaneous change in some of the pieces. The farther back you go in time the more likely that one or more mutations have occurred and this is what gives us the different Haplogroups. Haplogroups are just the labels that are used to identify one set of mutations from another and they are expressed as a letter followed by a number, followed by a letter and so on. Each character identifies a smaller and smaller genetic mutation. So, the first letter is the biggest and oldest mutation and the characters that follow it refine that further into sub groups. My Y-DNA haplogroup is "I", which, according to current research, was first found about 30 thousand years ago in the area that is now Scandinavia. It is the DNA of the Vikings.
Autosomal DNA, which makes up the vast majority of your DNA, is the randomly combined DNA from both parents. Generally speaking you'll get 50% from your father and 50% form your mother. But back beyond that the percentages will vary as during the combining process different pieces of DNA are spliced together for each gamete. So, although you get roughly 50% from your mother, only 40% of that may be from your Grandfather and the other 60% from your Grandmother. It's estimated that it is possible to completely loose the genetic material from one family line within 6-9 generations.
Genealogy is the actual paper trail of your ancestry. It has existed for millennia. There is quite an extensive genealogy given in the Bible, and Charlemagne used it to claim descendancy from Jesus. The fact that we can now compare all of our genealogical research with our genetic data makes the whole process so much more interesting. By looking at who we are closely related to genetically and then looking at their ancestry we can verify where we got it right and in some case where we got it wrong.
So next I am going to go into a couple of things that I have found during my research. One of which is verified by my DNA and the other, a mystery uncovered by it.
