• Reaching medieval era with DNA !

    From Denis Beauregard@denis.b-at-francogene.com@fr.invalid to soc.genealogy.medieval on Tue Dec 31 11:33:53 2024
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    Hi all:

    I am admin of the French Heritage DNA project on FTDNA and built my
    own database where I integrate the studied lineages.

    From time to time, I get some coherent Y DNA results for 2 gateway
    ancestors. It is not possible to conclude something with mtDNA because
    the MT chromosome is too small. But the Y chromosome is 63 Mpb long
    so a time line is possible.

    We can do nothing if the family names are different, but there are
    more and more cases with 2 pioneers with coherent results and they
    are not always from the next town !

    The first one was found by the late Larry Vizenor in 2008, about
    (unnamed) TORTOCHOT in France, married in 1684, no parents given, and
    Louis TOURTEAUCHAUX married before 1684. Distance is about 55 km.

    Links involving the noble Verdun and Havilan back to around year 1000. Including Verdun seigneurs de Doriere and Fauchon issued from the
    Doriere
    https://fmg.ac/images/foundations/vol15/JN15-02-X.pdf

    The Massicotte from Charente-Maritime matching some Machicot from
    Ari|?ge. Distance is nearly 500 km so I suppose that the common
    ancestor is probably living before year 1500.

    2 Bergeron pioneers, 2 Gelinas/Gelineau, 2 Boucher, 2 Dore,
    2 Gauthier, 2 Suzor, etc.

    There are more and more, but they are mostly commoners so the
    medieval link is only virtual.

    My own closer DNA cousins before my ancestor left France in 1665
    are a group of Armenians, likely descending either some Crusader
    or from a companion of Marco Polo or another explorer of that era.
    The common ancestor is estimated to be living between 800 and
    1300.


    Denis
    --
    Denis Beauregard - g|-n|-alogiste |-m|-rite (FQSG)
    Les Fran|oais d'Am|-rique du Nord - http://www.francogene.com/gfan/gfan/998/ French in North America before 1722 - http://www.francogene.com/gfna/gfna/998/ Sur c|-d|-rom/DVD/USB |a 1790 - On CD-ROM/DVD/USB to 1790
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  • From Ian Goddard@ian_ng@austonley.org.uk to soc.genealogy.medieval on Tue Dec 31 17:07:40 2024
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    Denis Beauregard wrote:
    It is not possible to conclude something with mtDNA because
    the MT chromosome is too small

    Might your problem here be not so much the length of the chromosome but
    the fact that it is only maternally inherited?

    Firstly, if families have been more at pains to record the paternal line
    then your records will be better. Secondly, if males moving into a new territory take native wives then some maternal lines will not go back to gateway ancestors at all.

    Ian
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  • From miked@mike@library.net to soc.genealogy.medieval on Wed Jan 1 17:48:18 2025
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 16:33:53 +0000, Denis Beauregard wrote:

    Hi all:

    I am admin of the French Heritage DNA project on FTDNA and built my
    own database where I integrate the studied lineages.

    From time to time, I get some coherent Y DNA results for 2 gateway
    ancestors. It is not possible to conclude something with mtDNA because
    the MT chromosome is too small. But the Y chromosome is 63 Mpb long
    so a time line is possible.

    We can do nothing if the family names are different, but there are
    more and more cases with 2 pioneers with coherent results and they
    are not always from the next town !

    The first one was found by the late Larry Vizenor in 2008, about
    (unnamed) TORTOCHOT in France, married in 1684, no parents given, and
    Louis TOURTEAUCHAUX married before 1684. Distance is about 55 km.

    Links involving the noble Verdun and Havilan back to around year 1000. Including Verdun seigneurs de Doriere and Fauchon issued from the
    Doriere
    https://fmg.ac/images/foundations/vol15/JN15-02-X.pdf

    The Massicotte from Charente-Maritime matching some Machicot from
    Ari|?ge. Distance is nearly 500 km so I suppose that the common
    ancestor is probably living before year 1500.

    2 Bergeron pioneers, 2 Gelinas/Gelineau, 2 Boucher, 2 Dore,
    2 Gauthier, 2 Suzor, etc.

    There are more and more, but they are mostly commoners so the
    medieval link is only virtual.

    My own closer DNA cousins before my ancestor left France in 1665
    are a group of Armenians, likely descending either some Crusader
    or from a companion of Marco Polo or another explorer of that era.
    The common ancestor is estimated to be living between 800 and
    1300.


    how did find the dna of these long dead medieval people?

    mike
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  • From Denis Beauregard@denis.b-at-francogene.com@fr.invalid to soc.genealogy.medieval on Thu Jan 2 11:35:08 2025
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    On Wed, 1 Jan 2025 17:48:18 +0000, miked <mike@library.net> wrote in soc.genealogy.medieval:

    On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 16:33:53 +0000, Denis Beauregard wrote:

    [..]


    My own closer DNA cousins before my ancestor left France in 1665
    are a group of Armenians, likely descending either some Crusader
    or from a companion of Marco Polo or another explorer of that era.
    The common ancestor is estimated to be living between 800 and
    1300.


    how did find the dna of these long dead medieval people?

    I don't. These tests are typically made from 2 living persons and
    confirmed by coherent results and documented lineages for the
    genealogical time, and by identified mutations in the Y chromosome
    (the average is 1 mutation, called SNP, per 82 years for the test
    named Big Y 700).

    So in my personal case, my ancestor is born in France in 1642.
    He has 4 known sons. I have many lineages from 3 sons with coherent
    results (the actual result may defined on the lab or on the test).
    I may have found one from the 4th son (but a new tester is needed).

    So for my family name, Y DNA is known to 1642. If someone in France
    descending from a relative (I have some cousins in the genealogical
    time, i.e. 1600-today, but no male and none is tested).

    Thanks to the rate of mutations, we can know when the common ancestor
    was living (with a wide range however). But also, the Y DNA is often
    enough coherent to know with a good level of probability if there is
    no paper trail, but the same family name, giving the series of 2
    pioneers and coherent results. This is for the "surname era", i.e.
    1200-1600.

    Finally, before the family names were inherited, the documented
    lineage is available only from noble families (like the Verdun-
    Haviland case). But it is also possible to compute when the MRCA
    or "most common recent ancestor" was living. Some examples:

    Some links to main Y DNA groups in my area https://www.francogene.com/adn/discover.php

    And my personal case:
    https://www.francogene.com/adn/discover.php?gr=R1b-A431 https://discover.familytreedna.com/groups/frenchheritage/tree?subgroups=19617,104595,176306,190187

    https://discover.familytreedna.com/groups/r-z31644/tree

    https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-Y7363/

    FTDNA is now integrating ancient DNA in those charts. See for
    example:

    https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/R-Y7363/ancient


    Denis
    --
    Denis Beauregard - g|-n|-alogiste |-m|-rite (FQSG)
    Les Fran|oais d'Am|-rique du Nord - http://www.francogene.com/gfan/gfan/998/ French in North America before 1722 - http://www.francogene.com/gfna/gfna/998/ Sur c|-d|-rom/DVD/USB |a 1790 - On CD-ROM/DVD/USB to 1790
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  • From Jan Wolfe@janetpcwolfe@gmail.com to soc.genealogy.medieval on Sun Jan 5 23:46:49 2025
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    On 12/31/2024 11:33 AM, Denis Beauregard wrote:
    Hi all:

    I am admin of the French Heritage DNA project on FTDNA and built my
    own database where I integrate the studied lineages.

    From time to time, I get some coherent Y DNA results for 2 gateway ancestors. It is not possible to conclude something with mtDNA because
    the MT chromosome is too small. But the Y chromosome is 63 Mpb long
    so a time line is possible.

    We can do nothing if the family names are different, but there are
    more and more cases with 2 pioneers with coherent results and they
    are not always from the next town !

    The first one was found by the late Larry Vizenor in 2008, about
    (unnamed) TORTOCHOT in France, married in 1684, no parents given, and
    Louis TOURTEAUCHAUX married before 1684. Distance is about 55 km.

    Links involving the noble Verdun and Havilan back to around year 1000. Including Verdun seigneurs de Doriere and Fauchon issued from the
    Doriere
    https://fmg.ac/images/foundations/vol15/JN15-02-X.pdf

    The Massicotte from Charente-Maritime matching some Machicot from
    Ari|?ge. Distance is nearly 500 km so I suppose that the common
    ancestor is probably living before year 1500.

    2 Bergeron pioneers, 2 Gelinas/Gelineau, 2 Boucher, 2 Dore,
    2 Gauthier, 2 Suzor, etc.

    There are more and more, but they are mostly commoners so the
    medieval link is only virtual.

    My own closer DNA cousins before my ancestor left France in 1665
    are a group of Armenians, likely descending either some Crusader
    or from a companion of Marco Polo or another explorer of that era.
    The common ancestor is estimated to be living between 800 and
    1300.


    Denis

    There is a similar project for French-speaking Switzerland, https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/swiss-romandyy-dna/about.

    The closest STR matches of my male-line representative are two men with
    the same surname as my ancestor. My male line ancestor immigrated from Switzerland to Illinois in the early 1900s. One of his two STR matches descends from a man who immigrated from Switzerland to New Orleans in
    the early 1800s. The other STR match lives in Switzerland.

    I have traced my male line to a man who married in a small town in Vaud
    in 1651. The male line of our U.S. STR match can be traced to a man who married in 1649 in the same small town and whose father and grandfather
    are named in the marriage record. So the common male-line ancestor of
    these two men appears to have been born before the early 1600s.

    The male line of our Swiss match can be traced to man who married in
    1720 in a nearby town and lived until his death ten years later in
    another nearby small town in Switzerland. His family believes their
    ancestor was also from the same small town as mine and the other match
    because that small town is considered the place of origin of our
    surname. There are records of men of our surname living in our small
    town in 1433, 1459, 1484, and 1548. The extant parish register starts
    about 1620 but there are some little gaps.

    Our Swiss match had taken the big-Y test some time ago and I recently
    ordered the big-Y test for my representative. When his results were
    analyzed, the y-DNA experts assigned the two of them to a newly defined haplogroup, https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-FTE60938/story, estimated to have branched from the previous line about 600 BCE with the
    most recent common male-line ancestor estimated to have lived about 1450.
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  • From Doug McDonald@jdmcdona@illinois.edu to soc.genealogy.medieval on Mon Feb 17 15:24:01 2025
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    On 1/2/2025 10:35 AM, Denis Beauregard wrote:
    On Wed, 1 Jan 2025 17:48:18 +0000, miked <mike@library.net> wrote in soc.genealogy.medieval:

    On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 16:33:53 +0000, Denis Beauregard wrote:

    [..]


    My own closer DNA cousins before my ancestor left France in 1665
    are a group of Armenians, likely descending either some Crusader
    or from a companion of Marco Polo or another explorer of that era.
    The common ancestor is estimated to be living between 800 and
    1300.


    how did find the dna of these long dead medieval people?

    I don't. These tests are typically made from 2 living persons and
    confirmed by coherent results and documented lineages for the
    genealogical time, and by identified mutations in the Y chromosome
    (the average is 1 mutation, called SNP, per 82 years for the test
    named Big Y 700).

    So in my personal case, my ancestor is born in France in 1642.
    He has 4 known sons. I have many lineages from 3 sons with coherent
    results (the actual result may defined on the lab or on the test).
    I may have found one from the 4th son (but a new tester is needed).

    Y DNA can go farther back than that. Mine goes all rge way back to
    Somerled, d. about 1164. For him we have only two sons with both living descendants and paper trails. For his 3rd great grandson John, lord of
    the Isles, we have 4 sons and about 16 men with both BigYs and paper
    trails. Everything agrees with the concurrent or almost concurrent
    paper. There are now a few immigrant ancestors to the USA (and New
    Zealand) that we have good DNA proof for. For me we have lesser proof,
    by DNA, through autosomal DNA matches back to Antrim. But there is no
    living male line back through the Earl of Antrim ... the current one is
    a Kerr, though a "special creation" of a female line.

    I still believe that Lord John is the oldest absolutely proven DNA line
    in the world.

    Doug McDonald

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  • From Denis Beauregard@denis.b-at-francogene.com@fr.invalid to soc.genealogy.medieval on Fri Feb 21 14:30:52 2025
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    On Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:29:33 +0000, miked <mike@library.net> wrote in soc.genealogy.medieval:

    You obviously are very enthusiastic about this dna research, but can i
    just check if i understand the basis for this. It looks like your saying >becos you _know_ that someone alive today is descended from mr X in the >middle ages, therefore anyone with a match to that persons Y dna must
    also be descended from mr X and so on.

    FTDNA has 6 kinds of Y DNA tests with a resolution increasing for each
    kind.

    Some tests will find the closer relatives in their database. "More
    markers" means you need to have more common markers (same values or
    small difference). In this group, you can test 12, 25, 37, 67 and 111
    markers. 111 will give you a high probably for a common male ancestor
    living around year 1400 to 1500.

    The 6th kind of test is called Big Y and is very different. It finds
    mutations in the whole Y chromosome. When you share more common
    mutations, you also share more common ancestry. In the Big Y 700, the
    current version, the average is 82 years per mutation. This allows to
    estimate when the common ancestor was living, without a papertrail.

    In my own case, we have a common series of mutations to the first
    immigrant in New France (or the gateway) born 1642. The next remote
    cousin was living around year 800-1000, perhaps 1200, but there is
    no papertrail. For some New France families, there are 2 immigrants
    with a known papertrail to the father of the immigrant, and often
    1 or 2 more mutations between the 2 immigrants (each having
    descendants from more than 2 sons with a Big Y test), which means
    that the ancestor common to both immigrants was born about 100 years
    before.

    As for noble families, because the papertrail can be more distant,
    you can use that papertrail to calibrate how fast the mutations are
    occuring. The record is for the Verdun/Haviland family with a
    common ancestor born around 1100. It is up to the McDonald to decide
    who is the more ancient triangulation !

    https://fmg.ac/images/foundations/vol15/JN15-02-X.pdf


    Denis
    --
    Denis Beauregard - g|-n|-alogiste |-m|-rite (FQSG)
    Les Fran|oais d'Am|-rique du Nord - http://www.francogene.com/gfan/gfan/998/ French in North America before 1722 - http://www.francogene.com/gfna/gfna/998/ Sur c|-d|-rom/DVD/USB |a 1790 - On CD-ROM/DVD/USB to 1790
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  • From Doug McDonald@jdmcdona@illinois.edu to soc.genealogy.medieval on Sat Feb 22 18:20:33 2025
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    On 2/18/2025 6:29 PM, miked wrote:

    You obviously are very enthusiastic about this dna research, but can i
    just check if i understand the basis for this. It looks like your saying becos you _know_ that someone alive today is descended from mr X in the middle ages, therefore anyone with a match to that persons Y dna must
    also be descended from mr X and so on.

    mike

    Its a bit more complicated! One also has to prove that all these men
    descend from HIM and NOT from his father. Thus, you need a marker for
    him, and optionally one for his father, or at least one present in him
    and not his father. You need men with paper trails to both men. We've
    got tons of men to Lord John. We have some to his father and tons to his grandfather (from whom descend the McAlister chiefs). STRs won't
    normally do. In this particular case they are over 99% accurate compared
    to the definitive test (see below.)

    We have enough for reasonable proof.

    Interestingly, the marker for Lord John himself is neither an STR nor
    a SNP. Its a 9415 base segmental delete that can only be "properly" seen
    in sequences aligned to the T2T reference, not Build 38. We have this
    only for me. It can easily be seen in Build 38 by observing
    three smaller deletes that are misassigned in 38.
    Its called CLD56, i.e. the 56th "SNP" I discovered in the earliest
    BigYs (ordered up the day it was announced.) At first FTDNA was making
    lots of stupidly bogus assignments, which I found in the BAMs and
    figured out. Thus the SNP-style designation.

    I estimate that about 43000 men bear CLD56, based on the statistics of
    our DNA project.

    As to Somerled himself, we have only one man purportedly descendind from
    his father, and there is no marker for him. We now do have
    several descendants from two of his sons, and a one from a purported
    third son. Thus the exactitude is a bit fuzzy and that one man is right,
    will remain so forever within BigY ... more complete resu7lts aligned to
    T2T might fix that of course.

    All this has taken 20 years ... we had a head start, back to 2003,
    because Brian Sykes tested I seem to remember 6 men with just 10 STRs.
    In 2004 about 30 tests were run with 14 markers by an academic in
    Belgium on our behalf.

    Doug

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  • From Robert Goff@rwgoff19812@gmail.com to soc.genealogy.medieval on Sun Feb 23 08:34:15 2025
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    On 2/22/2025 7:20 PM, Doug McDonald wrote:
    On 2/18/2025 6:29 PM, miked wrote:

    You obviously are very enthusiastic about this dna research, but can i just check if i understand the basis for this. It looks like your saying becos you _know_ that someone alive today is descended from mr X in the middle ages, therefore anyone with a match to that persons Y dna must
    also be descended from mr X and so on.

    mike

    Its a bit more complicated! One also has to prove that all these men
    descend from HIM and NOT from his father.-a Thus, you need a marker for
    him, and optionally one for his father, or at least one present in him
    and not his father.-a You need men with paper trails to both men.-a We've got tons of men to Lord John. We have some to his father and tons to his grandfather (from whom descend the McAlister chiefs). STRs won't
    normally do. In this particular case they are over 99% accurate compared
    to the definitive test (see below.)

    We have enough for reasonable proof.

    Interestingly, the marker for Lord John himself is neither an STR nor
    a SNP. Its a 9415 base segmental delete that can only be "properly" seen
    in sequences aligned to the T2T reference, not Build 38. We have this
    only for me. It can easily be seen in Build 38 by observing
    three smaller deletes that are misassigned in 38.
    Its called CLD56, i.e. the 56th "SNP" I discovered in the earliest
    BigYs (ordered up the day it was announced.) At first FTDNA was making
    lots of stupidly bogus assignments, which I found in the BAMs and
    figured out. Thus the SNP-style designation.

    I estimate that about 43000 men bear CLD56, based on the statistics of
    our DNA project.

    As to Somerled himself, we have only one man purportedly descendind from
    his father, and there is no marker for him. We now do have
    several descendants from two of his sons, and a one from a purported
    third son. Thus the exactitude is a bit fuzzy and that one man is right,
    will remain so forever within BigY ... more complete resu7lts aligned to
    T2T might fix that of course.

    All this has taken 20 years ... we had a head start, back to 2003,
    because Brian Sykes tested I seem to remember 6 men with just 10 STRs.
    In 2004 about 30 tests were run with 14 markers by an academic in
    Belgium on our behalf.

    Doug


    It sounds like you have a variety of solid paper trials to different
    people who the documents show to have been related. It also sounds like
    you have a large number of DNA participants to triangulate to confirm
    what the documenting are indicating. More participants with good
    documentary evidence of descent from collateral branches would help
    eliminate a major problem I see with DNA studies, namely the occurrence
    of unrecorded non-paternal events in the line of descent making the DNA samples of modern study participants not reflective or derivative of the historical person who the documents show to be their ancestor. Case in
    point, the Richard III DNA study where people who were thought to be descendants of x based on good paper trails were shown not to be
    descendants of someone downstream of x. I would definitely say that
    would be a concern where everything is based on one person's documents,
    even if those documents solidly indicate the proposed line of descent.

    I have been trying to better understand the projected date ranges in
    studies that I am a participant. My understanding is that mutations are random, but there may be some genetic predisposition to mutations.
    Whoever does the interpreting estimates an average mutation rate of
    genes reflected by particular markers that is then compared with the
    marker variances to determine an estimated date range for time to most
    common paternal ancestor. When you go that far back, the ranges seem to
    be substantial as in hundreds of years. I find personally the
    projections on more recent relationships past maybe 3rd cousins where we
    have good paper trials on both sides are often off, which one would
    expect if we were averaging and then estimating from a random mutation
    rate.



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  • From Doug McDonald@jdmcdona@illinois.edu to soc.genealogy.medieval on Mon Feb 24 12:28:24 2025
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    On 2/23/2025 7:34 AM, Robert Goff wrote:

    I have been trying to better understand the projected date ranges in
    studies that I am a participant. My understanding is that mutations are random, but there may be some genetic predisposition to mutations.
    Whoever does the interpreting estimates an average mutation rate of
    genes reflected by particular markers that is then compared with the
    marker variances to determine an estimated date range for time to most
    common paternal ancestor. When you go that far back, the ranges seem to
    be substantial as in hundreds of years. I find personally the
    projections on more recent relationships past maybe 3rd cousins where we
    have good paper trials on both sides are often off, which one would
    expect if we were averaging and then estimating from a random mutation
    rate.



    As to bastardies, we surprisingly have only three in all the 20 or so
    paper trails that look either reliable or traditional. These occurred in
    the years ~1500, 1985, and 2001, the latter two in the same line.
    All were were well known in advance of DNA tests. Of course, nothing can detect cases involving brothers or nephews.

    As to times by DNA, we are a special case because until recently the
    best calibration of the Y-DNA rates came from our line. Today
    everybody agrees we were right.In many cases in our lines we know the
    ages of markers literally to the day they were born.


    Doug

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  • From miked@mike@library.net to soc.genealogy.medieval on Wed Feb 19 00:29:33 2025
    From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

    On Mon, 17 Feb 2025 21:24:01 +0000, Doug McDonald wrote:

    On 1/2/2025 10:35 AM, Denis Beauregard wrote:
    On Wed, 1 Jan 2025 17:48:18 +0000, miked <mike@library.net> wrote in
    soc.genealogy.medieval:

    On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 16:33:53 +0000, Denis Beauregard wrote:

    [..]


    My own closer DNA cousins before my ancestor left France in 1665
    are a group of Armenians, likely descending either some Crusader
    or from a companion of Marco Polo or another explorer of that era.
    The common ancestor is estimated to be living between 800 and
    1300.


    how did find the dna of these long dead medieval people?

    I don't. These tests are typically made from 2 living persons and
    confirmed by coherent results and documented lineages for the
    genealogical time, and by identified mutations in the Y chromosome
    (the average is 1 mutation, called SNP, per 82 years for the test
    named Big Y 700).

    So in my personal case, my ancestor is born in France in 1642.
    He has 4 known sons. I have many lineages from 3 sons with coherent
    results (the actual result may defined on the lab or on the test).
    I may have found one from the 4th son (but a new tester is needed).

    Y DNA can go farther back than that. Mine goes all rge way back to
    Somerled, d. about 1164. For him we have only two sons with both living descendants and paper trails. For his 3rd great grandson John, lord of
    the Isles, we have 4 sons and about 16 men with both BigYs and paper
    trails. Everything agrees with the concurrent or almost concurrent
    paper. There are now a few immigrant ancestors to the USA (and New
    Zealand) that we have good DNA proof for. For me we have lesser proof,
    by DNA, through autosomal DNA matches back to Antrim. But there is no
    living male line back through the Earl of Antrim ... the current one is
    a Kerr, though a "special creation" of a female line.

    I still believe that Lord John is the oldest absolutely proven DNA line
    in the world.

    Doug McDonald

    You obviously are very enthusiastic about this dna research, but can i
    just check if i understand the basis for this. It looks like your saying
    becos you _know_ that someone alive today is descended from mr X in the
    middle ages, therefore anyone with a match to that persons Y dna must
    also be descended from mr X and so on.

    mike
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