> This guy reminds me of my mom's 2nd husband. That man > thought he knew everything. You could say the sky was > blue and he would disagree. My dad has told me that it's after 5 generations that we're only related in name. He probably got this out of a book. It's _probably_ true in large urban areas but, here in the South, we have such a web of connections, I don't think anyone with ancestors here before 1860 would be affected by this. Even in Medieval Europe, it was VERY hard to find someone who lived within a few miles of you who didn't share an ancestor within the last seven generations. (The Catholic Church tried to make it impossible for closely- related people to marry: the by-the-book cutoff on that was seven generations, but that was...by the book!) > BTW speaking of DNA testing did anyone see NIghtline > last night? I happened to catch it and it was about > racial idenitity. This african american man did this No, but I'm glad that's gotten some publicity. I get really upset about people who tell me that they're "pure" such-and-such. The standard anthropological assumption is that blacks in the U.S. average only 30% black African ancestry: I think, that between U.S. blacks who "look African" [I worked with a lady who had an eerie physical resemblance to one of the African extras in the second Romancing the Stone movie.] and U.S. blacks who would have "passed" 50 years ago, that's a reasonable assumption. I've also noticed regional differences in black appearance: for example, I had many black co-workers in the D.C. area who were very light -- they were always from families with long histories in the D.C. area -- and others who were very dark -- they were always either born in the Carolinas or Alabama or their parents had been. As for some of the rest of us -- there's a very good reason so many medical studies are done in Finland: that's the one area of Europe that has a virtually unmixed (ethnically) population. In this country, lots of medical studies are done on the Amish and the Orthodox Jews for basically the same reason: both groups are virtually unmixed ethnically -- at least for the past 200 years or so. Elizabeth Whitaker (If you're descended from a Travis Whitaker who married a Smith in the 1920s, please e-mail me. Travis was one of my great aunts.) --------------------------------------------- Check Your Email From Any Where in the World! http://www.myemail.com