Dear Tim, "Ancestry.com may well be helping us by reporting shared surnames and shared geography, but all of the "technical stuff" (specifically chromosome mapping) is just as important as it ever was." Mostly and for people with our level of technological expertise, I agree with you. For normal people, I think that atDNA just got useable and, sort of, understandable. For people with scientific and technical expertise, I think that a large part of our "druge" work just went away. Ancestry.com's atDNA program is still in beta and chromosome mapping, in fact any access to Raw Data is not yet possible. For normal people, I don't see this as an issue. For us, I completely agree with you. Should lack of access to Raw Data not become available by or shortly after public release, Ancestry.com's atDNA will be nothing more than a another, and limited, tool. Sam From: "Tim Janzen" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AUTOSOMAL-DNA] Ancestry atDNA Dear Sam, Ancestry.com may well be helping us by reporting shared surnames and shared geography, but all of the "technical stuff" (specifically chromosome mapping) is just as important as it ever was. The only way you can be certain that you truly have a true genealogical relationship with a genetic match who may be a 6th to 10th cousin to you based on Ancestry.com's discovery of shared surnames or geography is to accurately map as much of your genome as possible with results from as many 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins as possible. You can be more comfortable with linking a specific segment to a specific ancestor 6 to 8 generations back in time if you have already linked that specific segment to a specific ancestor 3 to 5 generations back in time. This is particularly important for endogamous populations. The genetic genealogical community needs to continue to strongly push Ancestry.com to release the matching segment data and to allow downloads of the raw data files. Sincerely, Tim Janzen

I have to agree with Tim. I have a fairly robust Colonial Virginia ancestry, and am now at 62 confirmed atMatches with Common Ancestors - some with more than one Common Ancestor. As I look at the 1,000 plus atMatches in a spreadsheet arranged by Chr and Start Location of the largest Segments, I note some overlapping segments going back to different ancestors. This is OK for one on Dad's side and one on Mom's side, but impossible for both to be on the same side. Each large segment on a Chr can only go back to one ancestor on, say, Dad's side. This will be an excellent opportunity to sort out some of the Tree claims on Ancestry. I'm afraid that unless they let us see the segment locations, they will just perpetuate, in fact make worse, the junk Trees that are out there. Ancestry's powerful software will match us with all kinds of junk (there's plenty of it there), and now folks will claim their lines are proved by matching DNA - impossible to refute unless it's tied to segment mapping. With segment mapping we may finally get some of Trees right. It's OK to have multiple Common Ancestors with atMatches (it's very much expected with Colonial roots), but each atDNA segment can only go back to one ancestral line. It will become very important to map these segments with the flood of info we'll get from Ancestry hint leaves. Jim - Sent from my iPhone - FaceTime! On Apr 10, 2012, at 10:48 AM, Sam Eaton <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Tim, > > "Ancestry.com may well be helping us by reporting shared surnames and > shared geography, but all of the "technical stuff" (specifically chromosome > mapping) is just as important as it ever was." > > Mostly and for people with our level of technological expertise, I agree with you. For normal people, I think that atDNA just got useable and, sort of, understandable. For people with scientific and technical expertise, I think that a large part of our "druge" work just went away. > > Ancestry.com's atDNA program is still in beta and chromosome mapping, in fact any access to Raw Data is not yet possible. For normal people, I don't see this as an issue. For us, I completely agree with you. Should lack of access to Raw Data not become available by or shortly after public release, Ancestry.com's atDNA will be nothing more than a another, and limited, tool. > > Sam > > > > From: "Tim Janzen" <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [AUTOSOMAL-DNA] Ancestry atDNA > > > Dear Sam, > Ancestry.com may well be helping us by reporting shared surnames and > shared geography, but all of the "technical stuff" (specifically chromosome > mapping) is just as important as it ever was. The only way you can be > certain that you truly have a true genealogical relationship with a genetic > match who may be a 6th to 10th cousin to you based on Ancestry.com's > discovery of shared surnames or geography is to accurately map as much of > your genome as possible with results from as many 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th > cousins as possible. You can be more comfortable with linking a specific > segment to a specific ancestor 6 to 8 generations back in time if you have > already linked that specific segment to a specific ancestor 3 to 5 > generations back in time. This is particularly important for endogamous > populations. The genetic genealogical community needs to continue to > strongly push Ancestry.com to release the matching segment data and to allow > downloads of the raw data files. > Sincerely, > Tim Janzen > > > ______________________________ > For answers to Frequently Asked Questions about mailing lists, please see: > http://dgmweb.net/MailingListFAQs.html >