hELLO All listers - Further to my previous message which was sent to me by Dick Boucher and his further comments follow: QUOTE I have no objection to your passing on the information I sent you except that be advised it is my rough paraphrasing of an article published in vol.19, number 2, issue 56, p.80 - 82 in the "American-Canadian Genealogist" entitled "A Genetic Approach to Franco-American Genealogical Reasearch" by Thomas H. Roderick, Ph.D., Center for Human Genetics, Municipal Building, PO Box 770, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609-0770 When I contacted Dr. Roderick about joining the program almost nine years ago I was told to go to university at Berkeley to have Dr. Mary-Claire King's staff at her laboratory there take a sample of my blood for their data base. Subsequent to this Dr. King left Berkeley for a position at university of Washington, in Seattle, and I have heard nothing more from either her or Dr. Roderick. I assumed the project was in limbo, especially after reading through the elaborate position paper given me by Dr. King's staff in Berkeley on Dr. King's on-going research on those missing children in Argentina. I do not pretend to be an expert in biology. As a history major I just try to simplify what I have read in order to regurgitate it in such a way that whoever reads it will hopefully at least understand the basic concept of what I'm saying. Like you, I found the mtDNA genealogical research concept to be an exciting one. If you choose to disseminate what I've written you be my guest, but please add the names of the authors of the information. I hate plagiarism.à la prochaine, J.-Richard-Laurent Boucher dans la banlieue de San Francisco UNQUOTE A further comment from a friend named David follows: Sorry for its length QUOTEThis is a précis of what it says in the recent book on the subject and I attach a copy of what I typed up from the book for your interest. You may realise that to be a Jew, one's MOTHER has to be a Jew - not necessarily one's father, and this is why the genealogical line of Mary is given at the beginning of one of the Gospels (can't just recall which one - Bible not handy) which is given to prove the lineage of Jesus back to the stem of Jesse. The Seven Daughters of Eve By Professor Bryan Sykes A leading world authority on DNA and human evolution. Published by Bantam Press Ursula – born in the Great Ice Age, 45,000 years ago, in a shallow cave cut into cliffs at the foot of what is now Mount Parnassus, close to what was to become the ancient Greek classical site of Delphi. Her clan were the first modern humans successfully to colonize Europe. Within a comparatively short space of time they had spread across the whole continent, edging the Neanderthals into extinction. Today about 11% of modern Europeans are the direct maternal descendants of Ursula. They come from all parts of Europe, but the clan is particularly well represented in western Britain and Scandinavia. Cheddar Man is perhaps the most celebrated of its former members. Xenia – Twenty thousand years had elapsed since Ursula’s death. It was now twenty-five thousand years before the present and the world was even colder. The Neanderthals were gone, and modern humans had Europe to themselves. The great plains which stretched from lowland Britain in the west to Kazakhstan in the east were bare of trees save for a few patches of birch and willow scrub on their Southern margins. Today about 1% of native Americans are the direct maternal descendants of Xenia. Within Europe, three branches fan out over the continent. One is still largely confined to eastern Europe, while the other two have spread further to the west into central Europe and as far as France and Britain. Helena – Helena lived twenty thousand years ago at a time when the last Ice Age was at its most severe. Glaciers and permanent ice fields covered all of Scandinavia and stretched as far south as the present-day cities of Berlin and Warsaw. The Baltic Sea was permanently frozen, as was the North Sea from Denmark to the Humber. Britain, still joined to continental Europe by dry land, was buried under ice down to what are now the English midlands, central Wales and southern Ireland. Over successive generations the clan that began with Helena became easily the most successful in Europe, reaching every part of the continent. The reference sequence with which all mitochondrial mutations are compared is Helena’s sequence. 47% of modern Europeans are members of her clan. We do not know whether this remarkable success is because her mitochondrial DNA possesses some special quality that gives its holders a biological advantage, or whether it is just chance that makes so many Europeans trace their direct maternal ancestry back to Helena and the freezing winters of the last Ice Age. Velda - Three thousand years after Helena lived and died, the Great Ice Age had tightened its grip still further. Seventeen thousand years ago the plains of northern Europe were completely deserted; all life, animal and human, was compressed into the Ukraine, southern France, Italy and the Iberian peninsula. Velda, the fourth of the seven daughters, lived in northern Spain in the mountains of Cantabria, a few miles behind what is now the port of Santander (Spain). Today, about 5% of native Europeans belong to the clan of Velda; they are more frequent in western Europe than in the east. Many of Velda’s children have travelled a long way from Velda’s home in the hills of Cantabria. A small group found there was as far north as it is possible to travel, reaching the very top of Scandinavia, where they are to be found among present-day Saami of Finland and northern Norway. Tara – Velda and Tara both lived at roughly the same time, seventeen thousand years ago, in the depths of the last Ice Age. They may even have been exact contemporaries; but they certainly never met and their lives were very different. Velda lived in Spain, while Tara’s homeland was the hills of Tuscany in north-west Italy. Today, just over 9% of native Europeans are in the clan of Tara, living along the Mediterranean and the western edge of Europe, though they are not restricted to these regions. They are particularly numerous in the west of Britain and in Ireland. Katrine - Venice is slowly sinking into the sea. Fifteen thousand years ago, when Katrine lived there, the sea was over a hundred miles away. The Adriatic is a very shallow sea, and the worldwide lowering of sea level towards the end of the last Ice Age shrunk it to half its present size. Katrine could have walked in a straight line from split in Croatia to Ancona in Italy without getting her feet wet. She lived in the vast wooded plain that stretched from here to the Alps and took in the wide Po valley from Bologna to Milan and Turin. Katrine’s clan flourished in northern Italy and beyond. Ten thousand years after she lived, one of her many descendants died crossing the Alps. We know him as the Iceman. Today 6% of native Europeans are in the clan of Katrine. As a clan it is still frequent around the Mediterranean but, like the others, draws its present-day members from all over Europe. Jasmine – Compared to the hardships and uncertainties of the lives of the first six women we have encountered, Jasmine had a much easier time. For one thing, she lived in a permanent settlement, one of the first villages. But the accommodation could not be called luxurious. The village had a population of about three hundred people, very much larger than any of the temporary hunting camps which were home to the other six women. The village was about a mile from the River Euphrates in what is now Syria. The Euphrates carried the rain and melted snow from the mountains of Anatolia in the north through wide grassy plains to join the River Tigris on its journey to the Persian Gulf. Today, just under 17% of native Europeans that we have sampled are in the clan of Jasmine. Unlike the other six clans, the descendents of Jasmine are not found evenly distributed throughout Europe. One distinctive branch follows the Mediterranean coast to Spain and Portugal, whence it has found its way to the west of Britain, where it is particularly common in Cornwall, Wales and the west of Scotland. The other branch shadows the route through central Europe taken by the farmers who first cultivated the fertile river valleys and then the plains of northern ‘Europe. Both branches live, even now, close to the routes mapped out by their farming ancestors as they made their way gradually into Europe from the Near East UNQUOTE