<Much snipping of original messages> > From: "Janet Ogden" <janet@janetsfamilies.f2s.com> > >> Dave Sykes say's:- >> >> DNA of Sykes descendants from the Huddersfield area. All ten are from >> the R1b (Celtic) branch of the family. >> >> Our main thrust now is to locate where the R1a (Viking) branch of the >> family settled in Yorkshire. This branch constitutes 40% of the >> American Sykes that have donated DNA samples.... From: "Roy Stockdill" <roy.stockdill@btinternet.com> > I am afraid this is where my cynicism about DNA testing comes in. > > I agree with George Redmonds that the very prolific surname SYKES > (possibly the most common name in the Huddersfield and Colne Valley > area - if not, certainly one of them) must have multiple origins, since it > derives from the word "syke", being a stream or ditch often serving as a > boundary (Yorkshire Surnames Series Part Two: Huddersfield & District). > > I expect most of us remember in the early days of DNA testing, when > Prof Bryan Sykes of Oxford University produced his famous (infamous?) > report claiming that ALL Sykeses derive from a common progenitor. It > then emerged he had only tested about 65 men with the name! <snip> > My main criticism of DNA testing is this: OK, so testing may show that > two people share a common ancestor somewhere in the dim and distant > past, but it doesn't begin to tell you WHO that ancestor was or fill in > any of the gaps in between. This is true, but please try to curb your cynicism for a moment. As well as showing the likelihood of a link, DNA testing can also show its impossibility; if what Dave Sykes says about the R1a and R1b groups is true, then in this case it has proved its value, since it refutes the single origin hypothesis and corroborates what you and George Redmonds are asserting. Rather than complaining that DNA testing doesn't do something which it doesn't claim to do anyway, why not welcome the insights which it can provide alongside those of more traditional research? Arthur Kennedy