On Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 3:05:01 PM UTC-7, Andrew Lancaster wrote: > On Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 8:49:47 PM UTC+2, wjhonson wrote: > > > However if the point of your genealogy is to trace *your own* family, and after forty years of that you finally break down and take a test and discover that you were apparently adopted, then where are you exactly? > > There would be the point indeed, but it is NOT the point at all for most genealogists. > > Let me explain your position better than you have above: You are effectively saying (I will not cut and paste all the different quotes) that it is not genealogy or it is bad genealogy, and absolutely to be avoided, that we should spend any time on anyone who might not actually be a direct ancestor. You have expressed horror of this in many ways, over and over. > Utterly Incorrect. Not once have I said that spending time on any one who is not a direct ancestor is a bad thing. Not a single time. > On this basis real genealogy has never existed and still does not exist. We will need to wait for better technology. > Not what I said. > But I will just keep doing what I call genealogy. I am not too worried about researching people who possibly are not direct ancestors. In fact I like that. > > If you ever get to understand more about the autosomal DNA you will realize that once you get back a few generations, the ancestors you are studying (even if definitely your direct ancestors) are not more like you genetically than lots of random people with a similar geographic/ethnic ancestral mix. And again this is missing the point of anything I said.