I forgot the punch line.  So for kinship between you and your American cousins, it's a total of 11 of 12 generations, and for them it's 12 or 13.  So they would have < ~1/2 the level of kinship you and they do.  (< 1/2 rather than 1/2 because of the other mechanism I mentioned in an earlier post.) On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 18:57:48 -0400, jlerch1@lighttube.net wrote: It occurs to me that another mechanism is: Living in the more staid old world, the years between generations may be greater.  So for a given ancestor, the # of generations between your mom and that ancestor is fewer--say 5 for 4th cousins to her common ancestor: whereas, over here across the pond, it's been live fast, die hard so it's 6 or 7 generations with its concomitant lesser DNA. On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 17:30:39 -0000, Andreas West wrote: You are correct JAL, sorry for the confusion.   I don't get your question about my mum's ancestors, my mum is 68 and no parents or grandparents live anymore (that would make my task a lot easier).   Andreas (WEST) born BASSO   My ancestors: http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Basso-Family-Tree-23 "jlerch1 via" wrote:You got it backwards, Wjh--they're more related to him than to each other.  The confusion arose since he said "lower genetic distance". The answer to Andreas' question most likely is: They triangulate to your mum, but do they all triangulate with your mum's mum or your mum's dad, and then on to your mum's mum's mum, mum' mum's dad....?  So presumably at least some of them became their most related to each other through you by marriage. JAL   Wjh wrote From: Wjhonson Subject: Re: [DNA] Why is it that my U.S. cousins all shares less DNA amongst them but more with me? To: ahnen@awest.de, genealogy-dna@rootsweb.com Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8   The most likely case would be that they match each other on some other line as well.   So they might be ninth cousins to you, but actually fifth cousins to each other.   -----Original Message----- From: Andreas West via To: DNA Genealogy Mailing List Sent: Thu, Oct 29, 2015 1:43 am Subject: [DNA] Why is it that my U.S. cousins all shares less DNA amongst them but more with me?   Hi everyone,   I hope to hear some of your views on the following:   I'm seeing for a lot of my triangulated groups for my maternal side (they triangulate with both my mum and me, that's how I know which side) that the U.S. based (and been there for many generations) cousins have lower genetic distance and SNP's (hence shares less DNA) amongst themselves (means within the other U.S. based cousins) than they do share with us (and my mum is basically 99% German with     ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to GENEALOGY-DNA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message