In a message dated 05/18/2003 2:02:51 PM Central Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: > The DNA results chart is beautiful and it is exciting to see it posted. > As time goes on, hopefully MORE Hancocks will participate so it will be > even more useful. Thank you for all your hard work on it. ---I must > admit to a woeful inadequacy with reading charts of this complexity. > Will their be a “roadmap” for it later on? Well, as complex matches occur, I will explain them, but until then the only thing going on is that the two results that are listed in white have no matches, and I will continue to post any that have no matches in white. Any and all that have matches, will be posted in matching colors with the mutations shown in a different color as I have done in the fourth result. Mutations occur at an average of one in every 20 births, but they can occur more often, or not at all. It is sort of like rolling dice. There is no way to know when or if your will get a certain result. They are finding that some families have more mutations than others. The generations between two participants are counted up from each participant the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) so if there are 7 generations from you to your earliest Hancock and the same for the person you match that is 14 generations between you. Of course, the earliest Hancock that the two of you have found may not be your MRCA. You must compare paper research to find him, and sometimes he is beyond your research, perhaps in Europe before American immigration. I belong to the [email protected] list and the conversations get very technical most of the time, but a search of their archives may answer many questions that you have. Also, from our Hancock DNA website you can click on "Questions" and get answers from FamilyTreeDNA.com, the company that is doing our Project. In a nutshell, they consider from 0 to 3 mutations a match in the same surname family, so I will not be explaining those simple mutations, but will mark the mutations with a different color. Any participants that have the majority of their background the same color on the results chart are considered matches and of the same Hancock line. Bear in mind that the more mutations that occur the farther away the MRCA may be. If more complex matches occur, I will explain them. If you have specific questions, I will do my best to answer them. Julia