This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: ksaxe Surnames: McConnell, O'Neill Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.mcconnell/2466.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: ...and a lot of cousins The reason Keith has so many matches is that his test results (also known as personal haplotype) very closely match the DNA profile for the legendary Irish king known as Niall of the Nine Hostages. You can learn more about Niall at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_of_the_Nine_Hostages. One thing that I have learned about Niall is that royal privileges in his day included the chance to father many children, and those children and other descendants were also privileged and left many descendants. Research by Moore et al (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v78n2/43032/43032.html) has shown that many Irish men share a common set of test results, or haplotype. Within any related group the most common values at each marker are known as modals and the set of those values is called the modal haplotype. The common set of modal values shared by this group of men is called the Irish modal haplotype (IMH). Because certain family names such as O'Neill are historically known to have been used by descendants of Niall, the researchers have been able to look at test results for men with these names and compare them to the IMH. Generally their results are very close the the IMH and Moore et al concluded that Niall or a very close relative originated the IMH shared by his descendants. Sharing this haplotype links Keith and Belinda to Niall and northwestern Ireland, supporting the family legend of an Irish past for their McConnell family. It also links Keith to all of the other men matching the IMH, which is also called the Niall modal haplotype. With so many men close to the Niall modal haplotype, Keith and Belinda have a LOT of distant cousins. With so many cousins, there will be some cases of the same mutations occurring in different lines. Test results in these cases will suggest that the most recent common ancestor lived somewhat later than he actually did. This phenomenon is called convergence and is one reason Keith has so many very close matches, i.e. close matches at the 37 marker level. Those men are related to Belinda and Keith, but many are more distantly related than the Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA) statistics suggest. In Keith's case there have either been very few mutations from the modals, or some mutations were followed by backmutations returning the affected values to the modals. All of these scenarios lead to lines which are very close to the modal values, so Keith probably has even more matches than most of the other Niall kinsmen. You can get a feel for how this sort of situation looks on the project tables by looking at the R1b green subgroup table, which includes men matching the Niall modal haplotype. When you first open the tables, you'll find that for each subgroup, the group modals are listed at the top of the chart. The men in the chart are listed in order of their proximity to the group modals. Because Keith so closely matches the modals, he is listed fourth from the top. Generally, men at the top of their tables will have more matches and men near the bottom of their tables will have fewer matches, but this is a general rule and not a rigid pattern. Belinda's situation of having so many matches to sort through is somewhat extreme, but having hundreds of matches is not extremely rare. This happens most frequently with royal lines such as those of Niall and Somerled because they are so prolific. Robert C McConnell, the Somerled descendant profiled in June, is in a somewhat similar situation. One of the men in the R1b Yellow subgroup also reports a total of over 300 matches, with 3 of those matching on 33 or more of 37 markers. For these researchers, sorting through all of these matches can be a major undertaking and making the most of their test results can be a little tricky. Fortunately, there are a number of tactics they can use to help themselves with these tasks. Techniques like these and the experiences of Belinda and Robert with some of them will be the subject of an upcoming post. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.