Daisy and Mandy, If you have not been to this site you should take a look. It is the National Geographic's Genographic Project site - https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic This is how I first became exposed to the DNA for genealogy idea. When I bought my kit from them I received the DVD for the Journey of Man. It is very interesting and basically says we are all descended from the same small group of people that existed 50,000 to 60,000 years ago in Africa. One of the things we get when a match shows up through Family Tree DNA (www.ftdna.com) or Ysearch.org is the genetic distance of the match and a calculation based on probabilities of the Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA) between you and your match. One really needs to do at least a 25 marker test and preferably a 37 marker test as a follow on with any likely matches from the standard 12 marker test to really know much. In my case I am a 24 of 25 marker match with an Earl Ray Thomas who shows he descends from an Elisha Thomas born 1760 in Virginia. Meanwhile, I turned up with as good or better matches with some folks with the surnames Walters and Waters. According to the math, I have a 96.5% to 99.75% probabillity of a common ancestor with the Walters person between 16 and 24 generations back (that is 300 to 500 years back). That time frame is obviously beyond the reach of most genealogical information, so we may never know the connection. It is possible to have a test run for the deep haplogroup markers to discern the migration pattern of one's ancestors going back thousands of years. I have not felt the urge for that yet. Lastly, the Thomas DNA project page can be found at http://thomasdna.home.comcast.net. Tom Thomas tsquizzled@msn.com >From: fred e thomas <Daisythomas@compuserve.com> >Reply-To: thomas@rootsweb.com >To: "thomas@rootsweb.com" <thomas@rootsweb.com> >Subject: Re: [THOMAS] Thomas named Rees >Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:29:39 -0400 > >Mandy: > >I'm not Tom, but yes, the Thomas DNA is linked to many other names. This >is what surprised us as well, in the beginning. This is a very complicated >study of the human being and the origin of man. It is a SCIENTIFIC study >and deviates from the religious theory and so is not believed by many. >However, even the scientists have a problem with its complexities >sometimes. If you really want to get a hint of how it works, we found a >terrific CD/DVD that clarified some of the mysteries, and gave us a better >understanding of it. It was called "The Journey of Man". We can't >remember the author, but it is also in book form. (Both were loaned to us >and so I can't go look it up) The blood lines go back to thousands of >years before there were surnames. The markers denote true blood lines to >one another, by coded numbers, but sometimes with a few mutations along the >way. One can have the same ancestor linked to another person, but this >might be ten generations apart or even 50 or more generations. Google DNA >results or ancestry and see what you come up with. There is much on-line, >but none clarified it nearly as well for us as the above. Ask your local >library if they have a copy to borrow. We found one in the Thomas DNA List >who traces back to my husband's same ancestor who fought in the Revolution. > I think it's 7 or 8 generations back. He was/is a Thomas, but there are >others. My husband has the exact same markers as a man who can trace his >lineage back to Robert the Bruce in Scotland. Other exact markers go back >to Finland, Germany, Switzerland, etc. as was said in my previous post. > > Daisy > > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >THOMAS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes >in the subject and the body of the message _________________________________________________________________ Need a break? Find your escape route with Live Search Maps. http://maps.live.com/?icid=hmtag3