NEWS FROM
THE CLAN DONNACHAIDH DNA PROJECT
2006 – No 2
The project and the Clan Donnachaidh Society
The project, which covers the names Robertson, Reid,
Duncan Stark, Duncanson, and several others associated with Clan Donnachaidh, now
has about 235 participants. The project was set up in 2002 by Bill Robertson,
the International Vice-Chairman of the Clan Donnachaidh Society, to cover the
names associated with the clan.
Participants include society members and others who are
interested in discovering more about their remote or more recent origins. There
is no requirement to be a member of the clan society to take part but if you
would like to know more about the society, please see the Clan Donnachaidh
International website:
http://www.donnachaidhinternational.com/
If you would like to join the society you are very
welcome (an application form can be found on the website home page).
Four project websites
To help guide participants towards the Donnachaidh
website, we have asked Family Tree DNA to list the names Duncan, Reid and Robertson separately. This has been
successful because people have joined but it turns out that any results entered
exclusively on these subsites are not incorporated in the main body of the
project.
The project administrators are considering ways of
sorting this out but we would urge anyone who has enrolled only under the name
Robertson, Reid or Duncan to replace it by Donnachaidh. Participants can join
the Donnachaidh project by clicking on JOIN at the top of their home page and
selecting Donnachaidh.
To join the Donnachaidh DNA project, see this link on the
Family Tree DNA website: http://www.familytreedna.com/surname_join.asp?code=P85700&special=True&projecttype=S
We have finally taken the next logical step of
incorporating a genealogy database into our DNA project, thereby allowing
participants to share family histories with others in the project.
Anyone who is either a Donnachaidh
DNA project participant or a Clan Donnachaidh Society
member (or both) will be allowed to enter family histories and photos through a
GEDCOM format or manual input.
You will find the genealogy program on
the DNA page of the Clan Donnachaidh International
website. This link will take you straight to the DNA page:
http://www.donnachaidhinternational.com/ydnaproject.htm
You are first asked to register for a user account. You have to
click on a form to indicate whether you are a Society member or a participant
in the DNA project or both. Once you have submitted your request and verification
has been made, you will receive instructions for entering the program.
Importing
your data
If you already have your genealogy in a desktop program (like PAF,
Legacy, FamilyTreeMaker,
Results displayed on the Clan Donnachaidh International website
The results have now been divided into groups. There are
some large
See: http://www.donnachaidhinternational.com/ydnaproject.htm
-o0o-
Questions that have arisen in relation to the project
I don’t
understand my results
It is not always easy to understand a very new scientific
method, which is in full evolution, with new discoveries being made all the
time.
Family Tree DNA identifies your close matches on your
home page and also provides explanations of how to interpret your results. Here
is a very simplified explanation of things to look out for.
In studying your results and comparing them with those of
others, you need to be aware of your haplogroup and haplotype. An explanation
of haplogroups (the various branches into which the human race is divided) and
haplotypes (individual combinations of markers) was given in the first
newsletter.
Haplogroup. In
many cases Family Tree DNA can predict the haplogroup without a special test.
Sometimes this is not possible and for a definitive result you will need to
order this test.
The haplogroup is the first thing to consider because you
cannot be related to someone in a different haplogroup within thousands of
years. If you are an R1b you need to compare your results with other R1bs; if
you are an I, you need to compare your results with other Is and so on.
Haplotype. To
identify a close family relationship with another participant, you need a good
match between your set of marker numbers and those of the other participant.
Family Tree DNA does this for you by indicating whether you have a perfect or
close match on 12, 25, 37 and – most recently – 67 markers. Family Tree DNA
strongly emphasizes the importance of comparing results from people with the
same surname.
How many
markers?
Test results are becoming more refined all the time. As
the number of people taking genetic tests has increased, certain combinations
of markers representing particularly prolific ancient lines are being found in
a number of different surnames. If you are interested in using your results for
the purposes of genealogy rather than identifying your very remote origins, we
recommend testing for at least 37 markers, particularly if you belong to one of
the more common R1b groups. With some of the less common results it may be
possible to draw conclusions on the basis of fewer markers.
Scottish surnames developed late and we are beginning to
find approximate 37-marker matches between people with relatively common
results and different surnames, which suggests that an increasing use will be
made of 67 markers. Close 25-marker matches between different surnames are not
unusual.
Surnames
To help those interested in genealogy, we have divided
the results by surname. For some names we do not have many results as yet. You
might like to test your paper family tree by inviting male-line descendants of
other branches to take part, so you can verify your results and help work out
your ancestor’s haplotype.
There has been at least one case where genetic testing
has raised questions about a researched family tree.
Many participants will find that they have a number of
12-marker matches with people with different clan surnames. It is not possible
at present to say what this means in terms of clan formation. Others who have
chosen to see all possible matches will find they have 12-, 25- and possibly
even approximate 37-marker matches with people with different surnames. Unless
you can document a change in surname or have a close 37-marker match with
someone with a different surname, it is probably better not to consider different-surname
matches for the purposes of family research.
Finding out
more
Several participants have come to us through the
Genographic Project. The Genographic Project website (https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/)
has an interactive atlas that provides a visual picture of the human journey
out of Africa and round the world.
There are various sites that explain the science and how
to understand your results. The website of DNA Heritage (another testing
company – http://www.dnaheritage.com/default.asp)
has some clear, well illustrated explanations.
For academic papers see: http://www.ethnoancestry.com/info.html.
There are also various online discussion forums.
Am I a real
Robertson, Reid, Duncan, ...?
Yes, if you have the surname Robertson, Reid or Duncan.
The results have been quite varied and no dominant group has emerged so far
(see below for the most common haplotypes). There have been some excellent
Duncan matches among participants who have been working to verify documented
research. Robertson and Reid matches are just starting to emerge as
participation has been on a more ad hoc basis.
Known chiefly-line descendants come into the first group
in the table below. At present we can conclude only that the people in this
group share their results because they are descended or likely to be descended
from Niall of the Nine Hostages or other people in his family.
Is it possible
to prove that I am a Scot from my results?
Unfortunately no, not from your individual haplotype
because haplotypes cannot be tied exclusively to a particular area. There is some
information as to how frequently certain results occur in certain areas. In
2003 a research team from University College London, and universities in
Norway, Denmark, California, Italy and elswhere in the UK published ‘A Y
Chromosome Census of the British Isles’[1].
They took samples from men in 24 places representing points on a grid laid
across Great Britain and then compared the results with samples taken from men
in Ireland and the Basque country (chosen as likely to closely match the
indigenous inhabitants) and Germany, Denmark and Norway (chosen as likely to be
similar to the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings who arrived later). They chose men
whose paternal grandfather’s birthplace was within a 20-mile radius of the
selected centre.
So far the
three most common six-marker haplotypes among Donnachaidh participants are:
393 390 19 391 388 392
1. 13 25 14 11 12 14
2. 13 24 14 11 12 13
3. 13 24 14 10 12 13
They belong to Haplogroup R1b and probably largely
represent the people who first populated the British Isles after the Ice Ages.
It must, however, be emphasized that we do not have any kind of estimate of the
number of common lines of descent and that the first group comprises a number
of people who are known or suspected to be descended from a recent common
ancestor.
The first group includes those who match the haplotype
established for Niall of the Nine Hostages, High King of Ireland, and others
who are a fairly close match. Unsurprisingly the highest number are found at
locations in Ireland but a reasonable number in the Western Isles, Pitlochry,
Oban, Morpeth, Haverfordwest in Wales, and the Isle of Man. This group is
relatively infrequent in England and in some areas is not found at all.
The next two groups are by far the most frequent in the
British Isles. The second group represents the Atlantic Modal Haplotype and is
common throughout the western part of Europe, representing the migration north
from Spain after the Ice Age. Several participants have an Atlantic Modal
Haplotype badge representing descent from a man who lived in ancient times who
was the most prolific progenitor in Europe. It is found in all parts of
Britain, the Basque country and occurs in quite high levels in the samples
taken in Germany, Denmark and Norway. The only place where it appeared to be
relatively rare was York, which came under Scandinavian rule in the Viking
period. It peaks in Scotland in outlying areas, such as Orkney and Shetland
(despite their Scandinavian input) and the Western Isles.
The third group is found more frequently in places in
Scotland than in places in England and Wales, but it is found throughout
Britain. It appears more frequently in the central parts of Scotland than the
second group, including in the area around Pitlochry, which is in clan country.
This by no means represents all the participants. There
are also a number of R1b variants, several people in Haplogroup I, which tends
to be associated with Danish or Anglo-Saxon ancestry, and one or two less
common groups: such as R1a, which is usually assumed to be Viking, E3b, and J2.
The Kingdom of Scotland came very late in the genetic timeline. The Romans
moved all sorts of people round their empire and some of the smaller and more
exotic groups may also have come in with the Vikings.
This is a very rough calculation of how the 2003 results
compare with the Donnachaidh results and we will aim to provide a more detailed
account in due course.
As more research is done there will certainly be new
patterns of results and interpretations.
My results do
not quite match Family Tree DNA’s Niall of the Nine Hostages results
The original research team from Trinity College Dublin
tested a set of 17 markers, some of which are not used by Family Tree DNA (they
may be in the new 67 marker test) and made assessments of other possible
matches on the basis of surveys such as the 2003 data. Family Tree DNA came up
with a 12-marker profile presumably on the basis of results in their database
from people with certain Irish surnames. They have not suggested the
possibility of an 11/12 match.
Despite this, after 1700 years some mutation would seem
to be feasible and an 11/12 match is accepted for surname matches. It is to be
hoped that more research may establish results for different branches of
Niall's descendants. Some participants who do not exactly match FTDNA’s Niall
profile match on the FTDNA markers that were included in the Dublin survey. So
the possibility seems to be there (but see the Genghis Khan story below, where
a supposed descent turned out to be descent from a common ancestor).
-o0o-
The Western Atlantic Modal
Haplotype (derived from
the FTDNA website)
Family Tree
DNA awards a WAMH badge to participants whose first 12 markers match the
sequence below or who match it 11/12.
Western
Atlantic (Modal) Haplotype 13 24 14 11 11 14 12 12 12 13 13 29
The Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype is the most common
Y-DNA signature of Europe’s most common Haplogroup, R1b. There has been a
dramatic population explosion among this group over the past 10,000 years,
probably since the end of the last Ice Age.
R1b, and its most common haplotype, exists in high or
very high frequencies throughout western Europe from Spain in the south to the
British Isles and western Scandinavia in the north. It appears that
approximately 2.5% of Western European males share this most common genetic 12
marker signature. Because of its very high frequency FTDNA always suggests that
for genealogy purposes people in this group should only use the 25- or
37-marker test.
Anthropologists have been saying for many years that only
a select percentage of males in past societies did most of the fathering, while
other males lost the opportunity to pass on their Y-chromosomal genes.
Professor Brian Sykes of Oxford University has commented that most people will
have had a warlord in their ancestry in the past 10 000 years.
DNA in the news
Anglo-Saxons in
Britain
A research team at University College London has recently
concluded that the native population of the central belt of England was
substantially replaced by a relatively small group of Anglo-Saxon men who had a
dominant share of status and wealth and thus gained a genetic advantage over
disposessed native British men. The theory aims to combine the archaeological
evidence that there was no mass migration of Anglo-Saxons with the fact that
most British people speak a Germanic language and that it is now believed that
about 54% of British males have Anglo-Saxon rather than Celtic ancestry. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5192634.stm
Genghis Khan
Tom Robinson, a man of British ancestry who lives in
Florida, was briefly identified as a descendant of Genghis Khan on the basis of
results in the database of Oxford Ancestry (a genetic research company). More
detailed research by Family Tree DNA has revealed that he is not descended from
the Mongol warlord but that they share a more distant ancestor. In the same way
as the Anglo-Saxons are said to have dominated the gene pool, Genghis Khan has
been estimated to be the ancestor of about 16 million men in Central Asia.
Family Tree DNA has now published a Genghis Khan profile: http://www.familytreedna.com/matchgenghis.html
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake in 1431 and it might
be thought that nothing could have survived as the authorities took great pains
to ensure there were no relics. After Joan was seen to have died, the fire was
relit twice, to make sure nothing was left. However, in 1867 a family from
Rouen, where Joan was executed, produced a rib bone that had been exposed to
fire, some other pieces of bone, pieces of wood and organic material which were
reputed to have been salvaged from the fire. These remains are currently being
tested by a team of scientists who will first check whether the rib belongs to
a woman. Other tests will aim to identify signs of triple burning and the age
and origin of the wood. First reports say the tests are going well.
During the wars between France and England, in which Joan
was a leader in the French army, the Scots supported the French. Five years
after Joan’s death, Princess Margaret, daughter of James I, was married to the
King of France’s heir, the Dauphin Louis. Slightly earlier, in 1419 members of
the Scottish nobility, led by John Stewart Earl of Buchan and Archibald Douglas
Earl of Wigtown, raised troops to fight in France in support of the French
King. No reports have yet come to light of any members of Clan Donnachaidh
being involved and most chronicles of this period suggest they were more
interested in campaigning against rivals at home but in fact there is not much
information about their activities during this period.
[1] Published in Current Biology, Vol. 13,
979-984, May 27 2003. It may be available on the Internet.