How many generations does a Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) STR test trace?
Y-chromosome DNA tests trace both recent and distant generations. The number of generations traced by a Y-chromosome DNA test depends on the type of test taken, short tandem repeat (STR) or single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP).
Where did my ancestors come from?
There are two places to look.
The first is your haplogroup, which is identified and described for you on the Y-DNA—Haplotree page of your myFTDNA account.
The second place to look is the Y-DNA—Ancestral Origins page of your myFTDNA account. We list the countries of origin reported to us by others who have test results that are the same as or similar to yours. This list does not represent places where your ancestors have been, so much as places where your Y-DNA signature can be found today. It can provide a guide to the possibilities of your ancestors’ origins.
If you have few matches, this list will not be statistically representative. You will need to wait until more people who match your haplotype are added to the database. Several thousand people test at Family Tree DNA every month.
Don’t we all go back to Africa?
Yes, all of our Y-chromosome lineages trace back to a common ancestor who lived in Africa about sixty thousand years ago. Some lineages migrated out of Africa; others remained.
This map shows each of the major (backbone) paternal haplogroups’ paths out of Africa.
The path that our ancestors took tells a story about human history. Testing your relatives’ and your own DNA can help you understand both the diversity and commonalities of your part of the human story.
Ancestry
Can I test to determine if I have ancestry from one ethnic group, such as Native-American, Jewish, or African?
Yes. Our tests can tell you if you have ancestry from a population group.
Our Y-DNA tests trace the direct paternal line. This is your father’s father’s father. This is the best test when you want clear proof of ancestry on your direct paternal line.
Our mitochondrial DNA tests trace the direct maternal line. This is your mother’s mother’s mother. This is the best test when you want clear proof of ancestry on your direct maternal line.
How do I tell if I have Jewish ancestry on my direct maternal (mitochondrial DNA) line?
Judaism is a religion and not a genetic attribute that can be defined by a DNA mutation. However, because Jewish populations have been endogamous for much of their history, hints to your Jewish ancestry for your direct maternal lineage are provided by looking at the mtDNA—Ancestral Origins page in your myFTDNA account. Check the Comments column there. There are four possible situations:
1. You match only people who are Jewish. You will see in the Comments field Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and other historic branches. The answer here is a clear yes.
2. You match both Jews and non-Jews. The answer here is not clear. A higher level of testing—the Mitochondrial DNA Full Genomic Sequence test—will eliminate matches with one group or the other.
3. You match nobody of known Jewish origins. It is highly unlikely that you have Jewish origins on this line.
4. You do not have matches in our system. This is unlikely if you have Jewish origins.
How do I tell if I have Jewish ancestry on my direct paternal (Y-chromosome DNA) line?
Judaism is a religion and not an attribute definable by a DNA mutation, but we can give you hints about having Jewish ancestry by comparing your results against our database. Look on the Y-DNA—Ancestral Origins page to see whether the people you match have listed Jewish ancestry. Those in our Jewish database have a listing in the Comments column denoting Jewish ancestry. There are four situations when testing for Jewish ancestry. They are:
1. You match only people who are also Jewish on their direct paternal line. That is, the signature, or haplotype, matches only with people who have known Jewish ancestry. The answer in this case is clear.
2. Your haplotype matches both Jewish and non-Jewish lineages. The answer is not clear, and we cannot guess whether your personal lineage is Jewish.
3. You match no one of known Jewish origin. The answer is clear. You are unlikely to have Jewish origins on this lineage.
4. You have no matches in our system at all. That means we have never seen your specific results. We will know more about your ancestry when you start matching others.
I have a family tradition of Native-American ancestry. Is the Population Finder tool able to detect it?
The Population Finder program can detect a significant Native-American contribution to your genetic ancestry. If you have a 100 percent genetically pre-Columbian ancestor in your recent genealogy, Population Finder is highly likely to detect it.
For example, if your great-grandmother was 100 percent pre-Columbian Native-American, Population Finder will detect your approximately 12.5 percent Native American ancestry.
Population Finder is also likely to detect Native-American ancestry that is a high percentage of a modern population. As another example, if all four of your grandparents have Native American ancestry from Mexico, your Population Finder results will reflect the amount of pre-Columbian ancestry within a normal range for those with Mexican heritage.
However, in the current release, the available reference populations limit the ability of the program to identify your specific ancestral group. It may also underdetect heritage that comes from a distinctive unrepresented group such as the Na-Dene.
Remember that you may have a Native-American ancestor but insufficient genetic heritage to be detected by a DNA test. This is due to the randomness of autosomal recombination.
Therefore, genetic testing can confirm your ancestry but not disprove it.
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For more FAQs, visit FamilyTreeDNA.com.
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1 Reprinted with permission from Family Tree DNA.
DNA Test Kit Instructions
** Please Note--Read this entire sheet before you begin your specimen collection. Scraping should be before eating or drinking, or at least an hour after eating and drinking. Avoid warm or hot fluids before scraping.
1. We have supplied 2 swab kits and collection tubes to insure accuracy.
2. The number on your tube should correspond to the number on your Release Form and the plastic bag.
3. With clean hands carefully open the plastic wrapper without damaging the scraper. Keep the plastic bag that has your kit number to put the tubes back after the collection.
4. Using one cheek scraper, scrape forcefully inside the cheek many times (about 60 seconds). A great scrape gives us a great sample! A weak scrape will yield less DNA and may cause several weeks delay.
5. Remove the small specimen tube marked with your kit number. Unscrew the top and gently push on the plunger at the top of the applicator stick, ejecting the scraper into the tube, just under the soapy solution. (Please do not jam the scraper to the bottom of the tube. . . it is difficult to retrieve)!
6. Remove the plastic applicator handle, leaving the scraper tip in the tube. Twist the cap onto the tube securely. The tube must be shut tightly to insure the quality of your sample. The tube with the scraper tip inside should be left at room temperature. However, it will not be harmed by winter or summer temperatures when sent by regular mail.
7. Wait 3-4 hours and repeat steps 4 to 6 for the second scraper and tube marked with your kit number.
8. Put the tubes inside the plastic bag that has your kit number and seal it. Insert the plastic bag and the release form in the self-addressed envelope provided, and send it back to Family Tree DNA via US Mail (postage within the US is $1.95). If payment has not yet been made, please make sure to write the Kit AND Invoice numbers on the check. This will ensure that payment is correctly assigned to your order.
SELECTED SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
PREFACE
Sharon R. Ennis, Merarys Ríos-Vargas, and Nora G. Albert authored The Hispanic Population: 2010 as part of
“2010 Census Briefs” (May 2011; available online at: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf).
To watch the full episode of Haiti and the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided, part of the PBS series Black in Latin America by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., visit: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/haiti-the-dominican-republic-an-island-divided-watch-full-episode/165/. In the series, first aired in 2011, he covers other Latin-American territories, including Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru.
To read more about the passing of the mind-boggling “Dominican Republic Electoral Law Reform,” first published on November 20, 2011, visit http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/local/2011/11/11/41602/Legislation-eradicates-Dominican-Indians. I wonder if this ridiculous law will ripple throughout the rest of the Caribbean. The act of suppressing one’s ancestry is not only oppressive but also hazardous to one’s health. See, for example, the study “Differences in Albuminuria Between Hispanics and Whites: An Evaluation by Genetic Ancestry and Country of Origin: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis” by Carmen A. Peralta, et al. Cardiovascular Genetics, 2010; 3: 240–247. (To access this paper online, go to: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2948758/pdf/nihms-229323.pdf.) Researchers found that higher European ancestry may be associated with lower levels of albuminuria, and that Native-American/Amerindian/Indigenous ancestry may be associated with higher levels of the protein among Latinos, depending on one’s country of origin. “Since albuminuria is a known important risk factor for adverse cardiovascular events and kidney disease progression,” states the paper, “our findings highlight the importance of recognizing the heterogeneity of Hispanic subgroups.” The researchers observed that Latinos differ in their genetic ancestral component by country of origin. Of the Dominican folks tested, they found that 5 percent had Native-American ancestry and had the highest percentage of African ancestry of the participants tested, as well as European ancestry. To ignore any part of our ancestry is to disregard the genetic predispositions to certain diseases. Therefore, it hinders our ability to take necessary precautions. I’m just sayin’.
CHAPTER ONE: LOVE, AMERICAN-STYLE
I’ll never forget the look on Dad’s face when he found me reading a copy of Dr. Antonio Zaglul Elmudesi’s Mis 500 Locos (Editora Taller, 2003), until I learned the role he played in Rocío’s life, and later, in talking her parents into letting her marry Dad. In a way, I guess this man had something to do with my being here.
CHAPTER TWO: MEAN STREETS
The data I use is for Dominican-born people residing in the U.S, of which an overwhelming majority settled in Nueva York. Before 1990, the U.S. Census didn’t identify Dominican as an ethnic group, lumping the numbers of Dominican-born people throughout the United States into one figure. The population estimates I used can be found on the chart “Population Change in the Dominican Republic,” page 249, in A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York (Princeton, 2008) by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof.
CHAPTER FOUR: UPTOWN ’81
“God is smiling on you but he’s frowning too / Because only God knows what you’ll go through,” rhymed by Melle Mel, is from a song titled “The Message,” credited to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and released in May 1982 on Sugar Hill Records. Check out a blurb about the origins of the song, which should have given propers to Melle Mel and Duke Bootee, the only people on the record. Rolling Stone features a blurb about the song’s origins, available online at: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/the-500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-20110407/grandmaster-flash-and-the-furious-five-the-message-19691231.
CHAPTER FIVE: AN AWAKENING
Bernhard Goetz, whom I occasionally still spot walking across Fourteenth Street not far from the train station where he shot four Black teens in 1984, was quite a polarizing figure until it became obvious that the guy was a colossal dick. Read Stanley Crouch’s take, “The Joy of Goetz” (2003), in New York magazine at: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/anniversary/35th/n_8601/. Incidentally, one of Goetz’s victims, James Ramseur, died of a drug overdose and possible suicide on the twenty-seventh anniversary of the day he was shot, during the writing of this book.
To get an idea of what it was like riding New York City subways in the ’80s, read Mark S. Feinman’s “The New York City Transit Authority in the 1980s,” available online at: http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/history-nycta1980s.html (the site is not affiliated with any official transit agency or provider, despite its name).
“The enemy could be their friend, guardian” are lyrics from Public Enemy’s ferocious track “Don’t Believe the Hype,” from the groundbreaking album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, released in 1988 on Def Jam Records.
CHAPTER SEVEN: AVE MARIA, MORENA
“She’ll make the toughest homeboy / Fall deep in love” are lyrics from the song “Roni,” off of Bobby Brown’s “I’m A Grown-Ass Man” post–New Edition album, Don’t Be Cruel (his debut solo album, King of Stage, is forgettable but came out before the aforementioned joint).
A little over two decades ago, a crew of Italian-American wild cowboys murdered Yusef Hawkins (also spelled Yusuf) in Bensonhurst. Read Sewell Chan’s “The Death of Yusuf Hawkins, 20 Years Later,” in the New York Times, available online at: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/the-death-of-yusuf-hawkins-20-years-later/.
CHAPTER NINE: THERE’S NO OTHER PLACE . . .
I want to come and go as I please and continue to flow in hip-hop’s inspired current without being questioned by someone who doesn’t get it. I want to write like Robert Christgau and Joan Morgan and Greg Tate and Lisa Jones, all journalists whose contributions to The Village Voice replaced the played-out textbooks I barely cracked as a high school senior at the onset of the ’90s. Nothing I read during this time hit me harder than Jones’s Voice column “Skin Trade,” parts of which she included and built on in her crazysexyfierce book Bulletproof Diva (Anchor, 1997). A couple of years later, Joan Morgan, who has since become a dear friend and colleague, released the groundbreaking When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip-Hop Feminist (Simon & Schuster, 1999). Do a search on any of the aforementioned writers at www.villagevoice.com, and it’ll be evident why I loved them so back in the day.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: TRUTH, RECONCILIATION, AND TIME MACHINES
I had the pleasure of interviewing geneticist Spencer Wells for an hour or so in the lobby at New York’s Standard Hotel in the winter of 2011. I relied on the interview, as well as the information from his accessible book, titled The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004). Wells is currently the director of National Geographic’s Genographic Project, accessible online at: https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/.
Blaine Bettinger pens a popular blog called the Genetic Genealogist (www.thegeneticgenealogist.com.) I came across it after downloading his comprehensive eBooklet on Family Tree DNA’s website, titled “I Have the Results of My Genetic Genealogy Test, Now What?” (Blaine T. Bettinger, Ph.D., 2008). If you’re interested in reading the very latest news about the subject or embarking on your own genetic genealogy project, his blog is a must-bookmark. Bryan Sykes’s The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry (W. W. Norton & Company, 2002) is essential reading.
CHAPTER TWELVE: THINGS COME TOGETHER
More Arab- and Persian-descended Americans of my generation and younger are finding themselves in racial limbo, like their Latino counterparts. Helen Hatab Samhan contributed the chapter “Not Quite White: Race Classification and the Arab-American Experience” in the collection Arabs in America: Building a New Future (Temple University, 2000), which I’m told is an essential read on the subject. John Blake wrote a terrific piece about the issue for CNN called “Arab- and Persian-American Campaign: ‘Check It Right’ on Census” (2010), which can be found online at: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-01/us/census.check.it.right.campaign_1_arab-american-leaders-census-form-persian?_s=PM:US. Raja Abdulrahim wrote “Students Push
UC to Expand Terms of Ethnic Identification” for the Los Angeles Times (2009), available online at: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/31/local/me-arab31.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: TRIPPING IN MOROCCO
I enjoyed author and PBS host Richard Bang’s Quest for the Kasbah (Open Road, 2009), from which I gleaned some of the historical information I used in this chapter.
I’m indebted to my travel guide, Adnane, and our trusted driver, Mounir, for all the history they shared with me about Morocco.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: RUNNING THE FUKú DOWN
The anthology Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America, edited by Jane G. Landers and Barry M. Robinson (University of New Mexico Press, 2006), is a good source for information, including African slave laws in Hispaniola, the Senegambia region of West Africa—modern-day Guinea Bissau—and free African communities on the island. It is one of numerous sources that document Black ladinos. G. Aguirre Beltran’s paper “The Rivers of Guinea,” published in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 31, 3:290–316 (1946), is essentially about the tribal origins of slaves in Mexico but has integral information about the Senegambia region and its relation to slaves in Santo Domingo.
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