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Science

DNA Testing Of Deep Ancestry 119

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that's-pretty-nuts dept.
Randall Burns writes: " Oxford Ancestors, founded by world-famous University of Oxford scientist Bryan Sykes has announced the public availability of an inexpensive($US 180) service that will trace matrilineal ancestry using DNA tests. Applications include forensics, genealogy and research of history. Coverage includes a recent BBC story. The currently available test can trace matrilineal ancestry back to one of seven women who lived 150,000 years ago to which 99% of all people of European descent can trace their ancestry."
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DNA Testing Of Deep Ancestry

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  • I wonder if there's anyone that all Slashdoters can trace their heritage to. I mean, there must be some kind of abacus hacker whom we can all identify with. Or maybe some cave painter who realized that we need to find out new ways to live...

    Anyways, couldn't this information be used for discrimination by corportations and other entities? Or is the information only available to the person who requests it? I mean, what if someone was traced back to a Neanderthal who lived in the Great Rift Valley? Some people could mistake that as the person being African-American. Of course this doesn't happen easily, but it's a possibility the conspiracy theorists out there can ponder on.

    --
    Vote for mind21_98 this November
  • But of what REAL use is this? If it could tell me more about my family, and how they got here, and where they actually came from, THAT would be useful.

    Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!

  • One of seven women? (Score:4)

    by blogan ( 84463 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @03:29PM (#1117906)
    99% of people come from one of these seven women? Man, they must have been huge sluts! :)

    Seriously, I don't see the point of this. When people want to trace their ancestry, they're mostly concerned with who their great great grandparents were and who their relatives were that lived during the Civil war, not 150,000 years ago. Yeah, it's cool, but nothing I'd pay $180 for.
  • who my great great great great great great great great great great great ..... great great great .... great great parents where. I guess, they were great.

    On the other hand I can see how some people could be disapointed to find out that their great^n n->inf was some OOG who built the StoneWedge, or maybe even that their cousin's mother's brother's father's sister's daugter's ... ancle's brother is Bill Gates.

  • But the real question... (Score:3)

    by zCyl ( 14362 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @03:30PM (#1117908)
    Can this technology help us finally figure out what species Janet Reno is?

  • Similar project already started by BYU (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    BYU start a similar study [byu.edu] earlier this year. It's a race! ;-)
  • It would be nice if there actually was a lineage traced all the way back to those seven women. As it is, all the deep-test shows is that you're part of one of seven groups...but there's no information as to whom those seven women really were. No names, no family info, nothing.
  • Scientists at the University of North Carolina have used a similar method of DNA testing on subjects in the Appalachian region of N.C., S.C, and VA. - they have come up with quite the revalation, tracing over 200,000 young "toothless" midget children to the same "Maw and Paw."


    FluX

  • OOG YOUR ANCESTOR!!! (Score:3)

    by OOG_THE_CAVEMAN ( 165540 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @03:37PM (#1117912)
    SILLY SLASHDOTTER, WHY YOU NO PAY ATTENTION!!! OOG BE FIRST SLASHDOTTER IN RECORDED HISTORY, EVEN BEFORE TACO CREATE SLASHDOT!!! EXCEPT OOG NO LIVE IN GREAT RIFT VALLEY, THAT JUST BASTARD COUSIN OF MINE (RIFT VALLEY HAVE SHITTY INTERNET ACCESS, OOG DEMAND BROADBAND)!!! ALTHOUGH SHITTY GENE TRACING PROGRAMS NO MENTION OOG, OOG BE REAL ANCESTOR!!! OOG BREAK HEAD WITH OPEN SOURCE CD AND POST SLASHDOT SINCE MAN FIRST EVOLVE!!!

    OOG WONDER HOW DARE YOU OVERLOOK YOUR HERITAGE!!! WHY YOU BE UNGRATEFUL BASTARD!!! IF NOT FOR OOG YOU NO HAVE SLASHDOT ACCOUNT WITH +1 BONUS!!! OOG DISSAPPOINTED IN YOU!!! AS OF TODAY OOG CUT YOU OUT OF INHERITANCE OF OOG FAMILY FORTUNE!!! OOG SUGGEST YOU SHOW MORE RESPECT TO CAVEMAN ANCESTOR!!! PERHAPS OOG ALSO SHOW YOU DISCIPLINE BY BREAK HEAD!!!
  • Interesting point. You know, this would be a blow to those of us who consider their race, culture and religion to be THE RIGHT ONE. Or my, my, my.
  • but there's no information as to whom those seven women really were. No names, no family info, nothing.

    Um... I'd be surprised if they had names back then as we know them now. And I don't think the concept of biographies had been invented yet, either.
  • Aren't we all descendants of those 7 women?
  • So i can trace my roots back far enough so that i could actually be related to OOG the caveman or Jon Katz. I think I'll pass. But better OOG than Katz. OOG is a caveman, but Katz is just an idiot.
  • Actually, there is already legislation protecting a persons DNA from being used agains them as a form of discrimination. Businesses may not genetically test people for screening. I believe this also applies to the insurance community but i may be wrong.

    As far as being African-American. Unless you're planning on carrying a cross through your neighborhood in celebration of our happy little christian holiday on Sunday, you'll probably admit that life pretty much began in and about africa/fertile crescent. thusly - YES! we are all indeed African-American (or black as i like to say) in heritage. Damn - i'll bet that really pisses people in the KKK off....oh well, i guess now they'll just have to lynch themselves!


    FluX
  • This is all in what time period ? hundred's or thousands of years ago ?? what about from a Christian's point of view ?? on the Biblical creation of earth, where man was given life in the past 4 - 6 thousand years ??? How can this dna test be sooo sure... carbon date testing was proven false... but us as the nieve human species believe what we are told, by scientists...
  • SO there are 7 women 150,000 years ago....my question...did Dick Clarke impregnate them all on the Rockin' New Years 148,000B.C. ? But think 150,000 years of evolution and we have "who wants to marry a millionaire" go figure
  • I don't believe there was such thing as a whore. Those were simple days, old days, days of peace and inbreeding, nothing fancy. One OOG and seven chicks. No feminism, no shovinism, no sexuality (seriously. It was invented during this century by Freud and implanted into the culture as Foulcaut explained.) The only problem was not to get killed by a saber toothed tiger while hunting down a mammoth. Anyway, those people were way purer in heart than ALL OF US, although they would kill and maybe even eat you while you're bleeding to death. Chew on that.
  • I can finally prove that I am Rob long lost cousin

    http://theotherside.com/dvd/ [theotherside.com]
  • According to my psychic friend, Dione Warwick herself, in my past lives not only was I Cleopatra, but also Genghis Khan, Leonardo Da Vinca and Thomas Jefferson. Imagine my suprise to realize that I was all those people! I guess that I spend this life pumping gas at the Stop-N-Fuel is meant to balance out all the great people I've been.

    Personally, I am deeply offended that Slashdot does not recognize the validity of psychics. I mean, for only $4.99/min I discovered who my ancestors are, plus I found out that my g/f was possibly cheating on me and a long trip is in my future!

    Now moderate this up before I pour hot grits down your pants, sailor!

  • Its so cheap that all the men in one town in Australia are to be DNA tested to help solve a rape case. It turns out the someone admited doing it just after a DNA sample was taken.

    This makes me wonder just where that DNA info is going and how well it will be tracked. I know labs can screw up (remember your chem lab assistant - they are now doing this for a real living).

    I once had a drug test when I was considering working for GTE in Florida and I got a call from the lab saying they had got the names on the covers mixed up and if I wouldn't mind, they would send me a new cover that I could sign my name on and they would put it with my sample. Yea Right. With DNA the results will be absolute because everyone knows everyones DNA is different.
  • Why does it matter where you came from? You're not going back there. Does it matter if some relative of yours was famous? No. What matters is what you do with your life not what some relative did with their's.

    This is interesting from genetic stand point, if for no other reason so it can shut up racists. Imagine testing them and saying something along the lines of "Well you're descended from a little European genetics and a lot of African." As long as they keep video tapes of their reactions I would be happy. Remeber it's not what you come from and what you've done. It's where you're going and what you're going to do.

  • I could have told you that.
  • Mom gives you your mitochondrial DNA which makes tracing maternal ancestry relatively easy. Paternal ancestry is harder since Dad only contributes sperm and blood type components. So, even tho' we can tell who your great-to-the-nth-power grandma is, I'm afraid we still don't know who's yer daddy.

    --// Hartsock //
  • OOG is more than enough proof that those silly christians are wrong.
  • The Mormons have helped contribute to geneology research, mostly motivated by religous ideas.

    I could make some rude, sarcastic, and accurate statement about these motivations, but I have to give them the nod. While the means are questionable, the ends have benifited genetic research and has helped cure some diseases.

    The research at Oxford, though, looks to be much more advanced. In the long run, it should yeild some very benificial results.
  • Hi, the Christian point of view is wrong. I'm not saying it's wrong so much as very very naive. Look, I'm all for Jesus, but who is anyone to say that their view of everything is more valid. Maybe Coyote fell out of the sky onto a turtle, maybe the earth was created on seven days, who knows? And don't pull any of that "but the bible is divinely inspired" crap. Hell, this post is divinely inspired. God made me, I made post. That doesn't mean God made post. It's not a matter of being naive and listening to scientists, but that big fscking fossil over there is tangible. Fossils like that don't happen overnight, and man didn't just pop up as homo erectus. Didn't happen. Christianity needs to get over itself.
  • I knew you were going to post this. thats what Kenny Kingston told me.
  • I'm hoping you're just being humorous and joking about OOG and Katz.

    What separates you from an idiot? Not to troll, flame, or whatever, but inside you/me/he/they/us is about the same chances for genius, idiocy, murderers, parents, children, etc.

    Fine, you don't like Katz, that's just a personal thing. But I really hope this was a thought out comment, and not an innate, subconscious thread of your personality...

    -AS
  • I think his post was only meant for those who watched MadTV last night...

    --
  • No, I just think Katz is an idiot. I guess you've never read his garbage. =) But i actually like OOG. OOG posts some funny shit. If you take /. seriously, its obvious you havn't been here long enough. All the Kill JarJar, Natalie Portman, Hot Grits, OOG, and the rest grow on you after a while. Sure they're are intelligent posts here, but they get slammed by idiots shortly thereafter. So i'll just end this with a (-1 Flamebait) "Linux Sucks, BSD Rules"
  • 'Eve' probably isn't intended to refer to the actual biblical personage.

    For instance it was shown using mitochondrial DNA studies that everyone can trace their ancestory to one women (believed to be from central africa I think). This didn't involve any of her actual DNA just comparisons among currently living DNA.

    My guess is such a service, if it is real, is using similar techniques. Who these seven women are is probably unknown their existance is merely deduced from currently availible DNA. If it is indeed the same technique it means that it can only show maternal ancestory (they look in the mitochondrial DNA which can he inherited directly from the mother).
  • If 99.9% of all europeans call one of them an ancestor it wouldn't surprise me if something like 90% were in fact descended from all of them. Just a little bit of interbreeding should insure this.

    So its worse than than that. For $180 you get told that in fact you had an ancestor 180 years ago

  • The currently available test can trace matrilineal ancestry back to one of seven women who lived 150,000 years ago to which 99% of all people of European descent can trace their ancestry. "

    Gee, SEVEN women? Adam had quite a harem!!!


    --

  • I am of course reminded of the movie Gattica. A rather grim 1984ish prediction of the future, done Hollywood-style. Still it was a good movie, and raised some interesting points.

    Even though it was "illegal", as it is in America today, for companies to discriminate based on genetic information, it still happened. Genetic information was so easy to get, people litteraly leave their genetic information everywhere they go in the form of tissue that is continually being shed (hair, skin, etc...). Just as today, discrimination still occurs based on race and sex, even though its illegal, discrimination can still occur. I think that it is very likely that, as technology advances and allows tests to be performed on minimal tissue very cheaply, this kind of test will become quite common in the business world. As the main character in Gattica states, and I'm paraphrasing, "why spend all that money training an employee who will die 10 years later of a heart condition."

    All I can say is that I hope I have a healthy DNA record, for my children's and children's-children's sake.

    Spyky
  • Or even they've managed to find a sequence of mtDNA that all Europeans have. It's hard to see how they can figure that 150K years ago there were only 7 or so women in Europe who's children managed to survive. I'm betting they're finding characteristics that are shared in general among Caucasians rather than characteristics of a particular family line. But who knows.
  • But that's my point. (You think)Katz is an idiot. He's not being spectacularly different than you or I, and doesn't deserve the label any more or less than we do.

    If we are his peers, we can judge him. But if we are truly his peers, we realize we are just like him at some level, and any judgements we can make are hollow, pointless, and empty. Of course, if we aren't his peers, we actually have very little basis on which to judge him, then.

    I don't begrudge the OOGs or the Katzes, both are part and parcel of what /. is today. I don't mean to take /. seriously, I mean to take you seriously, because you are a person/entity, and /. is not; it's a collective, and emergent response behavior of all the yous and Is on the site.

    -AS
  • This reminds me of a story I ran across when
    searching for Zen Koans and other assorted
    goodies.

    It went smething like this...the master looked at
    a dog (there was some reason for this) and said
    "He is happy"

    the student said "but you are not a dog, you can't
    know if he is happy"

    The master replied "But you are not me, you can't
    know that I don't know if he is happy"

    -Steve
  • Err, what do you mean the means are questionable? Are you saying they have bad technique? Or did you mean to say you don't like their motivation? Which is different than having questionable means.

  • I took the service and . . . (Score:3)

    by Money__ ( 87045 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @04:22PM (#1117942)
    Hemos is my dad.
    [luke skywalker]
    NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo! ! ! ! !

    ;)
    ___

  • But this only tracing through the mom, so it can only take one path.
  • You seem to be a very interesting person with fresh and insightful views of the world around us. Any other time than friday night before finals i would comment seriously. But tonite is the friday before finals.
  • ...because it sounds pretty useless.

    Sure, DNA tracing will give you mathematical probabilities about where/when a hypothetical ancestor lived--but no amount of "historical research" is going to find that person. We don't have DNA samples of "third peasant from the left, Duke of Chattinghamshire's feudal fifedom".

    As an example, let's say I went in. They take my DNA.

    First iteration: "You have a mother." Well DUH!
    Second iteration: "Your mother had a mother." Interesting, I never would have guessed.
    47th iteration: "You have a great-(repeat 44 times)-grandmother. Simple math (20 years/gen, 47 gens) tells us she lived 1000 years ago. 'Historical research' tells us this was the Middle Ages. Your neighbor Joe has a 83% chance of having the same ancestor." Can I get my $150 back?
    --
  • > his makes me wonder just where that DNA info is
    > going and how well it will be tracked. I know
    > labs can screw up

    Heh labs screw up? never!

    Reminds me of a story of a highly publicised case
    in the 80s where a train wreck occured and the
    Driver was tested for drugs after the crash. He
    tested positive for marijuana and there was a huge
    to do about it.

    Later on it turned out that the lab that did the
    tests wasn't actually doing drug tests. Turnes
    out they had just been making up test results for
    months (either due to lack of funding or because
    they were incompetent and couldn't run the
    equipment) - that story didn't make the major
    press though.

    > I once had a drug test when I was considering
    > working for GTE in Florida

    Heh I refuse to take a job that requires drug
    testing. I don't want to work for someone who
    can't respect that what I do on my private time
    is my buisness, and my body chemistry is none of
    their buisness.
    (I read somewhere that drug testing falls into
    the same catagory legally as a full body cavity
    search...would you submit to one of those as a
    condition of employment? I wouldn't)

  • The new factions: (Score:5)

    by hypergeek ( 125182 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @04:31PM (#1117947)
    If 99% of Europeans were matriarchically descended from one of seven women...

    (Scene opens with armored mercenary on horseback approaching a stone castle retrofitted out of the decaying hulk of the abandoned steel husk of an office building. Camera pans, giving audience a breathtaking view of the barren, wrecked skyline of a post-apocalyptic American metropolis.)

    Guard (steel spear glinting as he shouts): "Halt! Who goes there? Know ye that this place be the realm of the descendents of Bertha the Bountiful. If thou be a son of Agnes the Prolific, begone from here, lest we slay thee!"

    Mercenary: "Good soldier! Stay thine blade, for I, too am of the Tribe of Bertha!"

    Guard (in stupid, low grunting Superbowl-commercial voice): "Whazzuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!"

    Mercenary pulls a flintlock pistol from his belt, cocks the hammer, and fires at Guard, killing him instantly. Audience cheers.

    Guard (lacking the decency to just DIE): "Lo! I am sped! Dead am I! I am made as dust by the treacherous asp! Gone am I from this mortal coil! I am---"

    Mercenary: "Why won't you DIE??!"

    (Mercenary dismounts, then proceeds to kick Guard till he falls dead, and more importantly, silent. Audience cheers.)

    Mercenary: Never underestimate the 1% descended from Jane Doe the Probably-Just-a-Rounding-Error-In-Our-Calculations !

    Mercenary proceeds to singlehandedly storm the castle, raping and pillaging, stealing treasure, weapons, and office supplies.

  • Because this is not going to tell you, say, who your great^50 grandmother was in the year 1348, or whatever. We've all met a few people who are from these European families and can trace their heritage through some famous castle in Austria back to the year 800 AD. But those people are few and far between and this study is not going to let most of us have the same knowledge of our families as your rare aristocrat.

    Don't forget, as late as 1900 more than 3/4 of the American population were rural farmers or otherwise agrarian.(IIRC) Most of us can probably trace our roots to farmers and we probably don't have to go back very many generations before this is true. The farthest I can trace my last name unbroken is to Iowa, 1837. If I don't take the strict last name route I can go back to the early 1700s when the Scotch-Irish emigrated en masse from Northern Ireland to the states. Thus, I know that my ancestors were all farmers, they were likely farmers in Ireland and Scotland before that. I know they were at least literate when they came to America, but I have no knowledge of my family before that. Seeing as how for many, many generations most of the human population was agrarian, passed knowledge orally, and did not keep records, I don't see how this study is going to help people "trace" their ancestry.

    I realize that that was not the only purpose of the study BTW, and that they likely made many worthwhile discoveries.

  • Just goes to show: It's the 1% that's the kicker, right?

    Vik :v)
  • all the men in one town in Australia are to be DNA tested to help solve a rape case

    ?

    Wow! Does Autralia not have any sort of constitution or a right to privacy? Are they volunteering or being ordered? And, if the government can just demand your bodily fluids, aren't you really just a slave.

    God, I hope that this never happens in the US.

  • Re:One of seven women? (Score:3)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @04:57PM (#1117951)
    99% of people come from one of these seven women? Man, they must have been huge sluts! :)

    Not really. 150,000 years ago we could assume the lifespan for a woman was about 40-45 years on average. Let's assume one generation is 40 years. Now we know these seven women had kids. For this example, let's assume each woman had 2 kids in their lifetime - one male, one female.

    So, from seven women we now have 14 children - 7 boys and 7 girls. Now, let's assume that only half of the 14 of the kids ever had kids of their own. Continue this pattern through 3750 generations (40 year lifespan into 150,000 years) and you come to a really big number. (Get this number by doing 3750^7. You come to something like 1.04284286499e+25.)

    That's a lot of people.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Good luck with finals then!

    I like your sense of humor

    -AS
  • One: The real OOG actually posts good, insightful comments. He delivers them in a singularly annoying way because it's his way of protesting moderation. But it actually works wuite well (take it from the buy who swapped personalities with him on April Fool's; it's actually fun). But this one really was just a troll, not like OOG at all. (And yes, I am an OOG fan).
    Two: OOG uses spaces in his name, not underscores. That one's actually probably more definitive evidence that this was an OOG-poser.
  • first of all the bbc link shoud point to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_7 19000/719376.stm According to BBC story all 7 women decended from one of three clans that still exist in Africa today. I assume the other 1% of homo sapians would have decended from the other two clans. Wouldn't it be cool if we could trace combine this with historical and archeological records as well as some new genttic research to create a family tree of the entire human race. We could set it up a server with a CVS like service that people could login to and submit their familt trees. Historians an scientists could be responsible for putting it all together and tracking our ancient ancestors. The information could be put on the internet giving people that are still alive a serial number to protect their privacy. Maybe Slashdot could even set uo a page when you put in you serial number and it tells you how close of a releative you are to linus, Gates, John Katz, etc
  • The science is fairly well established. But what good is? If I'm of European descent, according to this I know that I must almost certainly be related to one of Syke's 7 "matriclans." But since I am of Europeam descent then I already can take this as known, why do I need a "test?" Anyway at a 150,000 years ago, I'm pretty sure this has droped out of my family's oral traditions by now. As to my more recent geneaology, unless someone has tested my (purported) ancestors, after the test I will know no more about my genealogy than I do now. At the risk of seeming like a conspirologist, this test seems to do two things. 1) get the .com some revenue, which may or may not turn into money for the backers. And 2) add "voluntarily" to the DNA data base of whoever's lab this stuff ends up in. The best part is I get to pay for it and never know what's really behind this!
  • Good call! Although this is the authentic OOG account this post clearly is not posted by the OGG we know and worship. The grammar is not OGG and there is no insightful comment. OOG should easily be able to say something bowel splitting in response to this story. I'll bet his little brother has logged onto his account while he is out for the night. Or (heaven forbid) some jerk has cracked his logon passwd and is trying to ruin him. Hopefully the former.
  • The cops in this town (Wee Waa, from memory) basically figured out that the evil prick^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H suspect was a resident of the town. There was enough outrage in the town that they decided to do mass DNA testing. It wasn't compulsory to take the test, but because almost of the men in the town did take the test, it pressured the guy who did this to turn himself in.

  • Interesting idea... (Score:3)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @05:14PM (#1117958)
    However, it won't be that useful to geneaologists in the long run. The reason: a sad fact of European society (and most others, actually, dating back for most of recorded history): the family name and identity was generally handed down in a patrilineal manner, while mitochondria can only trace matrilineal ancestry. I guess it's sorta understandable, though; back when those rules were made the people didn't know about mitochondrial DNA (or, for that matter, any other kind of DNA).

    Furthermore, mitochondrial DNA tracing is far less specific, since barring mutations mitochondrial DNA is identical from generation to generation. In other words, you're not going to get accurate family lineage tracing this way. You can get into the general ballpark (tracing back to one of seven women 150,000 years ago, for example) but you can't be very exact.

    I guess it would have important symbolic value, however, particularly among warring nations. It proves that, in a way, we're all brothers (and sisters too, of course). Now if only we could get a few certain groups in the world, who shall remain nameless, to get that through their skulls...
  • Well if you bothered to click the link, which led to the wrong news story and then search round the news site a little bit you'd eventually come to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_7 19000/719376.stm [bbc.co.uk].

    Now if you bothered to read this article you'd see that it said:
    His discovery also reinforces the theory that modern human beings have their origins in ancient Africa. Professor Sykes found that the seven ancestral mothers have strong links to one of three clans that still exist in Africa today.

    Therefore this supports the theory that homosapians come out of Africa.
  • He thinks Katz is an idiot. That is the reference point to compare oog to. And katz is "spectacularly different than you or I." for starters he is an idiot, is annoying as hell, writes meaningless, insulting drivel, and has front page post access. i don't see how being called a peer of Jon Katz can be construed as anything other than an insult. and i can still judge him by the quality, or the lack thereof, of what he writes.(this is much like how any other slashdot user is judged)

  • This strikes me much differently than what seems to be indicated by most of the posts here already.

    This awes me. That we've actually scientifically confirmed that one little tribe (or the roots of 7 little tribes) managed to fight their way though what passed for life for them, and the end result has been a large chunk of modern civilization.

    For some reason it takes something like this to make me feel the wonder of something that could have been logically surmised and proposed beforehand.

    I mean, logically you know that if our civilization manages to survive, it implies that:

    • We will have millions of millenia to do whatever we decide to do. With that span of time, and a little enlightenment, we'll be able to make the pyramids and metropolis' of today look like straw huts and tinker toys.

    • You're lineage will eventually include one hundred million billion individuals, spread over the span of time.

    But when is the last time something made your mouth drop open and think seriously and deeply about things like the above? When is the last time something happened and made it feel real?

    I hope I've adequately expressed how this story makes me feel :)

  • Maybe I should have pointed out that I grew up and live in Utah. I was baptised, went to church, and was ordained to the office of an elder in the preisthood. But I don't consider myself a LDS anymore.

    Anyway, I do understand the principle and motivations behind the geneology work they do. In fact my parents are serving a mission at a family history center in SLC where they do extensive database work, cataloging various geneology books. Their methods seem fine, their motivations are their own.

    You made a number of inaccurate statements. First they don't (or can't, not sure which) do the extraction work until you have been dead at least 50 years or if your family says it's ok. Second the principle is not that you are suddenly mormon after you have received the baptism for the dead work. You are just given the opportunity to accept the religion in the after life. Thirdly, the posthumous work is not the primary task of temples. That is actually rather a minor part. Fourth, all religions are just cult's that made it big.

    Growing up as I did and living the life I led I obviously have a different outlook than a non-mormon. I feel that in general the modern church is typically a good thing. They generally teach good behavior and they do an amazing amount of social work for their members. If you come upon hard times and you are mormon, you won't ever have to worry about where your next meal is coming from if you are willing to accept the help. This is a much better situation than any government run welfare program, IMO.
  • Now, perhaps some of the more Christian oriented members of the Slashdot community could fill in the details here, but weren't there like 13 tribes at Babel? Or was it 9? or 7? I can't remember. I have always been of the belief that things were not quite as literal in the Bible as some would have you believe. Perhaps this is a sort of reference to that...Not trying to start a religious war, but something to think about.

    Of course, my mother always believed that the [13|9|7] tribes at Babel were us and the aliens that populate the universe...and the sundering by language was more of a sundering from earth itself...who knows ;)

  • Re:One of seven women? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    No offence intended, but I hope math is not one of your stronger points. The figure 3750^7 corresponds to seven generations of 3750 children (all of whom reproduce). That's a lot of children.

    Furthermore, if each woman had two children, half of whom lived to reproduce, then the population would in fact become EXTINCT in about 3 generations (depending on how many males and females are born.).

    Fortunately for us, human women have tended to have more than 2 and less than 3750 children.

  • Hmm. I try to get by without judgement. I mean, if I don't have the time or energy to deal with an article, I just won't read it.

    I'm saying we aren't really peers of Katz because we don't write anything of substance for the front page of Slashdot. Thus my previous point; if we were really his peers, we would be walking in his shoes and living in his space. Since we aren't everything we see and say is clouded by the fact that we are, essentially, outsiders looking in. If you really don't want to be his peer, that's your choice, not mine. I can call you anything I want, real, imaginary, fictional, or otherwise, and that's just my delusion and reality.

    So judge him, as long as you're comfortable with the fact that other people will judge you similarly. I prefer to not judge, if possible, on the grounds that I don't want to be judged either. Because, in all the world, in all the situations and contexts, sometime, someplace, you too will be an idiot, annoying as hell, etc... and someone just like you will be saying that about you. It would bother me if someone were to believe things like that about me... so I avoid believing that of others.

    Now what would happen if Katz had another identity, and it happened to be OOG? Or some other of the trolls? It could happen ^^

    -AS
  • I know such things are controversial, but I think the most commonly accepted view is that Europe was inhabited by Neanderthals 150K years ago, and that the Nanderthals contributed little or nothing to the modern blood lines.

    So if those seven women were of the "modern" type at that remote period, then they must have lived in Africa, or barely possibly the Near East. In which cases you should be able to trace a lot more people than just Europeans to them.

    --
    "Damn! And just when Piranha was starting to turn the tide of negative PR!"
  • > man didn't just pop up as homo erectus

    Here's wondering what Dr. Freud would have made of that statement.


    --
    "Damn! And just when Piranha was starting to turn the tide of negative PR!"
  • > The science is fairly well established.

    Actually, my latent Luddite tendencies make me somewhat skeptical of the science involved here.

    The problem is, once you provide a tree-producing algorithm, it is going to output some tree, no matter what the input is. The validity of the tree depends as much on the input as it does on the algorithm.

    To take a geek-oriented analogy, consider a simulated neural network. Given a network, it produces some output regardless of what input you give it. It can be out of bandwidth for what the network is supposed to categorize. It could even be an array of random numbers. It doesn't matter; the network is going to produce an output anyway.

    So with DNA categorizing algorithms, at least according to the skeptical hemisphere of my brain. Maybe it gives you seven matriarchs; maybe thirteen; maybe only one. But it will give you something, no matter what the input was.


    --
    "Damn! And just when Piranha was starting to turn the tide of negative PR!"
  • Odds are many Europeans are descended from more than one of these women, just through their son's line. So your 1% rounding error may very well be killing his own cousin.

    How many women disappeared because they only had male children or grand-children?
  • The reason they were going the study at BYU is the Mormon geneology records have been kept for the past hundred and some years. The combonation of written geneologies and genetic geneologies would really help in figuring out certain aspects of a person's genes.
  • I'm sure no one would have any privacy issues with that sort of thing...

    Seriously, I'd go for it. I know one line of my family back eight generations, but I don't even know my great-grandmother's maiden name. I suppose I should ask her sometime. I'd love to know my family history further back.

    --Kevin
  • First off, I hope spelling isn't one of your stronger points. This is interesting though, so I'm going to try and follow it to an estimate.

    So after a bit of digging, I found some info on growth rates at the following URL:

    http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/img/worldgr.gif

    The numbers are above 1 percent per year for the years they actually have data on. I'll assume that because life just wasn't always so easy, a growth rate of .1% per year.

    Starting with a population of 14 (with the silly assumption that there were seven guys to go with those seven women) and multiplying by 1.001^150,000, we get a population of 1.8102974241583444 * 10^66

    Thats a lot of people. So, it certainly sounds plausible to me.

    --
    grappler
  • Should have waited a minute before submitting. Darn latency on thoughts!

    It was, after all, mostly the males who went pillaging and raping.
  • > Mercenary proceeds to singlehandedly storm the castle, raping and pillaging...

    And, with supremest irony unperceived by 'is hignorant mind, leaving the world even more full of Berthaites than before.

    --
    "Damn! And just when Piranha was starting to turn the tide of negative PR!"
  • I think it would be really interesting to see how the decendants of the different women are distributed. Are they evenly spread out, are they more or less partitioned off from each other (pretty unlikely), or are just identifiable centers which might suggest where these women lived?

    Does anyone know anything about this? Or geographic distributions of the three clans of Africa? Also, does anyone know how much more specific this could get? What would the time limit be? Is it always going to be 100k+, or might it eventually get down to like 25k?
  • If 99.9% of all europeans call one of them an ancestor it wouldn't surprise me if something like 90% were in fact descended from all of them. Just a little bit of interbreeding should insure this.

    You miss the point. Let's say that all of Europe descended from 26 women, not 7. What the finding of 7 (in the sample he's tested, which is not definitive) different types of mitochondria simply means that 7 were dominant and the existence of the other 19 (whose genes you may in fact share more of) cannot be confirmed by this methodology.

    In other words, that "stamp" identifies the *dominant* traits you have from one person, where the dominant trait in question is just the one. You may have parts from other moms of Europe, just not ones that are uniquely identifiable by his methodology.

    _Deirdre

  • you'll have to pardon my wording. not all of us can be as *precise* as yourself. Pardon me - *human* life began in Africa. (read: Lucy, Austrelopithicus, Homo erectus, etc.)

    actually, no. Life began about 3.5-4 billion years ago.

    ummm - so you actually know when life began in the Universe? holy shit! have you been on Charlie Rose??? let's not get into semantics here, pud! - you're Jeff K. [somethingawful.com] aren't you??


    FluX
  • I am of course reminded of the movie Gattica. A rather grim 1984ish prediction of the future, done Hollywood-style. Still it was a good movie, and raised some interesting points.

    Gattaca, the name was taken from the initials used for the base pairs of DNA.

    The problem with the hypothesized Gattacan universe is that just because you have a gene doesn't mean it'll be expressed. For example, I have celiac disease [celiac.com], which is genetic. Of the studies done, one involved identical twins, where it was found that where one twin expressed the disease, there was a 70% chance the other did.

    Another study (I've been looking for it again) was on Type I diabetes. Basically, the study demonstrated that if one a) had the gene, b) was given cow's milk prior to 9 months of age, and c) had the third bout of influenza prior to puberty, the gene would be expressed.

    Thus, I believe we'll develop rulesets, given a person's genes, of how NOT to express undesirable traits.

    Thus, I see the future not in eugenics (as Gattaca would have us believe) but rather in providing information on working around genetic issues. To me, that is a far more plausible (and pleasant, if somewhat regimented) future.

    _Deirdre

  • While you're probably right, you'd never know from this, since it only traces your mother side, and you can only have one linear list of women in that set.
  • Do you realize what this means?! 99% of humanity belongs to a single tribe, a tribe with a governmental structure (or whatever structure tribes have) still intact! Man, and you thought Ghengis Kahn's empire was big! Is the name of the tribe given anywhere? I'd like to pay respects to my chief, and i'm sure he'd love to know just how widespread and powerful his tribe really is. And i pity the fools in the other two tribes if they try to start any wars with them, i mean, us! We are an army 5,400,000,000 strong and growing! YES!
  • Um, obviously theoretical growth rates only apply in perfect conditions. Remember the bacteria they always talk about in middle-school math classes whose population doubles every 2 hours or whatever? Well, obviously that isn't a sustainable rate, otherwise the world would have been over run with them billions of times over by now.

    Clearly it's the same with people. If you were to say that there were only 2 people around 150,000 years ago, your figure of 1.8*10^66 would be only reduced to a seventh, so there would still be 'a lot of people'.

    Of course its still wrong anyway, the formula for population growth isn't p = p0*r^t, its something more like p = p0*e^rt, or something like that (something with an 'e' I don't remember exactly)

    Also, that number has nothing whatsoever to do with the number of people alive at any particular time, these women could have lived at different times, and probably had peers that were not represented in the European mtDNA pool. (It has nothing to do with the fathers ether)

  • Re: (Score:1)

    by delmoi ( 26744 )
    But what about the remaining 1%? Why isn't there an eighth woman? And what about incest?

    The last single % probably comes from several diffrent women, or something. And as far as incest, you wouldn't notice any, since this only traces mitocondrial DNA, witch you only get from your mother. I don't know of any one who was developed in the wombs of two diffrent people
  • Greg Egan wrote a thoughtful short story based on mitochondrial DNA profiling called 'Mitochondrial Eve.' It was included in the Luminous anthology. While the technology for this type of analysis is not necessarily brand-new, it will be interesting to see if, now that mitochondrial genotyping is generally available, it will take any permanent root in people's imaginations or lives.
  • So, then, what about you, yokel, would you marry your cousine

    Hrm... I do really like Maruchan Ramen Noodels [google.com], witch is about the only thing I can make...
  • carbon date testing was proven false...

    No.
  • The other women probably died out (altho we can safely say not from STDs. The other 1% of people
    (which includes natalie portman) are probably descended from hot grits.
  • I hadn't heard about this. However, there's a rather large problem with using it to track descent. Only men have Y-chromosomes (even individuals with Kleinfelter syndrome, in which case they have two X's and a Y, come out male).

    So while you could use the Y-chromosome technique to track patrilinear descent of men, the technique is rather useless for women. And even if it could be used to track women, it has all the same problems that mitochondrial tracking does (namely, since it's basically identical from generation to generation, you still can't get specific with it).

    There is one possible interesting use for this, though: it could be used to determine how many men were in this tribe with the seven women, and furthermore it could be used to track which men and which women mated. Just think of the fun the tabloids could have with that one: "Prehistoric sex scandal! OOG seen with mysterious "eighth woman!"
  • I assume the other 1% of homo sapians

    No, the other 1% of europians
  • Well its obvious that the chief is OOG.
  • Perhaps...but what about determining if Al Gore is actually organic?
  • List their Bacon Numbers, please!
  • It would be more accurate to say that the modern Negro, and all other human "races" are descendants of Africans from 150,000 (or whatever the correct number is) years ago.
  • Um, obviously theoretical growth rates only apply in perfect conditions. Remember the bacteria they always talk about in middle-school math classes whose population doubles every 2 hours or whatever? Well, obviously that isn't a sustainable rate, otherwise the world would have been over run with them billions of times over by now.

    Obviously. Don't think I'm reading too much into my little calculation :-)

    All I was trying to do was show that there is no reason, mathematically speaking, why there couldn't have been just 7 women in Europe 150,000 years ago.

    Clearly it's the same with people. If you were to say that there were only 2 people around 150,000 years ago, your figure of 1.8*10^66 would be only reduced to a seventh, so there would still be 'a lot of people'.

    Again, I'm not trying to make any claims about what the population growth for humans is or was, or what the population is or was. My formula was far too simple for that.

    Of course its still wrong anyway, the formula for population growth isn't p = p0*r^t, its something more like p = p0*e^rt, or something like that (something with an 'e' I don't remember exactly)

    Well, of course it's wrong. But it could never be wrong for the reason you just gave above. The equations p=p0*r^t and p=p0*e^rt are both exponential curves, and exponential growth can be expressed in either form - it doesn't matter. An exponential curve always has the property that it's "doubling time" never changes, no matter where on the curve you look. This is true for both equations you gave. The only reason people use the e^rt form is that it is easier to integrate and differentiate.

    --
    grappler

  • Matrilineal Clans (Score:3)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @08:08PM (#1117994) Homepage Journal
    For matrilineal cultures like the Picts [tripod.com] tracing one's matriline is of primary importance. Although the Pictish clans are submerged within the patrilineal Scottish clans, there are those of Scottish descent who wish to revive the Pictish clans and must, therefore, resort to rather creative technologies to discover their matrilines. With increasing independence of Scotland from the UK, this may turn out to be more than an eccentric avocation for many.

    The Oxford Ancestors Matriline service relies on mitochondrial DNA which doesn't mutate often enough to provide the fine matrilineal distinctions that would be required for different matrilines that have a common matrilineal ancestress as recently as the Pictish clans probably do. However, it is interesting that the legend of the Pictish clans sets their number at 7 -- which is the same number of matrilines Sykes says constitutes 99% of the indigenous Europeans.

  • Shut the fuck up. Midgets are cool. and I go to the unc-chapel hill. Fucker. Piss off, ya wee doss cunt.
  • The last I heard, 8 men refused to take the test.

    Most DNS tests don't compare your DNA, they basicly weigh each of your chromosones and get a graph of their relative weights and thats considered "proof".
  • Well, it was once thought that the Leakeys merely discovered the origins of life in Africa. But, the shocking truth is that they were the cause of it! There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine, you see...

    Leakies indeed...
  • "How can this dna test be sooo sure... carbon date testing was proven false... but us as the nieve human species believe what we are told, by scientists..."

    Proven false - by whom? Keep your pseudo Christian Science to yourself.

    And they dont use carbon dating to determine genetic regression.
  • ...that the British Royal Family is more inbred than previously thought.

    -AP
  • This reminds me a lot of Greg Egan's [netspace.net.au] short story "Mitochondrial Eve" .. Basically, a religion springs up around tracing ancestry via the mitochondria.. Eventually, of course, the men trace their ancestry via the Y chromosome. Then there is a lot of large scale fighting between the people, because humans are still nasty to each other .. they've just decided on new borders of right and wrong.

    Sigh.
    ---
  • Nah, Math isn't a strong point, but it doesn't help that it was late at night with a beer in my hand.

    Fact is, I still suck at math. Oh well. ;)

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Major weaknesses in mitochondrial lineage tracing (Score:5)

    by orpheus ( 14534 ) on Saturday April 22, 2000 @05:55AM (#1118013)
    Mixed population bacterial genetics may be a far better anology than eukayotic (nuclear) genetics for explaining the distribution and prevalence of mitochondrial populations

    First, some much simplified background (I have a degree in molecular biology): Mitochondria are self-reproducing organelles (= cell 'organs') that many people believe were once independent organisms that entered into a symbiotic relationship with a host cell, and eventually became utterly dependent on the cell. They now function as the primary site for the production of ATP, the main cellular fuel. There may be hundreds or thousands in a single cell

    Mitochondria reproduce (to some degree) independently of the cell, and contain their own DNA. The DNA for everything else is in the nucleus (the cell's brain) but the mitochondria 'live' and reproduce in cytoplasm (cell body). When we breed, the nuclear DNA does the whole dance of meiosis/mitosis we learned in school, but the mitochondria fission like bacteria. Most (if not all) of the mitochondria is from the mother because a) the egg has thousands of times as much cytoplasm as the sperm; and b) after first contact with the egg, the sperm's mitochondria go into hyperdrive ("the acrosome reaction") and burn themselves out.

    Now for the Original Contributions

    1. In the billions of years of symbiosis since the development of eukaryotes, many genes that are useful or essential to the mitochondria have 'migrated' into the nucleus.

    2. Though the mitchondrial 'support' genes are fairly cosistent from person to person, they aren't identical in everyone. Those genes only got to the nucleus by accident (mutation, adaptation by mitochondria to the available cell resources, etc) and therefore not all strains may be able to live in all people, or certain strains may enjoy a competititve advantage in a given person

    3. Some individuals are known to have multiple strains of mitochondria, due to the various flukes and accidents of biological history. I know of no study that states that *most* humans have only one strain, and doubt its the case. It's actually a good idea to have multiple strains, since anything that kills (or impedes the reproduction of) a solo strain would kill (or prevent the reproduction of) its host. Multistrain individuals should be slightly hardier.

    4. Mitochondria became part of the cell when we were single celled organisms. The mitochondrial DNA variation we measure is presumed to be 'nonessential' because mitochondria have very little DNA, and most of it was largely fixed long ago. We presume we're sorting mitochondria by 'eye color', but we may not be.

    4) Mitochondria must adapt to their host as the host changes. A cow's mitochondria is much less similar to ours than you'd expect, considering that cows and men didn't diverge very long ago on a mitchondrial timescale.

    5) Suppose a type mitochondria in a remote tribe requires the (nucleus) gene PII'ase. This is fine if the tribe all carries the (nuclear) gene for PII'ase. However, this mitochondrial line may die out when interbred because outside populations may not carry the gene PII'ase.

    6) I can think of a dozen other mechanisms, but let's not go overboard.

    Conclusion:
    Mitochondria are subject to many of the evolutionary and selection pressures as independent bacteria, symbiotes, etc. the finding that there are seven major strains of mitochondria in modern man simply suggests that seven mitochondrial strains are widespread and well-adapted to the core genome of humans

    It doesn't mean there were only seven 'original women'

    It may mean that there were only seven (mitochondrially) *undemanding* women [ducks!] and the truth may be far more complicated. (lesser strains may coexist with the support of the major strains, etc.) and probably are.
  • don't want OOG's inheritance... fish heads are great and all, but...

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