Two years ago, I asked my Dad if he would be willing to take a DNA test for me, and because he is awesome! he agreed. Love that man! Anyways, I paid a bazillion dollars...ok not really a bazillion...but a lot of money to have him spit on a q-tip. We got the test results back, but honestly I still don't understand them. I did gather from his results that following his male line, we "hail" from Norway. Well....yay!...that's interesting but really doesn't help me figure out how we came to be in this Great Country. I joined the "Adamson Project" but so far no hits with could be cousins. I still kinda feel like I didn't get the most out of his tests. Ok, I will admit it I am not a Geneticist, but I like to think I know how to research something...yeah all this left me baffled. Sigh...
Well, so when I first heard that ancestry.com was going to be adding a DNA service I thought ok...cool. But will I be able to understand it?? And I was not to keen on the fact that I thought you could only trace your maternal line. Which would be really cool, following just my maternal line, I brick wall at my 4th Great Grandmother Caroline Harris, whom I know little about. I really just kept thinking this is not the path for me. It's a lot of money, without much in return. The combination of DNA and the genealogy world is still a fairly new idea. Only within the last 10 years or so has it really taken hold. Us genealogists tend to stick with what we know...paper trails. LOL.
Too make a short story long, I looked into this "new" service from ancestry.com and found out two things: 1. It looks at your autosomal DNA! Ummm....ok what does that mean? LOL, for us plain folk without 20 years of schooling, it means it looks at all 23 chromosomes. Good news for me...right? Yes, it means it will be able to tell me all my ethnicities. Whoo hoo! And 2. it connects right to my family tree I have on ancestry.com. Well, at least I hope this part will be as cool as it sounds. Ancestry really seems to have a good site up for the ancestryDNA. With ways to help me connect with my "cousins" and help me understand my results. I hope this one explains better than the last one I took. Maybe someday they can make it to where I input my Dad's results and it will connect the same way....maybe?
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| Here I am holding my tube of spit and my DNA kit :D |
That is crazy cool. I am interested to understand how it works. And I even took genetics in College! ha ha.
ReplyDeleteYou did!! Do you understand it? LOL...I get lost pretty fast when I try to figure it out on my own. :D could you someone a little smarter than me ;)
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