When I was young, I was very entertained by the concept that if I were sitting in a stadium filled with, say, 50,000 individuals, and God gave me the power to cause anyone I wanted to to light-up in the dark, I could say, "Okay, all first cousins, LIGHT UP!" and maybe 1 other person in the stadium would light up. And then I could say, "All second cousins, LIGHT UP!" and maybe 4 people would light up. And then I could say, "All third cousins, LIGHT UP!" and maybe 15 people would light up ... until I got down to, maybe, "All seventy-fifth cousins, LIGHT UP!" and the final 4,000 people in the stadium would light up.
COUSINS
Thoughtful readers might, say, divide the latest estimates for the amount of time that has passed since the first tool-and-fire-using hominid ancestors of man whose activities suggest that they had been ensouled by God and so could be defined as "human" appeared on Earth -- say, 250,000 years, a number corroborated by the apparent age of the now-second-oldest mitochondrial DNA found so far? -- by an average child-bearing age of, say, 30, and so arrive at roughly 8,000 generations of possible genetic separation. Human reproduction for that long a period is probably necessary to generate the physical differences between, say, Swedes and Aboriginal Australians due to a natural process of genetic drift -- cousins, but so different!
COUSINS
However, I have read that scientists reviewing the evidence underlying such notions come up against a surprising lack of diversity among existing humans generations -- as though catastrophes repeatedly wiped out almost all of mankind, including remote cousins' bloodlines, in historical and prehistoric times.
Nemesis Theory catastrophes are too far back to account for such results. Ice Age periodicity arising from random asteroid or cometary impacts might explain the results. Velikovsky-esque catastrophe periodicity would, too. Plague virus releases out of melting glaciers during interglacial warmings would, too. (A Bible literalist would add, "Well, so would a Genesis-type flood, right?" Sigh. "Jot-and-tittle" Bible literalists actually destroy religion.)
Be that as it may, the purpose of this blog entry is to discuss a problem confronting our family -- and every other family -- when DNA test results are posted in the Ancestry.com and GEDmatch.com websites: DNA cousins in cousin lists who don't belong there.
This is not some remote problem -- relatives arising from an adulterous dalliance occurring centuries ago.
Nope. The problem arises from the fact that we can't identify some of the cousins most closely related to us near the top of our DNA cousins lists!
#1 in my Ancestry.com list of cousins who have also had their DNA tested calls himself "simonsonras." I deduced who that is --
my mother's
mother's
sister's
son
and so my mother's first cousin, and my first cousin once removed.
my mother's
mother's
sister's
son
and so my mother's first cousin, and my first cousin once removed.
#2 in my Ancestry.com list of cousins calls herself "C.R." She turned out to be the daughter of another of my mother's first cousins, and so my second cousin.
#3 in my Ancestry.com list, "mcaston11," turned out to be
my father's
my father's
mother's
sister's
son's
daughter,
and so another second cousin.
#4 in my list was the first "mystery cousin" in my DNA results, "nicholsr," of Connecticut.
Who in Heaven's Holy Name was "nicholsr"?
And when saw me, "PeterDawson99," in his Cousins List, he thought the same. "Who in Heaven's Holy Name is 'PeterDawson99'?"
We spoke to each other by e-mail. We shared pedigree charts -- our family trees.
We spoke to each other by e-mail. We shared pedigree charts -- our family trees.
Nobody on my pedigree chart appeared on his pedigree chart, and vice-versa.
We submitted our results to the GEDmatch.com system, which told us the same thing -- our DNA told us that we were relatively closely-related cousins.
Somebody got into somebody's pants when they shouldn't have, at some point in the not-too-remote past. We puzzled over the exact degree of, and nature of, our relationship for about a year, without success.
Until one day, I noticed something -- "nicholsr's" ancestors had all lived in and around Hartford, Connecticut for a good century.
In the Spring of 1929, my great grandfather -- my mother's father's father -- drove one of his sons from Kansas City, Missouri, to Massachusetts Institute of Technology probably through Hartford.
Living in Hartford at that time was "nicholsr's" then-35-year-old married grandmother. So, there was the opportunity for philandering.
Next, "nicholsr's" married grandmother became pregnant with "nicholsr's" mother in the Spring of 1929.
That fit.
Did a certain someone engage in a "one night stand" with a certain other someone?
I thought of a way to prove it.
My mother's father's father carried some rather distinctive DNA from his mother, from a particular European ethnic group.
And I knew of a cousin whose DNA was also in the GEDmatch.com system who carried that same distinctive DNA in his genes.
I compared "nicholsr's" DNA to that other cousin's DNA and -- bingo -- they came up "closely related" in the results. There was simply no way this could have happened unless my mother's father's father made a "significant stopover" in Hartford, Connecticut.
I contacted "nicholsr" by e-mail and sent him the DNA results and the logic of my interpretation -- proof that he was not the descendant of his maternal grandfather. I did so with some reluctance. Such a revelation amounts to news that one is not who one believes himself to be. I imagine that that can be a pretty shattering piece of information.
He has asked me about his grandfather, my great grandfather Michael. I will tell him shortly, and I hope that he will be proud. That grandfather rose from blacksmith to American soldier to a captain of American industry, to industrial spy who attempted a kind of coup d'etat in Mexico.
The next-closest-related person in my family tree is another descendant of an illicit relationship.
That's how common they are turning out to be, in the Cousin's Lists.
So, go get your DNA tested!
No comments:
Post a Comment