Founded 1906
Archaeology Report Spring 2016
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Selected Article from the BHAS Bi-Annual magazine "Flint" Spring 2016
Digging into your DNA I'd guess that most people these days are familiar with the use of DNA analysis to identify individuals, familial relationships, ethnic origins etc. in archaeology as well as criminal investigations. Perhaps less is known about the opportunities that exist now for anyone of us to have our own DNA tested - at a cost, of course. I've tried out several of these options over recent years, mainly in connection with family history research. I first became aware of DNA testing when I read 'The Seven Daughters of Eve' by Brian Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at Oxford University. This very readable book describes (in layman's terms) his work on mitochondria! DNA (mtDNA) and the use it can serve in looking at human history. MtDNA is passed down the female line. Mothers pass it to both daughters and sons but only the daughters pass it to their offspring. Prof. Sykes had used this to trace population movements in the Pacific islands and demonstrated that these had followed a route through the islands from SE Asia and not by sea from South America. He postulated the existence of 'Mitochondria! Eve', the woman from whom all humans are descended. It's now believed that she lived in eastern Africa 1-200,000 years ago. (Her male equivalent, YDNA Adam, lived 2-500,000 years ago.) His research showed that about 95% of the present European population are descended from one of 7 women, the 'daughters of Eve', and he created names and fictional pen portraits of each, to illustrate the era and culture in which they lived. He set up a company, Oxford Ancestors, to provide testing to the public and I had my DNA tested. This told me that my maternal ancestor had lived on the north Italian plains about 15,000 years ago. A quirky additional detail was that 'Oetzi the iceman', whose freeze-mummified remains were found in an Alpine glacier in 1991 was also a descendant of hers. After I started investigating my more recent family history I found that other types of DNA testing were available and more useful in this context. I traced my paternal line, the Mac-Gregors, back to 1743, where I got stuck. I joined the Clan Gregor Society in the hope of finding help with this and found that a clan DNA project had just been started. The motivation for this is that the clan was officially outlawed from 1603 to 1773, meaning that it was potentially death to use the name MacGregor. Many gave up the name and, understandably, adopted another. Nowadays, people who are trying to trace their family history and believe that they were originally Mac-Gregors often cannot find a paper trail to prove it so the DNA project was born. Comparison of a potential MacGregor's YDNA with that of someone whose descent line is attested can prove - or disprove - the clan connection. I had to contact a distant male cousin to provide the YDNA and although it hasn't yet helped much in going further back in my genealogy, it did lead to the discovery of another distant cousin in Australia! The clan project is hosted by an American company, Family Tree DNA; but at a big clan gathering, in Scotland of course, in 2014 we had a talk from Dr. Jim Wilson from Edinburgh Uni-versity who is also very interested in the use of DNA in gene-alogy and has been working with the MacGregor DNA project team. He and a colleague have set up another company, Brit-ain's DNA, which provides both mtDNA and YDNA testing and I decided to go for this as well to investigate my maternal an-cestry. As a woman, I can of course only test the mtDNA, the motherline, and had to involve a male cousin on my mother's side for the YDNA test, the fatherline. The motherline result was a bit of a surprise. It's called 'Levantine' and is apparently most commonly found among Ashkenazi Jews. There is no family knowledge of Jewish ancestry and my guess, linking in the result from Oxford Ancestors, is that my maternal ances-tors were part of a group who lived on in the Middle East until relatively recent (in archaeological terms) times and therefore share the DNA profile of others who stayed on and became the Jews. In testing my mother's paternal ancestors I was in-terested to find out if it would help with the belief that they were Jutes. The family name, Smitherman, is relatively unusual and was found mainly in East Kent and the Isle of Wight, where the Jutes settled. That result came back as 'Teutonic', most common in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, which fits with the theory. There was an additional comment that the specific sub-group was one that had been identified only very recently and its dispersal was not yet well un-derstood - so we may learn more in time. So if you find that you become as fascinated as I have been with the whole idea of DNA and deep ancestry - and have £200-250 to spare - go digging into your DNA! Joan MacGregor
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