Genelach Dáil Cuinn Project™ Forum

Hello everyone,

With the current sales promotion at Family Tree, please consider taking the time to reach out to your closest Y67 and Y111 matches to upgrade with the Big Y. This has been successful for me in the past and I reached out again tonight. One of those matches has the closest matching family trees I have ever found anywhere in years of research. You may also have an opportunity waiting for you. Please take the time to reach out to your matches. It sure won't hurt our project any and may help break through some brick walls we tend to run into.

Sláinte,

Mark

Mark,

It never hurts to get as detailed a Y-DNA test and analysis as possible. However, with the advances in technology, I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT RECOMMEND ANYONE WASTE THEIR HARD EARNED MONEY ON AN NGS TEST LIKE THE BIGY 700. EVERYONE will be better served by going to a WGS test like YSEQ's new WGS400. You will get more coverage of the Y chromosome for SNPs and better resolution on STRs. YFull can do the analysis and you will be placed on their YTree.

Yes, it is a smaller service, but if more people start waking up and realizing they are being cheated with NGS tests in this day and age, then the community as a whole will benefit significantly. We just ran into a common problem with NGS tests - 2 different men who are R1b-A259+, but are R1b-A260- MAY share an exciting new mutation. But one of the men's BigY 700 test did not cover the position the mutation is located at, so it is impossible to tell if he has the mutation without doing a Sanger test, if that is even possible.

And to be very clear, with an NGS test like the BigY 700, NO 2 tests cover the exact same positions on the Y chromosome. There is significant overlap, of course, but there are gaps where one test covers a position and the other test does not. Even the same man doing an NGS test on separate occasions will not get exactly duplicated results. While a WGS test may have the same issue, it is apparently far less likely to happen. In addition, a WGS test covers regions of the Y chromosome that targeted NGS tests deliberately ignore. As the database grows, those ignored regions MAY turn out to contain vital data.

PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES AND GET THE MOST BANG FOR YOUR MONEY. IT BENEFITS EVERYONE. THANKS!

David,

Thanks for reminding me of the current testing opportunities at YSEQ. I completely forgot about the availability since taking the Big-Y tests years ago. I was reminded of the sales promotion at the FTDNA Project forgetting that FTDNA does not like recommendations for other labs. I'll get back in touch with my matches with an update and link to YSEQ. Chalk this oversight of mine up to trying to teach an old dog new tricks! Still, it never hurts to nudge matches to take the next step.

-Mark

I might also add that I have suggested to start using WGS400 and YFULL to the private Clan Munro organization to use in addition to the one and only FTDNA Project currently utilized. I may be going to our annual Clan Gathering this fall and if I do, the plan is to bring it up as a discussion for possible action. When researching genealogy, brick walls are a common place and genetic genealogy is no different with the brick wall policies of the different labs and the discussion boards. This is one reason I like it here because we can openly discuss topics.

Mark,

I am so glad to learn you are making that recommendation. And please accept my sincerest apologies if I came on a little strong about the waste of buying a BigY 700 test. I am just frustrated by running into the issues like I previously described. And the cost is the same for a WGS400 test + YFull analysis as for a brand new BigY 700 test. Plus MT-DNA, AT-DNA, etc. As an engineer, I just hate inefficiency and waste.

The issue, in a little more detail, is that YFull added a new clade directly under R1b-A259 that has 3 men they have analyzed in it. Alex Williamson graciously looked at the data files for 2 of those men and saw something that could validate the YFull call, but they are very low quality reads. When Alex attempted to look at the position on the O’Conor Don's BAM file, it was not covered by his recent BigY 700 test, so there is no way to know if he has it or not.

This new clade MAY do one of 2 things:

1. Unite the entire Uí Briúin Aí under a common clade parallel to R1b-A260.
2. Unite the Cland Cathail surnames under a common clade parallel to both R1b-BY18120 and R1b-A260.

Either way, it will be a significant discovery if it is validated. And TBH, IDK if FTDNA will ever "discover" this potential new clade. We cannot afford to miss out on the exciting new possibilities because of outdated technology. Anyway, again, please accept by deepest apologies for being so adamant on the testing choices.

Clan Munro members fall under I2a or M222. The clan chieftain is the bloodline Munro under I2a. The rest of us under M222 were supporters of the clan thus adopting the clan surname. I received an interesting take in this email from a fellow Clan Munro member in Scotland:

Hi Mark

Personally, if FTDNA don’t prioritise making downstream SNPs available I can’t see why they should complain about us sharing information about those who can; in any case I doubt anyone polices the fora so it is up to the admins. Certainly the I2a-P37 haplogroup project to which I also belong is happy to suggest YFull, YSeq etc.

I suspect that now the founders have sold up to MyDNA, the priority will shift to money making health genealogy. The Y-DNA market is in any case pretty mature - there is not much to be discovered at the highest levels, at least in Western countries. When I tested Big Y I had dozens of new SNPs - any SNP in I2a starting Y11… or Y12… is likely to have been detected in me. Now, the yield of new SNPs by NGS testing is now very low and one or two SNPs when Y111 will already show recent relatedness is poor value. I wouldn’t put it past the merged company to wind up this part of its operation. Hope you have downloaded all your data.

As regards Clan Munro, Margaret has been able to order some YSeq SNP testing with her funds, but the advantage of FTDNA is that it enables direct comparisons with others and that suits the clan as a community. It’s all very well doing a YSeq WGS 400, but you’d have to persuade others to do the same to get anything out of it. It would really only be needed to answer some very specific questions, and most folk really don’t want to get into that level of detail. Margaret and others are always willing to advise privately how any individual might find out what they want to know.

The project has been running for 20 years now - one of the first - and although it continues to grow there are diminishing returns. Your Y-DNA will now generally show you are recently related either to one of the big groups, or to someone else, possibly not a Munro. Getting Scottish Munros to test, even with sponsorship, has been difficult, but I doubt there are any early patrilineal clusters we haven’t already sampled out there.

Since the Y table is not growing, a lot of the recent project members must be autosomal testers/daughters of Munros, or non-testers. The tabulation needs rationalising, and winnowing out matches from groups which have turned out to be convergent on further testing. Other projects organise by haplogroup, and have separate autosomal only categories. I expect this won’t happen, as one if someone has been told they belong to this or that cluster, it’s harder to reassign to unmatched.

My own interest is in deep, pre-surname, ancestry and migrations. As you will know from R-M222 there are a lot more interesting relationships to reveal beyond Monroes; similarly in Scotland the earlier links between founding clan chiefs become apparent.

If I do make it to the States in October, it’ll be to New England, but at present I have no expectation of being let out of Scotland, let alone the UK, and even then would they let me back in? However I am sure Margaret and the other members of the genealogy committee like Mark Eden Monroe, would be happy to discuss going forward.

Best wishes

Mark,

Thanks for that post from the correspondence. However, I have to strongly disagree with the gentleman's statement that Y-DNA testing is mature and there is unlikely to be more discovered. We are seeing quite the opposite in fact. With the more advanced technology, we are seeing mutations that previous tests could not detect. The R1b-DF104 Y-Haplotree is changing at least weekly, if not more frequently. So ignoring the new testing technology like the WGS400 is more than a little shortsighted, IMO; especially for someone who is interested in deep ancestry and migrations. But to each their own.

And I think I detected a hint of Scotland-centric bias there too. If anyone will look at the Y-DNA data and the recorded histories with an open mind, it is clear that the most reasonable explanation for R1b-DF104 being in Scotland comes from the Dál Riata Kingdom established in Scotland ~500 AD FROM IRELAND and subsequent migrations to it by Dál Cuinn men. We by no means have conclusive evidence, but what there is so far strongly supports this explanation. The O’Conor Don gentleman's recent BigY 700 results completely destroy the argument that R1b-M22 came to Ireland with the Plantations in the 1600s since his pedigree is documented back to at least ~1200 AD and is completely Irish in nature.

Time will tell, but the adherents of Scottish Romanticism are very likely going to be sadly disillusioned. In all fairness, there is the possibility I will have to eat crow instead, but I am more than willing to do so if the evidence clearly indicates I need to. But the evidence is just so preponderant for an Irish origin of R1b-DF104. It is my own speculation that R1b-M222 originated in, or at least was carried to, the La Tène culture of Europe and that it was carried to Ireland by the invasion of the "Second Milesius" of the Laud 610 genealogies who is the putative ancestor of Cond Cétchathach, the recorded progenitor of the Dál Cuinn. There is good archaeological evidence to connect the construction technique of the massive Doon Of Drumsna in Connacht to similar fortifications in the La Tène region, both dated to the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. But as I said, time will tell - and I have plenty of hot sauce to put on my crow if required...

David,

Now you are beginning to see the struggles I have been running into. Within a clan you have bloodlines and for lack of a better term, adoptees of the clan. I have had more cooperation and assistance within this project than within my own clan project. I sense a hint of historical bias but cannot come right out and say there is in fact a bias brick wall. When I fall outside of the clan bloodline and more in line with those within the Connacht area of Ireland such as with the O'Rourks or O'Reilly's, why is it so difficult for the clan to come forward with historical information on the region? The clan in Scotland has extensive historical documentation but getting access to it is more difficult than getting a tour of Fort Knox. On the positive side, the clan grows and sells barley to fine Scotch distilleries such as Glenmorangie. I shall keep sipping my dram of Scotch as I dig online for the answers I seek. Also, I take predictions with a grain of salt. There are too many people untapped that will still be able to grow the Y Tree.

-Mark

Mark,

Damn straight there are still too many untapped men out there for testing. But no government mandated testing, please!

I feel your pain in facing that "Scotland über alles" mentality. As you well know we get/got that from the R1b-M222 project relentlessly, but as I said, time will tell.