Ok, I always promise that my blog is Genealogy 101 – easy to enjoy for all, and this is no exception – sort of. Ancient DNA – this is what it is all about – isn’t it? Where do I come from?

I call it Pond Scum, my (long lost, absent) bff did not know what to think when I said we have to find where her ancestor was Pond Scum. We have not finished the task. We need more hints and shovels and piles of money to sequence Ancient DNA and find our ancestors.

Everybody does their autosomal DNA – ok, ok I have also but what is your haplogroup? How much Denisovan do you have? How much Neanderthal? I can’t write the book on this but I read the stuff everyday – these are some of the latest and favorites for learning about your ancestry in anthropology.

Start with the late Jean Manco’s saved site – I have written about her old site before and will again. Her pages are saved on archive.org and when you learn your haplogroups – your maternal – your dad’s paternal and maternal, and your mother’s dad’s paternal and everybody! See on the left on her pages on Archive, the different eras and knowing your own haplogroup, search each of the eras for any sequenced skeletons who share a basic or root haplogroup of your families.  I am mt-DNA H10a1 and this is highly refined. In most of the sequencing of the ancient skeletons they are not as refined as this and so when searching I search for H10, and even as rare as my haplogroup is, I do see a few. My husband’s mt-DNA is H3k1a and so I mostly search for H3.

You want to see where ancestors and ancestresses – uncles, aunts and cousins lived and when – it is a play-with-me-all-day site – one to go back to over and over again.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170831001206/http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/ancientdna.shtml

Also my blog for her when she first passed:

https://cherielynnsherstory.com/2018/06/01/honoring-jean-manco-she-took-me-on-my-ancestral-journey/

 

 

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Camping in the the Arava and at Edan. The hillsides bled ancient bones everywhere one went. And there were mosquitoes as big as small birds near the oasis’s sides. You had to camp far from the water and keep a fire – we were intruders in this land of the dead and animals. We would be dinner in lean times. But it was pardes – aljana – svarg.

Take me to the experts for Ancient DNA:

No one can beat the writings and blogs of Razib Khan and Spencer Wells and the wonderful people at Insitome! See my blog for the last November holiday buying sales for descriptions of the special reasons to like Insitome!

Currently Razib Khan has a wonderful update about our Neanderthal ancestors. I would never argue with him or Spencer Wells but the pictures they have for Neanderthals are just not right. My memory serves me well and they were not nearly so… I can’t explain it… – well, their depictions do not reflect the people I “remember“!

They have a wonderful blog and have loads on all subjects and I am willing to vouch for their work.

January 16, 2019, To understand Neanderthals we need to understand ourselves

https://blog.insito.me/to-understand-neanderthals-we-need-to-understand-ourselves-2253d0a13aa6

Eran Elhaik is a new-to-me poster – I can’t wait to see how we contribute to this and see the results read out like Ancient Admixture – talk about throwing darts at a dart board guessing! Wonderful!

14 Jan 2019, His article from sharing on Facebook says: DNA tool allows you to trace your ancient ancestry. Scientists have created a tool which can more accurately identify ancient Eurasian populations. The tool allows people to discover how similar they are to the Roman-era Britons, Vikings or ancient Israelites.

University of Sheffield:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/dna-tool-allows-you-to-trace-your-ancient-ancestry-1.825005?fbclid=IwAR22jnI-iIJfpbxKN3tsdfh2uD1sWR1_by9DFN1ZvAPXuTHDT5XA-ISRg-E

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/9/12/625

Cyndi’s List – has information of related subjects

https://www.cyndislist.com/us/

The wonderful blog, The Genetic Genealogist has lots of info

https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/

I try to update all my blogs so follow along. Here is an old page of my first loves, my first lovers – well not first – I guess my first would have been Australopithecus! This has a tearful snippet of a lost Neanderthal story.

https://cherielynnsherstory.com/2018/01/18/neanderthal-lovers/

The anthropologist Donald Johanson wrote he named the 3 million plus-year-old skeleton Lucy for the song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds by the Beatles – it happened to be playing at the right moment. So, as I have tried on occasion to add a song to my blogs, songs for genealogy, then I will add this lovely version here

Milos Karadaglic – Lucy in The Sky with Diamonds (Beatles cover) ft. Anoushka Shankar

 

This is how I became a lover of all things ancient DNA and anthropology. But I also quickly read as a teenager that one needed to be wealthy to be an anthropologist – so I went back to dreaming over cooking in kitchens, waiting tables, and writing my way around the world.

The original National Geographic article is what took me to the land of dreams.

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/nov24/lucy-discovered-africa/

As memory takes away last week and last month, I always will have – hope I will always have – my dreams. And YouTube! Did you miss anything on earth and beyond? search for it on YouTube!

Part One

To really enjoy all the stories being learned about these ancestors one must have their haplogroups! I wrote this also about why you want more than autosomal: Haplogroups!

https://cherielynnsherstory.com/2018/03/28/haplogroups-are-not-ethnic-clan-national-or-any-other-groups/

and – The Perils Of Admixture.

https://cherielynnsherstory.com/2018/01/19/the-perils-of-admixture/

But for searching for Ancient DNA the best is still searching through Google – from a google search engine page – search first for GOOGLE – and then use a boolean phrase

Enclose any phrase in quotations like

“Ancient DNA”

and you see the best search results, of your topic, from Google

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22ancient+DNA%22&oq=%22ancient+DNA%22&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65.4655j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

To learn about your Neanderthal ancestry, if you have any, I love Insitome the best – you get so much – this company has specialty DNA info and this is not for genealogy matching. She also my notes on them in my blog about admixture where I note also I loved their APP the best for learning about the world pieces of me.

Here is Insitome’s Razib Khan talking about his results!

 

Great little note about Neanderthal’s red hair gene!

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals/dna-genotypes-and-phenotypes

and this – great blog by John Hawks when the study first came out.

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/neandertal_dna/neandertal_mc1r_lalueza-fox_2007.html

and 4 years later but 8 years ago – another important work of John Hawks teaching

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/pigmentation/pigmentation-project-intro-2011.html

This is a great new article about ancient ancestors – meeting, greeting and maybe interbreeding or not – New info with links to may other related articles.

Just How Many Extinct Types of Human Did Our Ancestors Meet?