Friday, September 19, 2008

The interesting thing about genetic genealogy...

...is actually something I will probably never experience. As someone of entirely Western European descent (could my ancestry *be* anymore boring? Thank God for Peter Berg of Denmark for mixing it up just the tiniest bit!), there's really nothing...exotic? unique?...that I expect my DNA ancestry to reveal. Having my dad return as a K and not the uber-popular H was a pleasant surprise, but all that really tells me as of right now is that he belongs to a somewhat common Western European group, not a super common one.

I'm thinking in terms of people of mixed ancestry, or who don't know specifics but who have family stories that their great-great-great grandmother might've been a slave or that somewhere along the line, a Native American married into their family tree. Or for people who don't know anything about their genealogy. Maybe you're of Asian descent. Maybe you're of Jewish.

That's where I think, right now, this genetic genealogy is most interesting. Finding out something like that, about your theoretical, far-reaching family tree, could give a starting point and fuel an interest in researching your tangible, much closer family tree. That's what I think anyway. But I'm already hooked, so what do I know?

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