For those of us not R1b

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smcarberry
Posts: 1281
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:31 pm
Location: USA

For those of us not R1b

Post by smcarberry » Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:28 pm

There are Irish residents and members of the Diaspora who will join me in learning our common Scandinavian heritage, as more test kits are sent in and analyzed. Some people will be stopped in their tracks and not try to deal with such startling news. This posting is for those who are curious to know more and to show how much can be understood by even a rank amateur like me. With my Carberry line being Irish residents back into at least the 900s, when the surname came into usage, I had no inkling of a Viking past. Anciently the Carberry family is associated with the Midlands area, west of Dublin -- not Northern nor near Limerick, which I knew to be Viking conquests (actually Dublin is a Viking settlement too). After seeing Y results from FamilyTree DNA for my Carberry cousin and my own autosomal results from 23andMe, I now know that a huge part of my own DNA is traceable to this extremely old part of Ireland's history. My new understanding is enormously enriching, although the classic genealogy I have done is invaluable for assessing if a company's DNA interpretation is valid. Gene identification is done scientifically, but result analysis for ancestral determination is a new part of genetic genealogy and is subject to misinterpretation, as I have found, explained below.

First, why mention this to readers who look to Clare as their ancestral home ? I take my cue from Peter Sjoland of the Swedish Society for Genetic Genealogy, a speaker at conferences and the creator of the graphic presentations shown here. I don't have a link for these specific images but you can read about him (and also Paddy Waldron, on the conference circuit) here:
http://genetic578.rssing.com/chan-36839 ... php#item21

My Carberry Y haplogroup is R1a1a (for which I also have a more specific subclade, not mentioned here to preserve privacy). Disappointingly but not surprising due to prior belief that the Carberrys came late to Clare, this means the family I know so well via research has no Dalcassian roots (which shows up as R1b, in which fits Irish Type III). My Carberry cousin has exact DNA matches with a resident of the Outer Hebrides (Scotland) and a resident far up the western coast of Norway. Most of the test kits of his subclade belong to people with a history of the surname Brandon, who long ago lived in the Norfolk area of England, the eastward jutting portion just below the England-Scotland border (containing King's Lynn). Sjoland's info shows why this is credible. Look at his yellow dots representing those with Viking mutations globally: some are on the western coast of Norway, the Outer Hebrides, and a central area in Ireland. Plus, Sjoland's migration chart (with the Viking ship) shows R1a routes that include Norway, Outer Hebrides, the Norfolk region of England – entirely consistent with my Carberry DNA. His surname chart for R1a descendants includes Hayes, likewise consistent with my DNA with its R1a (see my posting on Hayes on this Forum).

Sjoland's “oldest Viking ancestor” chart is a wake-up call for Clare residents, as he plants the Swedish flag smack dab on the NW corner of the county.

However, a new analysis done by 23andMe on my own mix of DNA is not reliable. Not for re-posting, I am showing my “Ancestry Timeline” developed after the company considered the strength of the gene segments in my test kit – how many and how long the segments are that are attributable to ethnicities found in my results. This chart indicates that both my parents are of the Irish/British gene pool, but this is not correct. My documented paternal and maternal lines isolate the Irish/British heritage to my father's side. I spent time reviewing my notes, and there is no way anyone on my mother's side received or gave a DNA contribution of Irish or British origins. Her ancestors were not anywhere near a place or trade route that would have put them in contact with a non-Germanic ethnicity. Her input into my DNA is purely French/German/broadly NW Europe. The blackish part of her half of my X derives from “Doggerland” which anciently was a settlement now covered by the Baltic Sea, populated by certain people before becoming a German tribe. For some reason, Doggerland has come down in a good-size part of her DNA and mine.

I don't totally discount this erroneous Ancestry Timeline, because the analysis came from considering the strength of my Irish DNA components. My interpretation is consistent with traits I have observed in myself and seen described for my Carberry ancestors: I am more Irish than German. I don't look like my maternal cousins (or anyone older in their families), and our professions are nothing alike (sciences and medicine for them). As a child, I looked just like my father's brother (deceased age 9), and my Carberry cousins have had professions in the humanities, like me. Somehow, in the sifting and sorting of genes down through the generations that produced me, gene segments of Irish origin predominated in my DNA. So be it. I've got the science now to back up my hunches.

Sharon Carberry
USA
Viking mutations, distribution global.jpg
Viking mutations, distribution global.jpg (34.89 KiB) Viewed 5793 times
Viking haplogroups eastward.jpg
Viking haplogroups eastward.jpg (23.14 KiB) Viewed 5793 times
Oldest known Viking group ancestors, Ireland; Peter Sjoland '16.jpg
Oldest known Viking group ancestors, Ireland; Peter Sjoland '16.jpg (22.09 KiB) Viewed 5793 times
Viking descendant surnames.jpg
Viking descendant surnames.jpg (42.61 KiB) Viewed 5793 times
My WRONG Ancestry Timeline.jpg
My WRONG Ancestry Timeline.jpg (22.69 KiB) Viewed 5793 times

smcarberry
Posts: 1281
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:31 pm
Location: USA

Re: For those of us not R1b

Post by smcarberry » Sat Jun 17, 2017 12:09 pm

An update, now that the ancestry timeline chart has been discussed among 23andMe subscribers and now in view of DNA results for my half-aunt, my father's sole living relative in his own generation or older. Their common lineage is Eastern European, from their 100% Polish mother, which means that the Eastern European bar on the chart should be much closer in time than depicted. However, the DNA I share with my half-aunt, which typically would be 12.5%, is actually about 9%, meaning I didn't get much Polish DNA. The overwhelming strength of the Irish/British genes is supported by this latest analysis, and the timeline chart depends on genetic quantities so it need not exactly mirror genealogical findings. If and when I can get my cousins of British lineage to test, I can better say whether it is the Irish material preponderating in that mix.

For those interested in getting a DNA analysis but unsure on which company to do it, an autosomal webinar delivered yesterday spoke well of LivingDNA, a British company that entered the public arena last October. Accuracy of ethnicity analysis depends on the size of population reference groups established for the various ethnicities. LivingDNA has a far better population base for Ireland and the U.K. than the other testing companies, so its results can be more accurate and more detailed. Up till now, it has been common to simply learn that a test kit shows a result for genes from a "British/Irish" origin. LivingDNA apparently can be more specific.

If any other Donnellan descendant wants to test with LivingDNA, I am ready to send a test kit to that company as well, to explore whether West and East Clare lines of Donnellan have a common origin in Galway. When I obtain family history for my DNA fourth cousins, it points to West Clare as often as it does to East Clare. I have been finding Clancy, Griffin, Callinan,Shanahan and Scanlan, which I take as West Clare, as well as Miles Boland, whom I believe to be from NE Clare, plus a cluster of names from the Sixmilebridge area discussed earlier on this Forum. I already have seen a Donnellan in the Callinan background that explains my connection, and I am ready to find more of the Donnellan line who went to West Clare in the late 1700s.

I again send my thanks to Sheila for doing all those West Clare RC transcriptions. So much light in what had once been a very dark corner of Clare genealogy. I also appreciate the Killaloe transcriptions, although they seem to underline that folks of my parish (O'Callaghan's Mills) didn't mix with the Killaloe set, which I find odd but having the parish records to show it is very valuable.

Sharon Carberry

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