Artist: Eleven Tigers
Album: Clouds are Mountains
Genre: Electronic (Dubstep)
Label: Baked Goods
Year: 2010
Rating: 95%
URL: http://eleventigers.net/

Burial’s 2007 LP Untrue introduced many electronic music fans to Dubstep. Untrue’s potent combination of murky beats, bleak melodies mangled R&B vocal samples put a decidedly soulful spin on a genre that was otherwise migrating from its darker origins to a more rave/tweaker friendly sound. The problem was that once you got through Untrue and Burial’s less flashy self-titled debut, there was little else in the scene that sounded nearly as rich. Most popular dubstep tracks sound like lethargic remakes of the squelchy club music from Jersey Shore – fantastic to the clubbers tripping on Ketamine and distracting to just about anyone else.

Lithuanian producer Eleven Tigers breaks that mold authoritatively on his debut LP, Clouds are Mountains. While inspired by Untrue, Clouds are Mountains forgoes R&B and Garage mutations in favour of ambient pads and generous layers of IDM-style synth-work. Vocals are used sparingly and garbled to the point of sounding like Simlish. The songs flow seamlessly, engaging one other via crossfades of up to 40 seconds. The album is mixed like a well-planned DJ set and can be played from start to finish without a break in the action.

While the sum of Clouds are Mountains is indeed greater than its parts, there are still standout tracks. Songs for You plays like the lovechild of Dido and Burial, pulsing along at a slow dub-like speed lead by acoustic guitars before moving double time over ringing analogs. Atomic Turnip pays homage to the dub roots of dubstep with chest-tickling sub-basslines and a heavily reverberated organ. Thesis veers into vintage Prodigy territory, albeit with an IDM twist as three generations of grimy old school rave beats crunch against heavily altered speech loops and indescribable random noises that barely avoid chaos. Stableface easily boasts the greatest crossover appeal and dance floor potential, featuring chopped female vocals over several airy layers of pads and a driving drum beat. Even this track is complex, however, and like nearly all of the tunes on Clouds are Mountains, it constantly evolves.

Clouds are Mountains is easily one of the best albums of any genre that I’ve heard in the past decade. Numerous visitors to my house parties (whose musical tastes span from Alt-Rock to Hip Hop) seem to agree. Only dubstep scenesters may not bite since this album is closer to Boards of Canada than Rusko. However, anyone with an even passing interest in headphone-friendly electronic music would be well advised to check out this hidden gem.

And for Burial lovers … yes, this will tide you over for awhile.

See also: Part 1, Part 2

In the final installment of the series on DNA ancestry testing we will look at mtDNA and the maternal line. Read part 1 of the series to learn the difference between mtDNA, yDNA and autosomal DNA.

To quickly recap: a patrilneal test can determine haplogroup and tribal association as dictated by the father’s father’s father’s … father. My test results traced back to a strain I-Haplogroup (I1a) originating from and most commonly found in Scandinavia. Independent research verified that my paternal great grandfather was a native of Scotland, where the I-Haplogroup is alleged to have spread via Viking invasion. Needless to say, the yDNA test provided no information about which African ethnic group I may have descended from.

My Ancestral Journey – Mama Edition

The mtDNA test can determine haplogroup and tribal association by way of the mother’s mother’s mother’s … mother. MtDNA Haplogroups are denoted by different labels than male haplogroups, though the geographic regions represented are roughly the same.

Given the previous test results, I knew better than to have any explanations in terms of discovering exact African ancestry:

• mtDNA, like yDNA, only traces a single gender line of ancestry. Nearly all of the family tree is left untested
• Autosomal DNA can test both male and female DNA but is accurate for only a few generations back and sometimes cannot differentiate between closely-related populations
• My maternal grandmother is visibly and verified to be mixed. As she is from the Caribbean, her mother/grandmother could be from … virtually anywhere.

Genbase performs mtDNA testing based on a buccal swab from the user or a member of the user’s family. The latter option allows users to trace lines not directly accessible from their own sample (e.g. a father’s matrilenial line).

The default mtDNA test can predict a user’s haplogroup. My test predicted membership in the L-Haplogroup. An additional SNP backbone test confirmed my subclade to be L1C. The L1 Haplogroup appeared approximately 150,000 years ago in East Africa and is closely related to the original L0 group (Mitochondrial eve). The L1C subclade is commonly found in central and southern Africa, particularly among Pygmy ethnic groups and Bantu-speaking African groups.

Multiple years passed before I had a single “close match” on DNA Reunion (matches users to other users). The original assumption was that there weren’t many black users on the Canada-based Genebase system but a quick user profile search dispelled that idea. This was an early sign that the mtDNA result might contain another “surprise”, despite being within the African realm.

For Indigenous DNA testing, matrilneal tests can be performed on comparison of just the HVR-1 region (provided as part of the default Genebase mtDNA package) or additionally on the HVR-2 region (requires an additional package). Testing based on two regions should improve the accuracy of the matches at the cost of comparing samples to fewer indigenous groups. Comparing the HVR-2 region did not provide much value in my case, as most of the available HVR-2 data seems to be for European and Asian ethnic groups.

The Indigenous DNA test reads the users genetic profile and presents several sets of journals to perform comparison. As with the yDNA testing, the journals contain overlapping and non-indigenous samples.

The two strongest matches in my sample were to two African samples: the Maure and the the Sena. The names didn’t instantly ring a bell and the associated modern-day nations (Mauritania, Mozambique) are at opposite ends of Africa.

First to decode the names … some quick research revealed that Maure is the french adaptation of the latin term Maurus, which translates to “coming from Mauretania”. Ancient Rome acquired Mauretania (so-named after the Berber Mauri tribe) as a client kingdom in 33BC after defeating Carthage. The once-Christian region eventually fell to Arabic invasion and in 711BC the Islamic Moors conquered the Iberian Peninsula, holding European empires over several hundred years. The term Moor does not denote a single ethnic group but collectively refers to the groups involved with Moorish conquest. The Moors comprise chiefly of Berbers, Arabs and Sub-Saharan Africans.

The Sena are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group located mainly in Mozambique. Smaller groups of Sena people can be found in Zimbabwe and Malawi, where farm labourers and refugees fled to after Mozambique’s post-independence civil war. Zimbabwe is also the home of the Lemba, who refer to the ancient Yemen settlement of Sena as their original home. DNA testing performed in 2006 revealed that a substantial portion of the Lemba belong to the male haplogroup J, most common among Jews and Middle Easterners. Many of the males in the group also carry the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH), hypothesized to indicate Jewish lineage and possible membership in the Jewish priestly caste. This is noteworthy mainly because the Maure also have genetic ties to the Middle East.

So which is it? It’s impossible to know from these results as the difference in RMI for both groups is small, but it can be stated with some confidence that my matrilineal heritage is a mixture of African and Middle Eastern influence.

Final Thoughts

So are you really part-Italian? Is your mother trying to hide her Jewish heritage? Do your full lips indicate a black ancestor? A DNA ancestry test may be able to answer these questions. As stated, current DNA technology can’t reliably identify any ancestry that is not patrilineal, matrilineal or within the last couple of generations. It is almost certainly not possible to calculate ethnic percentages as some websites advertise.

Thus, DNA testing isn’t the silver bullet for ancestry that some may imagine.  However it can be a useful tool, along with traditional genealogical research, for discovering family history.

Mark Steyn continues to be a fantastic inspiration for impromptu posts with his thoughts on the loss of liberty and the eventual decline of the American empire:

What happens when the policies that brought ruin to Detroit and sclerosis to California become the basis for the nation at large? Strictly on the numbers, the United States is in the express lane to Declinistan: unsustainable entitlements, the remorseless governmentalization of the economy and individual liberty, and a centralization of power that will cripple a nation of this size. Decline is the way to bet. But what will ensure it is if the American people accept decline as a price worth paying for European social democracy.
…
The United States now spends more on its military than the next 40 or so nations combined. Yet in two rinky-dink no-account semi-colonial policing campaigns, it doesn’t feel like that, does it? A lot of bucks, but not much of a bang. You can understand why the entire Left and an increasing chunk of the Right would rather vote for a quiet life. But that’s not an option. The first victims of American retreat will be the many corners of the world that have benefited from an unusually benign hegemon. But the consequences of retreat will come home, too. In a more dangerous world, American decline will be steeper, faster, and more devastating than Britain’s — and something far closer to Rome’s.

Steyn makes many good points but from an economic perspective America was slated for decline since the 1980’s when they essentially did a kamikaze strike on the USSR. Amid the celebration of Reagan’s low taxes, very few people paid attention to two critical problems -

1. Spending was far outstripping revenues, despite the increased number of revenue sources and so-called trickle-down
2. Alan Greenspan was rapidly devaluing American currency (i.e. lowering interest rates) to keep the value of the debt low and to stimulate economic growth

Ironically, currency devaluation -long hailed by capitalists as a way of stimulating expansion- amounts to a hidden taxation – on income AND pre-existing savings. Since the mid 1980’s it has made more sense for consumers to be in debt than have savings, as the value of those debts has decreased rapidly. George Bush I did nothing about this issue (ie fire Greenspan) and Bill Clinton benefited from circumstance when the dotcom boom led to a temporary American surplus.

U.S. Debt Trends (source - Wikipedia)

In the meantime, Japan and China bought American debt (e.g Treasury Bills) at a cracking pace – a trend that accelerated when Bush II decided to invade Iraq and will accelerate even more now that Obama has found health-care for 300 million people instead of 50 million.  With China holding nearly $780 billion dollars of American debt, the United States has relegated itself to toothless observer in the largest economic/military growth spot in the world (East Asia). Not a good economic position given China is the major long-term rival and has shown little regard for playing by the rules of most industrial nations.

The final nail in the coffin will probably be when the military-industrial complex collapses and free market forces dictate that weapons are best bought from countries that can produce them for cheaper. Again this will be China, which has both the expertise and the cheap labour. The main reason we all aren’t speaking Arabic is because the Ottoman/Seljuk/etc paid little attention to weapon-making and ended up having to buy weapons from the same “barbarians” they sought to crush during their attempts to conquer Europe. An empire without the ability to produce its own war in-house is doomed to fall.

Tiger Woods is likely breathing sigh of relief as Sandra Bullock’s failing marriage quickly overtakes his own drama in the hyperactive imaginations of star-chasers. Bullock was (in)famously married to reality TV star and biker icon Jesse James who was recently caught cheating on her with fetish model / tattoo aficionado / stripper Michelle “Bombshell” McGee.

The media circus, led by the paparazzi-as-journalists at TMZ, naturally combed through Bombshell McGee’s life and found that the model had recently posed in a Nazi-themed photo shoot. McGee also has the tattooed letter W and P on the back of her legs – letters which typically stand for “white power” in tattoo / prison circles.

Possibly sensing the long term business risks of the direction taken by her 15 minutes of fame, McGee quickly fired out a second-hand statement claiming that she is no white supremacist and that the photo shoot in question was merely meant to be provocative.

To McGee’s credit, Nazi-themed photography is not exactly uncommon in the “shocking” world of fetish. To McGee’s discredit, she wears her heart on her Facebook page as vividly as she wears it on her body.

Look closely at the favourite books section. Many people have read Mein Kampf but very few would list it among their favourite books (if not for the content then surely for the fact that Hitler’s diatribe was mostly rambling). Even more interesting was the second book in her list – The Turner Diaries is a 1978 war novel, written by former National Alliance leader William Pierce, depicting violent overthrow of the United States government and eventual “cleansing” of all Jews and non-whites. Referred to by the FBI as “The Bible of the racist right”, the book has sold over 500,000 copies, mostly via mail order and gun shows. Several high profile hate crimes were committed by extremists who openly cited the book as an inspiration, mostly notably Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. For one to not only read but commend the book is a blinking light signaling far right sympathies.

Michelle McGee defeated her own argument and provided a fine example of yet another Facebook security threat – user stupidity. Whatever security measures are put in place, Facebook is still a website viewable by virtually anyone so long as one person has access to the information. A Facebook “friend” can easily take a screen shot of or “Save as …” any page on the website, instantly creating the opportunity to make private content very, very public. Incidentally, Bombshell made all the information in the above screen shot completely public so even that level of “wizardry” wasn’t necessary.

There are entire websites dedicated to foolish Facebook behavior by less famous users. Facebook Fails posts reader submissions of awkward survey responses, bullying and general purpose drama by Facebook users who type before thinking. For your pleasure, some noteworthy entries from the Facebook Fails website -

After a long hiatus, Cynics Unlimited is finally back on Twitter.  Catch all the action here -

http://twitter.com/cynicsunlimited

Or you could just look to your right (Quick Shots) – the twitter feed will be used to draw attention to interesting stories that I don’t have time to write a full blog post about. The majority of URL’s are shortened using a service called bit.ly – recommended if you like to put URL’s in your tweets but still want room to say something about them.

There I was minding my own business on Facebook when a friend request popped up.  Now how nice is that? Someone wants to be my friend.  After 2 years of social networking the requests start to slow down and navigating the site becomes a test of navigating through melodramatic status updates and covert invitations to Mafia Wars / Mobwars / Youville / Happy Aquarium / etc.

Lucia Pahmeier … nope, doesn’t ring a bell.  She seems to be a good decade younger than me to boot, so it can’t be school or co-op.   Sometimes it’s good to take a chance, and being a male, my brain isn’t the only organ weighing in on the pros and cons.  Still, Lucia only has 2 friends?  I’m one the first people she thought to contact on the web?  Seems unlikely.  A few warning bells go off.

Lucia got something pierced … what, I wonder?  The alarm bells are very loud now.  The clincher is that Lucia is unable to put up any more pictures in facebook (what else do young ladies do on Facebook apart from spread sappy memes and play Farmville?)  but she leaves a link to pictures.  Riiiiiigggght.  Good chance that obvious link forwarding URL is heading to a porn site.  Part of what made MSN Messenger unusable was having to deal with 20+ friend requests per week from what amounted to she-bots promising hours of online sexual self-gratification if only you’d come visit an external website.  Facebook seemed to be somewhat resistant to such sly advertising though obviously someone could just create a profile and try to snag males seeking another “hot chick” for their Facebook stable.

And there you have it.

Facebook is now officially a spam target.

Lucia acquired about 50 friends before her friend request and profile disappeared.  This was no doubt due to complaints from real users but she won’t be the last of her kind.  Facebook’s social network is too rich for Porn / Viagra / etc sites not to try penetrating its secure layers.

The important part of this story is that I did not let Lucia become my friend and in turn have access to my personal details.  As mentioned in an earlier Facebook tutorial, advertisers are very eager to get get access to user demographics, which tend to be cleaner and more appropriate for marketing purposes than most other sources (and are of course free).  Think twice before you accept a friend request unless you absolutely know the person.   Also, don’t be afraid to send a private message for confirmation before accepting.

Please read Part 1 if you have not already.

Like many who use DNA for ancestral discovery, I didn’t understand entirely what was going to be tested when I first signed up with Genebase. The common mistake is to think that the tests will determine the entire ethnic makeup of your mother or father (not to mention yourself). As explained in part 1 of this series, the yDNA and mtDNA tests simply look down your line of fathers and mothers respectively. In the proverbial family tree, they each follow a single branch, leaving virtually the entire bush untouched.

Of course I figured this out as I read Genebase’s excellent tutorials – which only became available over the past year or so. Indeed, you will find several websites with complaining about Genebase’s processing time and customer support. Most of the complaints registered before 2009 were warranted but now the website is comprehensive and the turnaround time for processing samples is usually much shorter than the estimated 6-8 weeks.

So what was I looking for from this test? Primarily some sort of connection, no matter how arbitrary, to the motherland. Africa’s diverse cultural landscape was compressed to a single label -black- with the Atlantic/Arabic slave trade and the label “black” roughly translates to “lower caste” in practical terms. Virtually any negative stigma that applies to some portion of our population -criminal tendencies, low IQ, lazy, irresponsible- is automatically assumed of the entire population. These images did not reflect my family who count professors, engineers and executives among their ranks, and so they served as my role models as opposed to some street stereotype. Regardless, it became tiresome to hear the self-congratulatory tone of some of the older locals in my rural setting: “You should be thankful you are here under our thumb; otherwise, you would be in Africa eating dirt half naked”. Of course Africa was not always in that state (it still isn’t entirely that way) and in later years I noticed a decidedly less bitter tone among African immigrants when compared to locally-born and Caribbean-born blacks. The primary reason, I realized, is because these African immigrants had a connection to their roots and culture – a culture in which they were the primary actors rather than a (barely) tolerated annoyance. Theirs was not merely a story of slavery, segregation clawing for mere survival. Most of Africa sported a pretty decent civilization at some point, from Egypt’s pyramid-building predecessors in Nubia to the gold-soaked trade routes of Ancient Ghana to the mysterious stone structures of Great Zimbabwe. I wondered whether I had even a tenuous connection to any of these ancient cultures.

Also I was generally curious about what might turn up. Between both sides of my family there is reddish hair, slanted yes, grey eyes and a wild variance in skin tones. Such variation in appearance, even between full siblings, is typical of many families with Caribbean or American roots (I have both).

My Ancestral Journey – Papa Edition

The fist test results I got back were for yDNA which determines the deep ancestry along my paternal line (father’s, father’s … father). I was curious to see which haplogroup passed down his line – perhaps the A-Group common in Ethopians or Khoisan? Maybe it would be the B-Group most common among Western Africans (the largest source for the slave trade)? Alas, the answer was neither -

Genebase’s test results show that I actually belong to the I-Group, a European-based haplogroup that evolved from our earliest ancestors in East Africa. The series of letters shows the exact path of migration and mutation, starting from the original ancestor, changing into the important Egyptian-based F-Group (considered to be the source of all non-African populations) and eventually splintering from the J-Group and K-Group after migrating into Europe. The map provides a more graphical version of my ancestor’s journey. Genebase provides the following description of the I Haplogroup:

The founder of Haplogroup I lived approximately 25,000 years ago in the Balkans during the last Glacial Maximum.  He is the direct descendent of Haplogroup F ancestors who had journeyed from the Middle East into the Balkans.  Today, the highest frequencies of Haplogroup I are found in the Balkans, near the Dinaric Mountain chain in Croatia.  Haplogroup I is strongly associated with Croat populations, namely Slavic people living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other nearby countries.
…
As the ice sheets retreated at the end of the Ice Age, these ancestors continued their journey northward into Northern Europe, in particular Scandinavia (a region in Northern Europe named after the Scandinavian Peninsula).  Today, a large portion of Scandinavian populations in the Adriatic regions, including Denmark, mainland Norway, Sweden, and Finland trace their ancestry to this line.  Vikings also likely descended from this line.  The detection of low frequencies of this haplogroup on the British Isles, France and some Celtic populations may be the result of more recent Vikings raids in these regions.

The last sentence was of particular interest – I have a very Celtic name uncommon among western black populations. Regardless, shock led to questioning, which led to the gnashing of teeth by older relatives and a begrudging admission that my great grandfather was in fact a Scotsman, presumed to be from the highlands. The I-Group isn’t very common in Scotland but was common among the invading Vikings. Thus, my paternal line may not have been in Scotland for very long.

At this point, I could have taken a subclade test to determine where within the I-Group my paternal line resides. However, due to certain genetic markers the initial STR assessment was able to determine also certainly that I belong to the I1a subclade, most commonly found in Sweden and relatively rare in Scotland. It is possible that my great grandfather may have been the long-term product of a Viking raid either directly on Scotland or a nearby region such as the Orkney Islands.

Next, it was time to compare my yDNA sample to all the other users in the database. Who might match me the closest and where would they reside?

Genebase allows users to determine how strict to make the search by setting a minimum number of matching markers and maximum genetic distance (marker values that differ). After clicking Find Matches, the user receives a list of close matches, where they reside from and the option to guess how many generations ago the respective family lines diverged. Genebase also provides a tally of ethnic backgrounds and a google map of current locations for all matches. Note that this data is user-input and sometimes subject to what people THINK their background may be rather than what a “perfect-world” DNA test might show.

Finally, it was onto the really fun test – which “indigenous” ethnic group most closely matched my yDNA sample? My African reunion in shambles, this test was more a matter of determining which part of Scandinavia may have produced the offending Viking.

Once again, Genebase provides the option to set how many overlapping markers to test. More markers generally ensures more accurate results but may result in fewer populations to compare. Users should try to match on the largest number of markers that still provides realistic population samples (see below).

Genebase analyzes yDNA samples and preferences to provide 1 or more population sets for comparisons. Data is taken from many journals created worldwide, providing a best-line-of-fit approach to matching indigenous groups. A good strategy might be to try different options and if one particular ethnic group keeps appearing at the top of the comparisons then there is a good chance your paternal line has something in common with the paternal line of participants in that ethnic samples.

From the results, it can be seen that my two top yDNA matches were both Danish – presumably from different journals, which adds credibility to the result. The rankings are being determined by RMI (relative match index) value, a ratio indicating the likelihood that the sample matches a given group vs the rest of the world population. For instance, these test results suggest that my yDNA line is 29.38x more likely to belong to the top Danish sample compared to the rest of the populations in the world.

Notice there is a group called U.S Caucasian. There are several non-indigenous samples like this across the journals (African American, Brazilians of non-black Decent, Asian-American …) and they seem to serve as controls. For instance, if US Caucasian shows up very close to the top of a yDNA match list, there’s a chance the sample are not matching closely to any indigenous group. A possible solution might be to increase the number of matching markers and re-run the test.

As for interpreting my results … Denmark is at the crossroads of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian worlds, so it’s reasonable to assume that my paternal line moved form Scandinavia to the British Isles by way of invasion, later moving to the West and obviously crossing paths with the Afro-diaspora.

This is about as far as a yDNA can get one for the time being. What is it worth? Depends on what you’re looking for. Due to the not uncommon relations between slave owners and their female slaves, a sizable portion of African American males will have a European y haplogroup (mostly the R-Group which is dominant across Europe) and an African mt haplogroup. Thus, western blacks taking DNA tests must acknowledge the very real possibility that no direct African link will be found by tracing the paternal line.

Next up: the maternal line

Continue to Part 3

Every Black History Month, many Americans and Canadians of African descent are confronted with one simple question – why do we need a Black History Month? After all, there’s no month dedicated to white history or gay history. The black history tradition dates back to 1926 and was founded by American historian Carter G Woodson, who sought to preserve and propagate knowledge of the artifacts and publications about the contributions of African-Americans to American life. The holiday was originally called “Negro History Week” and later expanded to a month-long celebration.

Of course this all took place before the rise of mass media, the internet and, most importantly, the legal rights that allow blacks in the United States to control their own destiny. Now in the digital age, discovering black history is as easy as visiting Wikipedia or scouring for an old copy of Encyclopedia Africana. So, why are so many black people still deeply attached to a concentrated celebration of widely-available information?

Part of the answer may be that assorted factoids about George Washington Carver and Harriet Tubman are the most intimate history many blacks have – due in part to slavery and the destructive breeding practices learned from that era. History within individual families can be hard to follow, with available information starting after the slave ship landed on American soil. The very label “African-American” implies a lack of knowledge about actual ethnic identity – a Somali has a considerably different culture and history than a member of the Ashanti tribe. Comparatively, the term European-American is rare except when in use by white nationalists. The majority of white Americans will refer to their heritage by nation – Irish-American, German-American, etc – and celebrate the specific contributions of those ethnic groups to American culture.

Fortunately, African-Americans no longer need to rely entirely on historical records to determine their ancestry. Specifically, DNA Ancestry testing has become tremendously popular over the past few years by promising to discover long-lost African history through genetically linking users to pre-defined samples of African ethnic groups. Some services, like Ancestry.com and DNA Consultants, offer comprehensive testing while other services like African Ancestry concentrate specifically on African heritage.

But what benefit can be gained from such services and how believable are the results? I’ve spent the better part of a year overseeing tests for myself and others as well as doing some research into the benefits and limitations of DNA testing. A summary of DNA Testing as well as my own experience will be spread over three blog posts. Readers are encouraged to submit their own experiences with DNA testing.

What can a DNA Test Tell you?

Present DNA ancestry testing is based on scientific findings that all present-day human beings can be traced back approximately 150,000 years to common ancestors in East Africa. Various waves of early humans migrated from Africa to different parts of the globe and their DNA mutated in tiny increments. These natural mutations, known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP’s for short) occurred randomly every few thousand years and were passed down from generation to generation. While these mutations are complex and there can be many different sequences (also known as Haplotypes), mutations are generally quite similar for early humans that migrated to the same part of the world around the same. Haplotypes are thus clustered into haplogroups, which are understood to have a common ancestor. There are separate male (Y-Chromosome) and female (X-Chromosome) haplogroups which are distributed geographically.

Three types of DNA tests can be used to determine ancestry:
mtDNA – Short for mitochondrial DNA, mtDNA is carried by both males and females. However, mtDNA is passed exclusively from mother to child, meaning an mtDNA test can only determine your mother’s contribution to your genetic makeup. Since this relationship is true all the way up your family line, mtDNA ancestry tests can determine the origin of your mother’s mother’s … mother. Because mtDNA is only inherited from mothers, it does not change (or mutate) significantly over time (due to the slow-changing nature of SNP’s). This slow rate of mutation allows scientists to determine the long term origin (also known as “Deep Ancestry”) of your maternal line.
yDNA – Y-Chromosomes works in a similar manner to mtDNA, except that they are only passed from father to son. Thus, only males have yDNA tests. Females wishing to discover their deep paternal lineage must have a paternal male relative take the test (e.g. father, brother).
(side note: human females obtain X-Chromosomes from both mother and father; thus, “X Chromosome” cannot be used interchangeably with mtDNA in this instance)

Autosomal – Every human has 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes. There are equal copies of the autosomal chromosomes in males and females, allowing genetic identification based on the heritage of both parents. However, autosomal DNA is not “deep”, as the 22 pairs are inherited randomly from parents (for a given pair, one chromosome comes from each parent; each parent can pass 1 of 2 chromosomes, meaning 4 possible configurations per pair). No two people -except for identical twins- have the exact same autosomal DNA, which contrasts with the direct inheritance of yDNA and mtDNA.

What can’t a DNA Test tell you?

So with all of this technology, it should be easy to figure out where you originally set up shop before the transatlantic trip, right? Not quite. Apart from the fact that an overwhelming percentage blacks in the western hemisphere are of mixed heritage, the current testing methods have noteworthy limitations

1. yDNA and mtDNA tests are single-line. This means that they measure straight inheritance via mother or father only. Thus, one cannot use mtDNA to test whether a mother’s father is part-native because the mother’s mtDNA comes exclusively from her mother. Similarly, yDNA only provides information on a line of fathers. Thus, even combining mtDNA and yDNA tests will not allow a person to determine their entire ancestry.
2. Autosomal DNA can only reliably measure back to the grandparent generation. Typically, autosomal DNA used in paternity testing, crime scene investigation and other situations where either exact identity or close family relationship needs to be established.
3. Autosomal DNA cannot determine what percentage of each ethnic group is in a person’s total makeup

Ergo, it may not be possible to tell whether you are a direct decedent of the Zulus unless either your mother’s mother’s … mother or father’s father’s … father happens to belong to that ethnic group. If you are so lucky it will still not possible to determine just how “Zulu” you are.

Discovering your Ancestry through Genebase

There are many different websites and offline services offering DNA testing as a way to discover heritage. Being Canadian and somewhat concerned about how foreign governments might use a DNA sample, I chose the Vancouver-based Genebase (note: many Americans also use this service).

Genebase offers mtDNA and yDNA test kits of varying comprehensiveness (and prices) for ancestral discovery. The initial tests are STR (short tandem repeat) tests that can be used to predict haplogroups. Additional SNP tests can be ordered to confirm haplogroup, and most recently Genebase has added subclade tests for further confirmations.

For example, a male users interested in his paternal ancestry could order the Advanced Paternal Ancestry Package (Y-DNA 44 Marker Test). After the test predicts that he belongs to the J haplogroup, he could confirm this by upgrading with a Y-DNA DNA haplogroup Backbone SNP Test. If the client wants more detail he could choose to order the Y-DNA J Subclade SNP Test and use the results to determine the probable region form which his earliest haplogroup member originated.

Apart from haplogroup identification, Genebase offers two other useful ancestry tools for incoming DNA samples -

DNA Reunion – yDNA and mtDNA STR markers can be compared to all the other users in the DNA database. The software ranks user matches according to number of overlapping markets to be compared between two users and the genetic distance (calculated by number of markers that have different values). For the example above, the user might upgrade from a 44 marker test to a 67 marker test, since having a larger pool of markers to test will improve the probability of finding matches. Using the search preferences, he can direct DNA Reunion to return a list of users who have a maximum genetic distance of 1 (ie only 1 marker different) out of a minimum 18 overlapping markers. The results might show that the majority of users matching this criteria reside in Egypt, suggesting (though not proving) that user’s deep ancestral roots may lie in that region.

Indigenous DNA – Similar to DNA Reunion, except DNA samples are compared to indigenous (and some non-indigenous) groups from around the world. The software makes STR comparisons over several different journals using a selectable number of marker matches. Again, the results do not strictly prove ancestry but are an excellent aid for determining probability.

Autosomal test kits are also available and are used in DNA Reunion – however Genebase only uses autosomal DNA to match near family relations to others users in the database. This contrasts to many other ancestry services which use autosomal DNA to predic ethnic identity.  Still, autosomal testing could be used for cheap, legal paternal testing.

At one time DNA kits used to be available in Best Buy but these days it seems the only way to get a kit is to order directly from the Genebase website. The kit is mailed to the user’s home with a return envelope, small swab brushes and full instructions on how to collect a buccal swab. Once the sample is returned, processing takes place over the next few weeks and the results are uploaded to a website. The user can then view the results and start using the tools described above.

Continue to Part 2