BBC: Eddie Izzard follows his DNA Trail

[davidft]

@ DevonCruwys

Thanks for that explanation on the neanderthals, most hopeful. Yes I thought the programme was not a patch on what it could have been.

I saw the Geno 2.0 test mentioned the other day (ftDNA) but I'm not at that stage yet, still trying to get a meaningful match for my yDNA test

[Ruskie]

There's just a couple of things I don't understand.

How do they know that we're all descended from a single woman? And in any case, wouldn't that single woman have needed another individual to impregnate her? And where did he come from?

Also, if we are descended from a single woman, whose myriad generations of offspring went off via various routes to populate the planet, then where do all the other strands of our DNA come from?

I'm glad you asked these questions. I had similar very simplistic questions whilst watching the programme. I find it all really difficult to get my head around. 

[Graham, your excellent explanation really helped, and as far as I am concerned, the simpler the better.]

A couple of stupid questions: If all our dna leads back to Africa, and Eddie's was shown to have originated in two different parts of Africa, so where did those different groups of humans come from? Might the dna trail lead somewhere else prior to Africa? Where did Neanderthals originate? Might there have been other groups of humans that we may not know about? The programme mentioned the Australian aborigines migration from Africa, but what about the people in the Americas - are they also from Africa?

When the scientist guy (sorry can't recall his name) said that humans share 40% of their dna with bananas, though interesting, that seemed to make other dna statistics he spoke of less relevant in a way .... 

[youngtug]

This is one theory.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnAROk72seg&feature=share&list=PL6c263DjuawSZWRCvP784u0_muQ_l5RYP

[Ruskie]

This is one theory.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnAROk72seg&feature=share&list=PL6c263DjuawSZWRCvP784u0_muQ_l5RYP

Thanks. 

[GrahamSimons]

As for the Americas, there is plenty of controversy because there is (as yet) not enough hard DNA and archaeological evidence. The agreed answer is that the Americas were populated via a land bridge across the Bering Strait; it seems, just as in the Izzard programme and the migration from Africa, that the founding population of the Americas was very small, with some interesting consequences on gene frequencies (for my biologist colleagues, allele frequencies!). The YouTube clip linked above is a version of the website I linked in a previous post: I prefer the website as it's a bit more interactive.

[Lydart]

This is all very technical; for Mr and Mrs Average who watch TV, I think the programmes were set at just about the right level, and obviously a lot about DNA was left out.   

Interesting programmes, but not for the geneticists among the members of RC !!

[DevonCruwys]

There is an excellent article in the Guardian by Mark Thomas, Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at University College London, which provides further context on the Eddie Izzard programme:
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/feb/25/viking-ancestors-astrology
 
This blog post by Razib Khan might also be of interest:
 
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=20224#.USy5izBUF5c

DNA testing is a very useful tool for genealogical research but it cannot tell you that you are a Viking, Norman, Anglo-Saxon or Celt.

[Ruskie]

DNA testing is a very useful tool for genealogical research but it cannot tell you that you are a Viking, Norman, Anglo-Saxon or Celt.

Oh that's no good!  My OH keeps saying he is a Viking. I keep telling him he isn't. I was going to buy him a test to prove that I was right.  Will I be wasting my money? 

(Just looking at the link you provided above which I think may answer my question  )

[DevonCruwys]

DNA testing works well for genealogical research. For that your OH would need a standard 37-marker Y-DNA test. That would allow him to be included in a matching database so that he could see if he has matches with other people with the same surname. It would also give him a haplogroup assignment. Haplogroups are branches of the human Y-tree. They all have slightly different origins, and some are more prevalent in Scandinavia than others. No test would prove or disprove that your OH is a Viking so if that's all you want to prove you would definitely be wasting your money. You might well find companies that will suggest your OH is a Viking but such claims are not based on any scientific evidence.