Challenge G2G to confidence Three X-DNA lines the first common ancester Gilbert Kennedy of Dunure, born c.1406

+1 vote
142 views

 As of now they appear to be ready to confirm by also true Triangulation once the Lines are all confident

in WikiTree Tech by Kevin Lajiness G2G5 (5.2k points)
edited by Kevin Lajiness
There needs to be detail for feedback. How many people, how strong are the matches, how good are the paper trails, is there endogamy, etc

1 Answer

+5 votes
From the info provided in your comments:

It looks like you have found paths between you, Hays-4528, and Col. Daniel Boone all back to a common ancestor in Wikitree, where every one of those three paths is a possible pathway for X-DNA inheritance (never two men in a row in the path). Is that correct? Considering that this ancestor lived in the 1200s, I will say it really is *wow* that you could find three such lines, including a famous American! Wow for that, regardless of how well each is documented -- I see on your profile that you are concerned with documenting them now. I will leave it to others to speak to that documentation, except to say that I have yet to encounter a line back that far outside of royalty that I have seen documented with reasonable confidence. However, I will note that one path in your document appears to contain two male Purefoys in a row. That single pair excludes any possibility of X-DNA being inherited down that line.

Concerning just the DNA, it is true that X-DNA has the potential to confirm ancestors father back than autosomal DNA. But let us look at why, so we can understand how much father back this is reasonable:

A daughter gets essentially an identical copy of her father's X-chromosome from him -- there is no recombination. However, there is recombination when a mother passes her X-chromosome to a child of either sex. So if you are looking at lines that are strictly maternal, you see recombination at each generation, so you wouldn't expect to confirm any farther back than using autosomal DNA. Indeed, because women on average produce more crossovers than men in their recombinations, you would expect to be able to confirm even less far back than usual with X-DNA compared to autosomal if you stick to a strictly maternal line.

On the opposite extreme, consider a line that goes from a woman Jane to her father, his mother, her father, his mother, etc., alternating between males and females.Jane is expected to share 12.5% of her autosomal DNA with a great-grandparent. But with her father's mother's father, she is expected to share 50% of his X-chromosome -- she only lost about half when her maternal grandmother gave an X-chromosome to Jane's father, recombining in the process.

Going back two more generations, Jane is expected to share 3.125% of her autosomal DNA with a great-great-great grandparent, but to share fully 25% of her father's mother's father's mother's father's X-chromosome.  Each time we go back two generations on such a line, the expected amount of autosomal DNA shared down goes down by 1/4, but the expected amount of X-DNA goes down by 1/2. So comparing cousins who descend from a common ancestor on strictly alternating male-female lines like this, you could conceivably confirm ancestors twice as many generations back as with autosomal DNA.

Now most people with well-developed trees and a good base of DNA matches can expect to reasonably a good assortment of ancestors 6 generations back and maybe a handful further back than that. So if your lines were strictly alternating male-female-male-female, I could believe that you'd have a reasonable shot of confirming up to about 10-12 generations back with rapidly diminishing probablity beyond that. Your chart shows one such path going back 25 generations. In my opinion this is so far back that the probability of confirming ancestors at that distance with X-DNA is essentially zero. And since your lines have very few males, so are far from that ideal of alternating male female that allows the X-DNA to be passed down much longer, I would say even confirming an ancestor back even 10 generations is beyond reach for the proposed lines.

However, if you want to do something to try to continue to prove the point with X-DNA, you should do true triangulation. You used the word in your post and on your page, but I don't see evidence given there of *DNA triangulation*. You need to have a common segment shared between you and at least two cousins on the exact same part of the X-chromosome. Unfortunately, it is not possible to test Daniel Boone, so you'd need to find another living cousin with one of these miraculous X-inheritance lines back to the same ancestor.
by Barry Smith G2G6 Pilot (293k points)
edited by Barry Smith

 As of now they appear to be ready to confirm by also true Triangulation once the Lines are all confident : Challenge G2G to confidence three X-DNA lines the first common ancester Gilbert Kennedy of Dunure

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