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Showing posts from February 6, 2008

I could be related to Marie Antoinette...

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...and so could you. This post is not about the primaries, the recession or Iraq, but about my recent discovery that I'm related to the great royal families of Europe (and, yes, so are you). I decided to take part in The Genographic Project (via National Geographic). The deal is: I contribute the DNA of either my Mom or my Dad (they send you a kit and you take a cheek brush sample, just like on CSI). They study your genetic markers in a laboratory and provide you information about your "deep ancestry," starting 60,000 ago when "we" left Africa where Mitochondrial Eve,the Mother of us All was born. I decided to first study my maternal lineage (mitochondrial DNA) and this week I got the results (online). So on my mother's side I belong to the Haplogroup H (mtDNA), subclade 16519. To make a very long story short: My grand-grand-grand....mother, that established my H branch on the Tree was probably born around 20,000 years ago somewhere in the valleys of the