The summer has seen a flurry of activity and a stream of new results has steadily been filtering through into the project. Here is a summary of the new results and how they have added to the project. All these results are visible on the public Results Page.
New Y-37 Results
The results for new member IN116071 place him firmly in Group 3g, the Kilmilkin O'Malley's. This is consistent with his reported genealogy which places him as a great great grandson of Peter O'Malley 1800-1887, who in turn was a grandson of Sean na Firinne O'Malley (1740-1801).
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| The Kilmilkin O'Malley's of Group 3g |
New Big Y Results
Seven sets of Big Y results have come back from the lab in the last 6 weeks or so.
An additional member (Private) has been added to Group 3f and sits on the sub-branch characterised by the SNP marker FT199058.
The Big Y results for a member who is currently in the Ungrouped section (896085) reveal that he sits on branch S20285 within Haplogroup I. This is a very isolated branch of the Tree of Mankind and the common ancestor he shares with his nearest genetic match on the tree would have lived about 2800 years ago.
Five sets of Big Y results have been returned for Group 3a, the Mayo O'Malley's. The results for two of these five test-takers place them on the FT86146 branch of the genetic family tree for Group 3a (980852, Private). Another member (549939) moves on to branch BY181019. And a fourth member (Private) moves from Group 3 (a kind of holding group) into Group 3a, and specifically onto the FTC74597 branch. Lastly, one of the Ballyburke O'Malley's (BP41562, from Line 3 of the Finding Grace project) joins his 2nd cousin on a new sub-branch below FTC67000, namely FTC68757.
These new results are indicated in the Big Y Block Tree Diagram below. If you have done the Big Y test, you can access this from your FTDNA Homepage by clicking on Results & Tools > Big Y > Block Tree.
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| Current configuration of the genetic family tree for Group 3a (click to enlarge) |
These new results are constantly fed into FTDNA's new Discover feature and increase the precision of the age estimates for the common ancestor of each branch within the genetic family tree. FTDNA update these estimates every week or so.
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| Available for free to everyone - just click here |
Over the coming months and years, we will see how these estimates are refined and evolve over time. The table below details the estimated year of birth of the common ancestor for each of the main branches within the project (together with the 95% Confidence Interval around each estimate). Any new results have a knock-on effect and refine the estimates for all branches upstream of where the person with the new results is placed.
Most of the time there are only small changes in the central estimate but occasionally we can see big jumps, such as the two examples highlighted in yellow below - the first shows a jump of 144 years (from 1029 AD to 885 AD) and the other has a jump of 101 years (from 1101 to1202 AD). Another point to note is that as more Big Y results are fed into the system, we see a gradual narrowing of the range around each Central Estimate. In other words, the estimates become more precise as new Big Y data becomes available and is added to the calculations.
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| Age estimates for the common ancestor of each branch will evolve over time |
The BY35730 branch is the one that encompasses all people with the O'Malley surname (or variant) within Group 3a. The current estimated year of birth for the common ancestor for the entire group is 802 AD (with a 95% range of 428 to 1098 AD). This predates the introduction of surnames in Ireland (about 950-1150 AD) by about 200-300 years, so I would not be surprised if there are further revisions to this estimate over time as more results come in, and this in turn may have a knock-on effect on all the branches downstream (i.e. towards the present day).
Watching with interest as we know for certain common ancestor for FT145889 was born 1883. Might that indicate a more rapid breakdown of DNA than is being forecast or is it an indication of substantial variability from the mean? Might we see a flatter Bell curve in some family groups than in others?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the question, Ian. The current TMRCA estimate for FT145889 has changed to 1826 with a 95% Confidence Interval of 1655-1933. This differs from the previous estimate of Sep 2nd, so we can see how these estimates continue to evolve, and as they do, the curve around the central estimate will tend to become less flat. There are many factors that influence this, including the number of test-takers in this portion of the Tree of Mankind ... the more that test, the more SNPs that will be discovered (both downstream and upstream) and this will shorten the "number of years per SNP" measure. The average is 83 years per SNP, but (for example) this has decreased to 69 years per SNP in the L226 branch of the tree due to widespread sampling by the eager Administrators of projects like the Irish Type III, L226, and O'Brien projects.
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