DNA Sequencing Megathread! Neanderthals, Denisovans and other ancient DNA!

[Valmy]

My understanding is that if you wanted to trace back my dad's line you hit a huge brick wall as soon as you the generation before they came to Canada - we don't know where precisely in Ukraine (well, Russia or Austria in those days) they came from, and even if we did the records would likely have been demolished in a little tiff called WWII.

SOme day when I have a spare $200 I wouldn't mind seeing what a DNA ancestry check would have to say.

Very common. The Atlantic Ocean is one hell of a barrier.

[viper37]

Well, I can trace my paternal ancestors back to Normandy, he was a cooper, like his brother(s) (can't remember if they were 2 or 3).  I know my maternal ancestor who first came here was from Poitou (from my grandfather line), but I have no idea what he was doing for a living.  Apparenlty, on my grandmother's side, we are related to Étienne Brûlé, though I don't know how much of it is really true, it's only something I heard from a tv show on famous pionneers and their descendants.

[HVC]

I got fisherman and farmers. Really the only exciting possibility that may have happened was an ancestors sibling got taken by Vikings given where my mom comes from.

Oh, and town famous philanderer great grandfather.

[viper37]

Given the tangent this thread has taken, I'm hesitant to bring it back to its roots...

But, this is a major discovery, mastodon bones, most likely killed and skinned by humans:
First humans in California dated to 130 000 years ago

130,000-year-old mastodon bones could rewrite story of how humans first appeared in the Americas

Shattered mastodon bones from a Southern California site bear the scars of human activity from 130,700 years ago, a team of scientists says — pushing back the generally accepted date that humans are thought to have settled North America by a whopping 115,000 or so years.

If verified and corroborated by other scientists, the discovery described in the journal Nature could radically rewrite the timeline of when humans first arrived in the Americas.

"This is the first time there's been a demonstrated archaeological site with all the bells and whistles," said Curtis Runnels, an archaeologist at Boston University who was not involved with the study, referring to the combination of several lines of evidence at the site. "This makes it absolutely first-water importance. This is up there with one of the discoveries of the century, I would say."
[...]

[derspiess]

I know my maternal ancestor who first came here was from Poitou (from my grandfather line), but I have no idea what he was doing for a living. 

That is where my Huguenot ancestors were from.  Family name was Monnet (or Monnett).  Looks like they fled to London sometime in the 17th century and then one of them ended up in Maryland, where the name was anglicized to Money.  Going back before that, I have at least 4 direct ancestors that were killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572.   

[Grinning_Colossus]

If Homo sapiens did this, it also pushes the migration out of Africa back by tens of thousands of years. Could it have been Erectus, or a North American descendant?

[Admiral Yi]

That is where my Huguenot ancestors were from.  Family name was Monnet (or Monnett).  Looks like they fled to London sometime in the 17th century and then one of them ended up in Maryland, where the name was anglicized to Money.  Going back before that, I have at least 4 direct ancestors that were killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572.

That's a long time to hold a grudge dude.

[The Minsky Moment]

If Homo sapiens did this, it also pushes the migration out of Africa back by tens of thousands of years. Could it have been Erectus, or a North American descendant?

Is there any evidence of sapiens in Siberia or East Asia 130-140K YA?  It does suggest Erectus or some variant. 

[derspiess]

That is where my Huguenot ancestors were from.  Family name was Monnet (or Monnett).  Looks like they fled to London sometime in the 17th century and then one of them ended up in Maryland, where the name was anglicized to Money.  Going back before that, I have at least 4 direct ancestors that were killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572.

That's a long time to hold a grudge dude.

WELL NOW ITS WORSE

[The Brain]

If Homo sapiens did this, it also pushes the migration out of Africa back by tens of thousands of years. Could it have been Erectus, or a North American descendant?

Is there any evidence of sapiens in Siberia or East Asia 130-140K YA?  It does suggest Erectus or some variant.

Well it must be one of the major Homos.

[viper37]

Family name was Monnet (or Monnett).  Looks like they fled to London sometime in the 17th century and then one of them ended up in Maryland, where the name was anglicized to Money. 

Do you share a common ancestor with our Count here?   

[viper37]

If Homo sapiens did this, it also pushes the migration out of Africa back by tens of thousands of years. Could it have been Erectus, or a North American descendant?

Erectus or Denisovan would be likelier, but it's a big ?, until we actually invent time travel

"The implications are massive in terms of human migrations, because for a start we don't really know which human was actually in North America 130,000 years ago," Fullagar said. "There are possibilities; it could be Neanderthal or Denisovan or an early anatomically modern human, but there are no human remains in northeastern Siberia of anything like that sort of age. So it's an unknown, and it extends in a way the capacity of these early humans to have made such a journey — especially if it were by boat and involved sea crossings as opposed to a land crossing."

[Eddie Teach]

Family name was Monnet (or Monnett).  Looks like they fled to London sometime in the 17th century and then one of them ended up in Maryland, where the name was anglicized to Money. 

Do you share a common ancestor with our Count here?   

Yes, but he's Irish rather than French.

[katmai]

My understanding is that if you wanted to trace back my dad's line you hit a huge brick wall as soon as you the generation before they came to Canada - we don't know where precisely in Ukraine (well, Russia or Austria in those days) they came from, and even if we did the records would likely have been demolished in a little tiff called WWII.

SOme day when I have a spare $200 I wouldn't mind seeing what a DNA ancestry check would have to say.

family tree dna is on sale for $59 at moment here in USA....no idea if applicable in Canuckleland.

[jimmy olsen]

Given the tangent this thread has taken, I'm hesitant to bring it back to its roots...

But, this is a major discovery, mastodon bones, most likely killed and skinned by humans:
First humans in California dated to 130 000 years ago

130,000-year-old mastodon bones could rewrite story of how humans first appeared in the Americas

Shattered mastodon bones from a Southern California site bear the scars of human activity from 130,700 years ago, a team of scientists says — pushing back the generally accepted date that humans are thought to have settled North America by a whopping 115,000 or so years.

If verified and corroborated by other scientists, the discovery described in the journal Nature could radically rewrite the timeline of when humans first arrived in the Americas.

"This is the first time there's been a demonstrated archaeological site with all the bells and whistles," said Curtis Runnels, an archaeologist at Boston University who was not involved with the study, referring to the combination of several lines of evidence at the site. "This makes it absolutely first-water importance. This is up there with one of the discoveries of the century, I would say."
[...]

There's no fucking way. Push it back to 30 or even 45k I could accept, but not 130,000. Humans got to Australia 60,000 years ago. No way that they arrived in the Americas 70,000 years before that.