On Tue, 9 Sep 2003 04:52:49 +0000 (UTC),
joe{at}removethispart.gs.washington.edu wrote:

>In article ,
>Representative Trantis  wrote:
>>For males the mother's ancestry can be traced via the mitochondriam, as they
>>are inherited from the mother alone.
>>
>>Their paternity can be traced back many many generations through their Y
>>chromosome.
>>
>>Can a female's paternal hancestry be traced in any way?
>
>It is a bit of a myth that maternal ancestries "can be traced via the
>mitochondrion".  My mother and her sister had the same
mitochondrial haplotype
>(I assume).  That means you couldn't tell from that which of them was my
>mother.  Similarly for my grandfather and his brother, who carried the same
>Y chromosome.
>
>You actually have to use non-Y, non-mitochondrial markers to infer ancestors.
>Lots and lots of them.

You also have to consider that you have two parents, four
grandparents, etc.  In ten generations, you had over a a thousand
ancestors, in twenty over a million.  Even accounting for substantial
inbreeding, you certainly had a large number of ancestors.  Tracing
the mitochondrial genes and the Y chromosome would only give you two
of these.  It is even possible that you carry absolutely NONE of the
autosomal chromosomes of the two individuals you trace that way. 

Mitochondrial and Y chromosome tracing have signiicant value for many
purposes, but for tracing what we, in ordinary language, call
"ancestry", they really aren't that useful.
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