re: #342 freetoken

If you wanted, you could take something like a Y short tandem repeat test at FTDNA, and find other men with whom you share male ancestors.

You could also take the mtDNA full sequencing test, to see if you pick up others on your mothers’ deep ancestry. I’ve not done that, though someday I think it would be interesting.

There’s also the autosomal tests, which have a lot of YMMV postings about them.

For me, I’ve been working on the paper side, rationalizing my deep nordic ancestry. I think I finally decided that anybody with a birth year below 4 digits probably is too far back to be truly in the pedigree. ⚉

I’d like to do the deep testing, but Oh! the cost! I did the preiminary mtDNA tests, putting that line in the U3 group. That’s apparently from eastern Europe. My earliest maternal line ancestor lived on Gotland, so her roots probably lie farther to the east.

Many people back in the days wanted to connect their families to nobility or royalty, so some genealogies get increasingly more fanciful the further back they go. Surnames in Europe really didn’t catch on until well after the 1300s, so making connections based only on given names is a fool’s game. Noble families, and literate families, would keep track of such matters, and some of those records have survived, leading the hopeful to make connections where none exist. Most of us probably came from illiterate ancestors, who could not have written down details about births, deaths and marriages. So, genealogies suggesting one is descended from Alfred the Great, or Alexander the Great, can probably be discounted.