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William Dowie & Catherine Craigie

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The Hanging of George Dowie

The Dowie Haplotype

Most Recent Common Ancestor,    Common Values,    Links

The table below shows the authors haplotype. Results provided by Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) Laboratories show the actual Allele values at each of the marker Loci used. Comparisons can be made with the results from other family name researchers and with the HG1 Atlantic Modal Haplogroup. Total distance of relationship is given by the final column showing the total number for mutational differences between "Dowie" results and others. This set of 25 markers allows greater distinction than the earlier 12 marker tests and should any other Dowie's return a result of either 24 or 25 matching scores then it is almost certain that their origins can be traced to a common ancestor within the last 30 generations. More detailed explanations are provided below and links for further reading provided at the foot of the page.

The above table { updated Feb 2008 } would appear to finally answer the questions I posed in 2002 when I first began to write these webpages.

I believe that my Genetic forefathers were amongst the very earliest settlers of North East Scotland arriving not long after the retreat of the last glaciation. The descendents of these people were named Picts. Picts harried The Legions though out the Roman occupation of Britain and eventually joined with the relatively more recently arrived Dal Riadic settlers from Ireland; and the Norse settlers of the northern and western Isles to form the Nation of Scotland.

This does not necessarily solve the origin of the name "Dowie"

OAGP 4 is the sub group that the academic Kevin Campbell has extracted from the works of Dr. Brian Sykes. Saxons Viking & Celts. This would allow us to claim to belong to Dr. Sykes' Clan Oisin

"OGAP4 is particularly intriguing.  It is ubiquitous across all areas of Scotland and exceptionally strong in Grampian, Tayside, and Strathclyde.  If we discount the Irish influx in Argyll and the Hebrides, it is also among the strongest haplotypes present in these regions.  It would not be too much of a stretch to label OGAP4 the quintessential Scottish haplotype and the single closest identifier to whatever is considered the indigenous Scottish population.  Sykes and Oppenheimer both write that the Picts were as close as anything to the indigenous population of Scotland."

R1b - 9 is the sub group identified by Dr Stephen Oppenheimer and the values above are again suggested by Kevin Campbell in another of his papers in The Journal of Genetic Genealogy. In his book The Origins of the British Oppenheimer gives the name Rox to our clan father.

It is hoped that such information will encourage other "Dowie's" to submit samples for testing and there by broaden the scope of this initiative. Links to FTDNA are also proved below.

The Loci where Dowie values differ from the Atlantic Modal Haplogroup (AMH) are coloured red. Whilst the Dowie results show a value of  DYS426=12 and don't  return DYS392=11  (italics) suggests it belongs within HG1; it should be noted that on DYS447 the Dowie result differs from the modal group  here by two mutations. Surveys have suggested that only 15% of HG1's return a value of 23 at DYS447. Also of note is that within HG1 only 9% of men return a value of 12 at DYS385a. These facts may prove to be a defining characteristics of the Dowie Haplotype. It should be noted that Haplogroup HG1 is now named R1b.

R1b -Haplogroup R1b is the most common haplogroup in European populations. It is believed to have expanded throughout Europe as humans re-colonized after the last glacial maximum 10-12 thousand years ago. This lineage is also the haplogroup containing the Atlantic modal haplotype.

Further Testing has confirmed my  yDNA Haplogroup as :

The results of more tests are awaited. The current results suggest a more Germanic origin but may yet support the theory that Dowie's arrived in Scotland via the descendents of Walter de Douai - the Flemish supporter of William the Conqueror.

Further Reading: Here

Understanding DNA Mutation
The thing that makes all this testing useful for comparisons, is that the locations on your DNA that are examined for this test are known to change (or mutate) over numerous generations at a reasonably predictable rate. So if your signature is very different from someone else's, your paternal ancestors either started with totally different DNA or so many generations separate you that the DNA has mutated many times. If your Paternal Ancestry Signature matches exactly or very closely, then very few generations separate you from the other person. This is because not enough generations have elapsed between you for many of the markers to have mutated. The markers cannot really be compared individually. The entire signature needs to be close or exactly the same if two people are related. The values for each location do not really have any intrinsic value. Their meaning comes from their comparison to other peoples values at that location.

If two people were identical in all markers except they are off in one marker by 1 point, the genetic distance would be 1. If they were off at 2 different markers by 1 point in each marker, then the genetic distance of those two samples would be 2. If they were off by 2 points at one marker and 1 point in a second marker, then the genetic distance would be 3. This is called the Stepwise Model of calculating genetic distance for shallow time depths. (i.e. Genealogy not Anthropology)
 

Currently the Scientists are classifying  DYS 464  as following the Infinite Allele Model ie multiple step mutations may occur between a single generation. Therefore in the above chart these allele have been greyed out.

Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA)
Since we know the approximate rate of change of human DNA at the locations tested, we can approximate how closely two people are related. A statistical model is used to determine the probability of relatedness. The following table describes how closely related two people are (the number of generations that separate them) by the number of differences between their two signatures.

For Example, if two people have signatures that match at all markers except one, they are most likely related within about 9 generations (8.9). However, since this is a statistical model, it is still possible that the two people are related anywhere from 1.3 generations to 29.7 generations apart. Imagine a bell curve with 8.9 generations as the peak value in the center and 1.3 on the left end of the curve and 29.7 on the right end of the curve. The correct number of generations is most likely in the center of the curve and progressively less likely as you move further away from the center in either direction. If two people have more than two or three mismatches, they are considered to be unrelated based on current calculations.

An individual's test results have little meaning on their own. It is not possible to take these numbers, plug them into some formula and find out who your ancestors are. The value of the test results depends on how your results compare to other test results. A perfect match will only indicate that you and the person you match share a common ancestor. Depending on the number of markers tested and the number of matches it will indicate with a certain degree of probability how long ago this common ancestor existed. It will not show exactly who this ancestor is.

Mutations occur at random. This means it is possible for two distant cousins to match exactly on all markers while two brothers might not match exactly. Because of the random nature of mutations we must use statistics and probability to estimate the Time to the Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA). The actual calculations of TMRCA are mathematically complex and depend on knowing the rate of mutation and the true number of mutations. At this time there is not enough data to accurately determine either of these factors so certain assumptions have to be made. The discussion of these assumptions and the actual calculations are beyond the scope of this webpage.

Matching Your Signature with Population Studies
It stands to reason that as we reduce the number of markers to compare with other people, we increase the chances of matching signatures with those people. Many studies have been conducted that try to characterize geographic or ethnic populations by examining what DNA markers they have in common. Many of these studies indicate that a subset of the markers in your test have a strong correlation to general geographic populations. Using a smaller common set of markers we can start to make correlations for groups of people that may have had a common ancestor much further back. These groups of people are called Haplogroups.

One common Haplogroup is Hg1 (Haplogroup 1), which is characterized by a commonly known haplotype called the Atlantic Modal Haplogroup (AMH, haplotype 1.15). This haplotype is most commonly found along the Atlantic coast of Europe. While the definition of these different haplogroups are based on a different set of test markers, there is a significant correlation with haplogroup tests and the markers in your test. If your results match or very closely match the AMH values, there is a very good chance your paternal ancestors came from this region.

Earliest Known Ancestors

Dowie Haplotype

Y-STR Database - The Y-STR (Y-Chromosome Short Tandem Repeat) databases contain thousands of test results for comparison purposes. You can enter a subset of your markers and see if anyone else has those markers in common and see what the geographic distribution is of any matches. The largest database is of European samples and can be found here:
http://www.ystr.org/europe/

Mutation Rates

Table 2. Relative ASD values and estimated mutation rates for the 37 FTDNA panel. The mutation estimates are derived from Zhivotovsky et al. (2004) value derived from the shaded markers. ?