It is an oxymoron to state that DNA is complex. Fortunately, if you focus on the area that is important to you and if you use some of the many excellent resources that are available, you can understand what you need and apply it effectively.

Well that’s the theory. Stumbling is both frustrating and richly rewarding. After all, it is only about life and death, and so we might as well enjoy the ride.

As we come across resources that are reliable and have helped me, we will add them here.

It is also worth noting that we cannot assume that any “fact” or interpretation will be definitive for all time. DNA research is growing new knowledge at an exponential rate. The increasing number of people having their DNA analyzed is contributing to that.

It is also worth noting that what appears to be bona fide interpretation and analysis may not be reliable. Enthusiastic amateurs like me, without the rigour of peer review, can post anything and make it sound credible. Others post “analysis” which is really opinion or speculation. Still others, like me, conduct their research from a particular interest base which either corrupts their findings or states them in a way which is misleading because they do not take the time to qualify their findings or to put them in the appropriate context. Alas and, occasionally, mea culpa.

All of the retail DNA labs that I have checked out seem to have very good explanatory information. some of it is not so easy to find. There are other organizations, like the ones that I will list below, which provide great services as well, but many of them are hybrid blog/peer review so be careful about how you use information that you find there if it is critically important to you. Verify.

Retail Labs
23andMe (mine)
FTDNA

Information Sources
ISOGG International Society of Genetic Genealogy http://www.isogg.org/

3 different Y-chromosomes (E1b1b, J2, J1) are strongly common to Ancient Hebrews, Phoenicians and Samaritans.

Genographic scientists in the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG-D-08-00725R2) shows that they left some people their genes as well. The study finds that as many as one in 17 men in the Mediterranean basin may have a Phoenician as a direct male-line ancestor.
NOTES: To view the publication in full: http://www.cell.com/AJHG/fulltext/S0002-9297(08)00547-8

PRELIMINARY NOTES
Research into Relationship Between Sephardic Jews and Phoenicians

Thesis: There would appear to be a relationship between Phoenicians and ancient Hebrews from around the time of Solomon that stretches as far away as Cadiz in Spain. Is it true? If so, why?

1. Cadiz on the west coast of Spain/Andalusia Founded by Phoenicians; 1104 BC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadiz
2. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephardi_Jews#Language
“Evidence which suggests Jewish connections with the Iberian Peninsula includes:
• References in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, I Kings, and Jonah to the country of Tarshish, which is thought by many to have been located in modern southern Spain (in ancient Tartessus).
• A signet ring found at Cadiz, dating from the 8th-7th century BC. The inscription on the ring, generally accepted as Phoenician, has been interpreted by a few scholars to be “paleo-hebraic.” “
• An amphora dating from at least the first century AD found in Ibiza, which bears imprints of two Hebrew characters.
• Several early Jewish writers wrote that their families had lived in Spain since the destruction of the first temple. The famous Don Isaac Abravanel (1407–1508) stated that the Abravanel family had lived on the Iberian Peninsula for 2,000 years.
Gadir (Phoenician: גדר), the original name given to the outpost established here by the Phoenicians, means “wall, compound”, or, more generally, “walled stronghold”. The Punic dialect lent this word, along with many others, to the Berber languages, where it was nativised as agadir meaning “wall” in Tamazight and “fortified granary” in Shilha; it appears as a common place name in North Africa.[4] The name of the Israeli town of Gedera has a similar etymology.
The city was originally founded as Gadir (Phoenician גדר “walled city”) by the Phoenicians, who used it in their trade with Tartessos, a city-state believed by archaeologists to be somewhere near the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, about thirty kilometres northwest of Cadiz. (Its exact location has never been firmly established.)

Cadiz is the most ancient city still standing in Western Europe.[1] Traditionally, its founding is dated to 1104 BC[5] although no archaeological strata on the site can be dated earlier than the 9th century BC. One resolution for this discrepancy has been to assume that Gadir was merely a small seasonal trading post in its earliest days.

One of the city’s notable features during antiquity was the temple dedicated to the Phoenician god Melqart. (Melqart was associated with Hercules by the Greeks.) According to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the temple was still standing during the 1st century. Some historians, based in part on this source, believe that the columns of this temple were the origin of the myth of the pillars of Hercules.[7]

SOLOMON: HIS LIFE AND TIMES.
BY REV. F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R,S.
ARCHDEACON AND CANON OF WESTMINSTER; AND CHAPLAIN
IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN. 1886?

Various forms of veiled and pregnant speech known as “riddles” and “dark sayings” were also much cultivated in this epoch of literature. Riddles have always played an important part in the story of the East. Josephus preserves a curious tradition that Solomon, and Hiram, king of Tyre, challenged each other to trials of skill in this form of “wisdom”—inability to read the riddle being acknowledged by pecuniary fines.5 At first Hiram was entirely defeated in this intellectual contest, but at last he discovered a Tyrian youth named Abdemon, of great natural gifts, by whose assistance he successfully encountered, and even defeated, his royal ally.
5 Comp. Theophilus in Eusebius, ” Præp. Ev.” ix. 34, § 19.

Modern humans migrated out of Africa via a southern route through Arabia, rather than a northern route by way of Egypt, according to research announced at a conference at the National Geographic Society this week.

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/11/03/modern-humans-wandered-out-of-africa-via-arabia/

In itself, somewhat remote and not earth shaking. But, down the road this research will lead to further research which may lead to a clearer picture of the place of origin of E1b1b1c1a M84 and therefore us. It will more easily explain our admixture of Asian, near Eastern, North African genes along with our Northern European genes.

Eugene Yurtsev is the closest possible unknown relative identified to date. Eugene and I have made contact on 23andMe.

Third cousin means that we might share great-great-grandparents, in other words, Frank’s grandparents.

He will be exploring his family tree with his family in the coming days. What I have learned is that a few years ago he migrated to the United States from Israel where he and his family had migrated from Belarus (600 km x 600 km; landlocked; surrounded by Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Latvia and Lithuania).

The lab matching determined that we share 0.41% of our genes and 4 chromosome segments: two on chr 1, and one each on 6 and 12.

However, we don’t share common Y haplotype or Mitochondrial haplotype. Since his Y chromosome is not our E, then his intervening line of descent, at some stage was through the maternal line.

My brother Brian shares two on chr 1 and 1 on chr 6. Curiously, my son David shares the most segments, 5, whereas son Jon shares none at all.

David shares: chr 1 x2; chr 6 x 2; chr 12 x 1.

Stay tuned.