Mods, feel fre to move this if you think innapropriate.

Have just completed this & am now awaiting the results in another 6 weeks or so. National Geographic are running the biggest survey of the human race, tracking DNA via the Genographic Project

$100 to take part, but for personal interest & a chance to contribute to the largest anthropological study that will be carried out in my lifetime, well worth it in my opinion.

This sounds fascinating Polorise thanks.

I work for IBM (who are sponsoring a lot of this project) - will check out next week if there is any way to get "group" discounts. I doubt it, but it is worth a try.

retrospective please ....

Sorry I checked everwhere and mailed the responsible group in IBM. I am afraid we cannot get bulk discounts - even as an IBM employee. Sounds like a good business to be involved with. Maybe I will start a new collection of peoples DNA to go with my beermats.

I was only thinking of this the other day...finding out my ancestry via DNA. Once you trace your grandparents to farms in Co. Kerry villages in Ireland it tends not to get too exciting going back beyond that

However I always do recall many many many years ago watching a programme on the history of Ireland alongside my parents. When the narrator reported that the Irish had repelled the Vikings my dad punched his fist in the air and said "yep, we sure showed those fellas!". When it then went on to talk about the Normans coming my mum started laughing. Turns out that they had done some previous research on their respective family names and that while she apparently goes back to the kings and queens of Kerry, my dad was decended from the Normans and so his lot wasn't even there when the vikings got stuffed!

Anyway....please excuse my ignorance...how's this work? Assuming you have sixteen great great grandparents, is it right to say that only two of them will feature in the search?

If so, assuming your father's father's father features in the paternal one, does the maternal one work on a mother's mother basis or mother's fathers basis. Or have I got this all totally wrong

Ummm, please don't take this the wrong way - but we have enough work to do around here. You have over 500 posts, you obviously already know your way around the forum (at least you should) - is your post related to Switzerland? If not, then why is it anywhere other than off topic?

Simply inviting us to clean up after you (as we often seem to), isn't going to fly going forward.

I've moved this into off-topic.

This is not a genealogy study, you might want to change that tag

Tim, as noted by Gooner below, this is not a genealogical survey but an anthropological research study ... so sorry will not tell you if great great grandmother was Marie Antoinettes maid....

to quote :

"Your results will reveal your deep ancestry along a single line of direct descent (paternal or maternal) and show the migration paths they followed thousands of years ago. Your results will also place you on a particular branch of the human family tree. Some anthropological stories are more detailed than others, depending upon the lineage you belong to. For example, if you are of African descent, your results will show the initial movements of your ancestors on the African continent, but will not reflect most of the migrations that have occurred within the past 10,000 years. Your individual results may confirm your expectations of what you believe your deep ancestry to be, or you may be surprised to learn a new story about your genetic background."

personally will find out shortly if in times of yore my gN was a red arsed baboon or not ...probability is quite high ....

Forgot to give you an update on this.

Basically no baboons, but seem to be descended from a "gggggg*-grandparent" originating from Spain. The family then migrated across the Pyrenees on into Southern France, up the Rhone valley, across the Benelux, & ended up in Norway via Denmark ... after that, can safely assume that someone then decided some pillaging was overdue in the Western Isles.
So my own personal mystery solved. Makes for some interesting reading on the site.

Nice one, must be very interesting for you. Makes me sorry I never took part, unless of course it's not too late.

no its still ongoing ....