With Christmas upon us yet again, we could do well not to forget the family with us now. If you are anyhting like me, new projects and hobbies can get in the way of ‘quality time’. Whilst the holidays give us some time to do those little things we’ve been planning to do in our research/projects, we must appreciate those who will be with us at this time of the year. (more…)

And today I feel like Zuzu from the Lion King after my post day yesterday. Anthropology it seems is a popular blogging subject but…. a lot of that stuff is just too heavy! I thought I would spend a couple of hours looking up some links for this blog expecting to find a few that would appeal to genealogists but so far I’ve come up short. (more…)

I have been debating with myself whether a blog that tries to cover genealogy, family history, general history and anthropology (the study of the origins of humans) could really be interesting to the amateur genealogist. I have decided to continue covering all aspects because all these things are easily connected. (more…)

A British plant biologist believes he has discovered why our brains stopped developing thousands of years ago and why we all have the potential to become geniuses. Read More Here

There is something that disturbs me when scientists say things like ‘we don’t use large areas of our brains’ or that there ‘are large chunks of junk DNA’. What they should be really saying is ‘that we don’t know what these do’. (more…)

Scientists believe that studying the humble zebrafish may have helped solve the mystery of human skin colour.

Read the story here

In the BBC news today, scientists have discovered that this wonderful island of ours (no, no, not the Seychelles) was peopled some 200,000 earlier than previously thought. It brought a smile to my face when I thought that if it were possible to trace your family to the earlier days, you would now be facing another long haul! (more…)

Apparently, the first recorded death by the Birmingham (that is the original Birmingham in the UK, OK?) Registry office was a prostitute whose death was notified by the master of the workhouse. (more…)

Over at The Loom, there is an interesting article ‘Tree or Trellis’ that takes another look at the ‘out of Africa’ theory for man’s history. Using DNA evidence the newer theory is that instead of one great migration, there were about three and at least once, there was movement back towards Africa. (more…)

I haven’t done much work on the DyNAstyDb in the past few months apart from the work to generate the Ellis Families of West Riding’s pages. In the back of my mind though I am trying to solve the issues that are coming up as I get to the black hole years. (more…)

Washington - Tues., Nov. 15, 2005 - Calling on all Americans to “know their family history,” U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, M.D., M.P.H., today unveiled an updated version of a computerized tool designed to help families gather their health information [Read More Here]

If you do not want to shake any family skeletons out of the cupboard, don’t do genealogy and certainly do not do genetic genealogy. (more…)

This news story on the BBC site is one that I am afraid of. Despite the fact that yDNA cannot be used to identify individuals, it is stories like this that will make it difficult to convince people to have their DNA tested for the WRYEllis yDNA study. (more…)

Just read this post which brings me to one of the biggest gripes I have about Crown copyright here in England. (more…)

Haven’t posted for a couple of days, been busy with other things really. Where I have had the chance I have been working on the West Riding Yorkshire Family pages. (more…)

The Abraham Lincoln quote on the front page of the dynastyDB page ( ‘I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.’ ) is exactly how I thought of genealogy. I saw researching family history as trying to live in the past when the future beckons. Now, though I can tell the difference. (more…)

Isn’t it just the way? Just as I am about to release the WRY Ellis Families site, I find that the code to generate the trees is not working as well as I though so I spent the evening fixing that code as well as tidying up this blog and the dynastyDB sites. (more…)

Welcome to the dynastyBlog. I will be covering Genealogical issues in this blog including genetic genealogy and the development of dynastyDB, a ‘Single Name yDNA’ study database application. I am not averse to discussing history as it relates to both general human development and family history. I hope to keep this blog quite busy and encourage comments and observations.

My discovery of how popular genetic genealogy is getting has re-fired my enthusiaum in continuing to develop dynastyDB which originally did not include the yDNA aspect. My hope is that with the feedback I hope to get, I will be able to release the application for other research projects. If you would like to know more about dynastyDB, please visit the Home Page.

Cheers