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From: "Paul Conroy" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA-R1B1C7] The Trinity Ui Neill study
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:17:01 -0500
References: <bd5.235eb14e.34c07cf7@aol.com><9656caf80801170703n68275d26y48c7b422a6ed5918@mail.gmail.com><001601c85925$63693380$6402a8c0@DW1>
In-Reply-To: <001601c85925$63693380$6402a8c0@DW1>


David,

The last 300 years where? Among what ethnic group(s)?

First off, we're talking about a span of time of about 1,700 years, give or
take a few hundred, so estimates have to consider historic and pre-historic
time frames - certainly not only time frames. The last 300 years is the time
since Industrialization began, this is not representative time period.

Since most of this time period, the population in question was living in
Northern Ireland and surrounding areas, then this is the specific population
that we should be concerned with. Most people in this time frame were
peasant farmers and reproduced early and often, but died young. The
particular family group in question, the O'Neills and related families had
more surviving and reproducing offspring then most. Why was this - probably
because they were powerful people in their clan group. For much of this
period succession would be based on the so called Tanistry system -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanistry - whereby a successor chieftain was
chosen from the clan group, and all males were possible candidates. In
Scotland the same system was in place, as I have seen no evidence of any
R1b1c7 people from traditionally Pictish areas. The difference being that
later O'Neills were one of the only clans in Ireland or Scotland to be
powerful enough to appoint their own successor - usually an elder son - as
chief, in their own lifetimes. Much, much later succession was defendant on
the Primogeniture system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primogeniture - as
espoused by the English.

What all of this means is that over a considerable period - 1,000 to 1,500
years - O'Neills were passing on material advantage to their direct
offspring, and particularly their oldest or at least elder sons. These of
course would have been born to fathers at a younger age, thereby reducing
the generation time considerably.

Cheers,
Paul



On Jan 17, 2008 11:24 AM, David Wilson <> wrote:

> Since we're looking only at the Y-chromosome succession here, we don't
> need
> to worry about the ages of the mothers involved. The point is that if a
> males historically fathered a surviving child every year or two between
> the
> ages of 20 and 50, the average age for that generation is 35. I have no
> doubt that tracing firstborns only would get you a new generation every 23
> years or so on average, but if we are tracking all individuals who left
> offspring (and specifically male offspring), the average generation would
> be
> longer. And if we tracked only lastborn sons of lastborns, the generation
> length could be quite long indeed.
>
> This is discussed periodically on the RootsWeb DNA list, and as I recall
> the
> statistics for people with long and complete family trees show that in the
> last 300 years, the age of the father when his middle child was born was
> about 30-32. I usually use 30 as a generation length -- or as a cruder
> yardstick three generations per century.
>
> David Wilson
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> [mailto:] On Behalf Of Paul Conroy
> Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 7:03 AM
> To:
> Subject: Re: [DNA-R1B1C7] The Trinity Ui Neill study
>
> Lochlan,
>
> Why would you say:
>
> I'm not sure but I think these figures are assuming a 25 year average
> per
> generation which is probably too low.
>
>
> In most of recorded history, and probably before that time too, men got
> married in their early 20's and women a few years after puberty 16+, they
> also lived short lives, so that figure looks conservative to me if
> anything?!
>
> Cheers,
> Paul
>
>
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