Condoleezza Rice
In last night's episode, Condoleezza Rice was said to have 40% European blood in her. Why didn't the show try to trace her European roots?
shareThey did a DNA test on the family whom they thought fathered her grandmother. There wasn't a match. There's nothing left to trace.
shareI bet if we collected everyones DNA on all around the world we'd be able to tie people together and know who belongs to who and how, solve the paternity of children at or even before birth, and would know right away who fathered a child by rape. But I do believe that certain people would misuse the collection of DNA to frame others for crimes they didn't commit. If that wasn't an issue I think it would be a great thing to have for all to see. Imagine some of the mysteries that would be solved if we had it. Then maybe we really would realize how connected we are and how much we really are one big crazy dysfunctional family since we all came from Adam and Eve. Secrets are meant to be brought to light.
shareAdam and Eve are fictional.
shareThe mitochondrial DNA, a genetic element that is separate from the main human genome and inherited just through the female line, does not trace back to a single woman for all those who have been tested.
Mutation introduces changes into our DNA and as such, the best that genealogical DNA testing can offer is when a segment is an exact match to another person's DNA, that means that the two people share a common ancestor. The further back in terms of the number of generations, the less likely that there will be any identical segments. The one case that I recall from this series had to do with a common ancestor that was a number of generations back. It was an unusual case and not very common.
The other problem that we face is that not all paper trails are reliable. For instance, many Americans would like to claim a revolutionary war ancestor and become a Daughter or Son of the American Revolution. For ages, membership was allowed even though there was a considerable amount of hearsay involved. In 1990, the D.A.R. published a new index of revolutionary soldier ancestors in just three volumes. Many were omitted because there were serious flaws in the applications that raised questions about the ancestral link and validity.
Published histories, whether family or location, tend to be notorious for having errors in them. As such, they can be used, only at best, as a guide to furthering research through actual official documentation.