Thursday, July 7, 2016

Corkill DNA Research

Interesting research on the DNA of the Manx:
Excellent reading for anyone interested in the history of the Corkills and the people of the Isle of Man.

There's also excellent information at http://www.mannincloud.info/ and at the Isle of Man Family History Society: http://www.iomfhs.im/

UPDATE as of June 14, 2016:

Having paid for and received results from both ancestry.coms DNA service (familytreedna.com, Y-DNA37) and manxdna.co.uk (Y-37) I am immersed in information. While I will try to digest the information over time I'll try to improve a synopsis below.

I purchased a Y-DNA37 test from familytreedna.com which provides a "Direct Paternal Lineage" trace, for description:
"What is the Direct Paternal Lineage?
Your direct paternal lineage is the line that follows your father’s paternal ancestry. This line consists entirely of men. It traces your father, his father, his father’s father, and so forth back to our shared common paternal ancestor. For genealogists, this clear line means that they can trace two or more descendants of a single man many generations back and compare their Y-DNA results with the expectation of a match. For those interested in deeper ancestry, tracing the modern geographic origins of exact and close matches means that they can discover with great certainty the origins of their own line.

Note that because Y-DNA follows exclusively the direct paternal line, common ancestors between you and your matches on other parts of your pedigree are coincidental."

There's a wealth of information embedded, essentially my paternal DNA traces back to I2 Y-DNA, and the maps and genealogists have that traced back to the origins of mankind. I worked through John Creer who is coordinating the manxdna research, after my results were returned he sent the following email:

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Hi Kelly,

I hope you are well. I am now back from holiday and have had a chance to look at your results in detail.

The good news is that you match closely the other two Corkhill men tested, thus confirming your Manx ancestry and possession of the genetic profile of the Cork(h)ill family.

From your Y-STR values FTDNA predict that you are a member of the larger Haplogroup I2 and possessing the unique genetic marker known as I-P37. This indicates that your early male line ancestors came from the early British Isles. See http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_I2_Y-DNA.shtml

Moreover from closer examination of your results we can see that you can be classified as possessing the unique genetic marker (Y-SNP = single nucleotide polymorphism) I=P37>L161>PF4135>Y12072

We can be confident in this prediction because the Manx Corkills and the Manx Kinley family are closely related and share a common male ancestor on the Isle of Man sometime around 1000-1200AD. One of the Kinley men has been deeply Y-DNA tested, with the Big-Y test and so we can deduce confidently that the Corkills will be genetically identical.

I hope that this is helpful. Thank you again for taking part and please let me know if you have any questions,

Regards

John
John A Creer
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My closest DNA matches per ancestry.com are two Corkhills in the USA, and two Kinleys on the IOM. Of course this is limited to the participants.

I'll post more and pictures as I can, so far one thing that I find is very interesting is that the first leg of I-P37 out of Africa is Sardinia. Sardinia is very close to Sicily which is the only other country IN THE WORLD with a Triskelion on their flag. Coincidence?


This is the migration path of each of my paternal ancestors from Africa.

My (our?) DNA first appears in the pale green line from ADAM heading North East to F (Southern Iran) 45,000 years ago.
Then from F North West to I in Northern Turkey 25,000 years ago.
Then from I to I2a in western Romania 25,000 years ago.
Then from I2a to I1, I2a in the south of what is now Norway and Sweden 25,000 years ago.
(I've drawn a red line in parallel to the migration path in this snippet from the larger image below):

This is the larger map, I'll expand on each below.
This shows the first identified branch (Halogroup F) out of Africa, in what is now Iran 45,000 years ago.
The description:

Haplogroup F: Out of Africa

People followed herds through a stretch of savanna in their second migration Out of Africa. The F-M89 lineage was born during or after this migration and is the parent of most non-African branches. Though most descendant branches belong to major named haplogroups, a few undifferentiated lines remain. These are most common in Western Eurasia.


This show the second identified branch, Halogroup I in Western Eurasia (now Northern Turkey) 25,000 years ago:

The description:

Haplogroup I: Western Eurasia

I-M170 originated in Western Eurasia. During the last ice age when glaciers covered much of Europe, members retreated to pockets of habitable land (refugia).


This shows the next measurement, Haplogroup I2a in Southern Europe (now Western Romania) 25,000 years ago:

The description:

Haplogroup I2a: Southern Europe

At the end of the ice age, members of the I-P37.2 branch spread north into Eastern Europe and west along the Mediterranean. One of the I-P37.2 branches may have been the first to settle Sardinia.


This shows the final measurement, Haplogroup I1, I2b in Scandinavia (now Norway, Sweden) 25,000 years ago:

The description:

Haplogroup I1, I2b: Scandinavia

I-M253 and I-P218 helped repopulate Europe after the last ice age. Some spread to Western Europe and have high frequencies in Scandinavia.


From that point on our ancestors took many different routes. This next image shows the current distribution of Haplogroup I around the world:

And this expands to the distribution in Europe of each haplogroup. Haplogroup I is 15.85% of Europe, with Haplogroup R being the majority at greater than 45%. Haplogroup I has it's largest percentage worldwide in Europe which firmly establishes our ancestry in Europe:

This next graphic shows the measurement points and lines:

My understanding is our placement is shown here, with the last path ending in the British Isles:

There's a lot more data from both ancestry and manxdna available at their web sites, if you've managed to get this far, my takeaways are:

  • Our ancestors were one of the first settlers in Europe.
  • The first appearances in Europe out of Africa were on the islands off Italy; Sardinia and perhaps Sicily.
  • As weather drove them they were early residents of what is now Norway and Sweden 25,000 years ago.
  • Our ancestors were on the Isle of Man back in the years 1000-1200AD.
  • I believe it's safe to say we have Viking ancestors, we certainly share ancestors with Vikings (who settled on the IOM in the late 800s).
I welcome any discussion about this, I am in no way an expert on understanding or interpreting DNA results. I've only read a few books and paid for a couple of DNA tests. If you have any suggestions or questions please don't hesitate to ask. I believe the experts will say that this is not yet a complete science, the more data (DNA tests) they have the better, and of course they use any DNA results they can acquire from archeological digs to reinforce. So if you're interested I would encourage you to have your own DNA tests done and add to the data. As mankind evolves and inter-marries this information becomes more differentiated and diluted every year so the more they capture now the more information they have to add to the total.

My certificate for having the ancestry DNA done:


I DO find it interesting to compare the Sicilian Flag with the Manx Flag:

Histories I've seen have drawn a comparison of the two, as those are the only flags in the world that use a Triskelion logo. Knowing now that we have shared ancestral migration paths that went through at least Sardinia (an island neighbor of Sicily, located at the tip of the toe of Italy) certainly adds credence to a shared history of the icon. One notable difference is that the IOM Triskellion is rotated - I've read that the reason for that is that the Manx "bend a knee to no one"!


Note: All of this is subject to change. As more DNA samples are tested, as archeological digs uncover new date-able DNA samples. I will try to update this if any new information is acquired.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Cell phone Technology

Pam and I are going to be selling our house soon, towards that we have to collect everything and either store it, sell it or dispose of it. We elected to stage our house so we're putting a lot in storage.

Along the line we've come across multiple caches of old cell phones the 6 of us went through over the last few years. This I'm guessing is about half of what we went through in the last 8-10 years. Amazing variety, most of these with proprietary chargers.

Some of these are androids, I suspect most of them have proprietary operating systems, some of which were decent, others simply bad, none compare to the devices we have now.

One notable exception from this picture are the iPhones we switched to 3 years ago, I've gone from a iPhone 4 to a 5, so glad I made the switch. Why aren't they here? While most of this is junk, we actually sold some of the used Apple gear, others are stored away for emergency backup. I know that some of these still have value in other markets so we're donating them to a technology recycler.

I sadly don't have my first cell phone, which was a Motorola Bag phone.

At least I never had one of these, I know two people that did!

Friday, August 29, 2014

Isle of Man in June 2014

I had the great fortune to be able to visit the Isle of Man, I'll try to add some pictures and information as work allows, I plan now on going back in a couple of years.

We had magnificent weather during our visit, sunny warm and very pleasant winds. People were at the beach every day, and we saw a lot of sunburned skin, which to me was clear indication of how unusually lucky we were.


A Corkill Removals van - moving company on the Isle of Man. We also saw a Corkill Heating and Air company van.


The "Tower of Refuge" in Douglas Harbor, fascinating scene as we rode in on the ferry (although this picture was from land).


A closer view of the castle at high tide.
The Castle was made as refuge for shipwreck survivors in 1832 by Sir William Hillary who helped to found the Royal National Lifeboat Association, which is still prominent on the island.


We definitely had a Bushy's, brewed on the IOM. One of two breweries, Bushy's and O'Kells(!).

I also had a fascinating Guinness with a gentleman in the Falcon Nest Hotel in Port Erin, who pointed out that Corkill is a very common name on the Isle of Man, almost like a Jones in the USA. He pointed out the page and a half of listings for Corkills in the IOM phone book (yes one phone book for the entire country!).

We also had an interesting discussion about the history of the surname, his belief was that it was related to a church, "kill" in Manx Gaellic translating to "Church". Since "Cor" translates to "English", he thought that our surname was derived from a "place name" which tied our ancestry to an "English Church":

This Manx to English translation site seems to corroborate that:
http://www.mannin.info/MHF/dict/dictsource.php?s=cor
cor adj, "english":"
http://www.mannin.info/MHF/dict/dictsource.php?s=kill
kill noun, a church.

Fascinating. I would be interested to hear others thoughts on that.

I will add more postings as I can, Pam and I took hundreds of pictures! We spent some time on the entire island, not a long enough stay. If you have interest you really should go.

I've posted more photos in an album on facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/kelly.corkill/photos_albums

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Sailing on the Banana River - Cocoa Beach.

Finally got a shot of me in the SSIOM with the trampolines in place. Pam and her sister Cindy and I went out today, I dropped them off after a couple of hours then chased some wind. Great day for sailing, wind at 10-15MPH with gusts to 20.

 
 

 

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Boulder Flatirons in the winter

There are several iconic shots of Boulder, one of them is a shot of the Flatirons (eastern face of the Rockies) either in early morning light with blue skys behind, or with a light snow cover (also with blue skies behind). On my way to the office Thursday I had to stop and take this shot.

I do like living by the mountains, they give us perspective.

Tomorrow is the 2014 Super Bowl, Denver Broncos versus the Seattle Seahawks. Brain versus brawn, I'm voting for the brain - Peyton Manning and the Broncos!

 

Boulder snow

Boulder's earning its' reputation today. We have about 5-6" on the ground, 2" overnight. The next 7 days should add another 6-7" if you believe the forecasters. Current temperature is 27 degrees. The Super Bowl is tomorrow with Peyton Manning and the Broncos in New Jersey, will be a good day to sit by the fireplace and watch the game.

 

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Cocoa Beach

Well now I've gone and done it. With my work taking me back and forth to Florida and the property values there being so depressed, I decided to purchase a condo. As a place to live when working in Florida and as an investment.

I add this as I'm sitting in my house in Boulder with 6" of snow and growing with temps dropping to negative numbers tonight, and Cocoa Beach at a high of 82 tomorrow.

Tomorrow Pam and I fly to Chicago to visit family for the weekend. Would much rather have the weather in C.B. this weekend!