Hello all,
I have followed this thread with some interest and wish to contribute a few thoughts.
First, however, I should mention that I have retired from the Admin business, and would encourage anyone with an interest in British Isles ancestry and a taste for challenges to consider joining Belinda in keeping the BIBC ship afloat. My chief reason for walking away from this sinecure was the unresponsiveness (i.e., total lack of response or acknowledgment) of FTDNA to attempts to propose refinements to the Discover tool.
That said, the original aim of the project, founded when 12 STR markers were the norm and you could write all the haplogroup names, in long form, on a single sheet of paper, was to enable persons seeking British Isles ancestry to narrow their paper search to counties where their haplogroups predominated by mapping haplogroups to counties. Hence the project name: British Isles by County.
Fast forward almost 20 years to the Discover era, and mapping is still the name of the game, although now the time threshold has been pushed back and we focus on prehistoric migrations rather than Atlantic crossings. To complicate matters, archaeogenetics has surged into the spotlight, and grows at an exponential rate.
Yet it seems apparent, at least from my limited experience, that Discover, or specifically Globetrekker, has not yet leveraged ancient DNA to full advantage, even though the designers claim to have incorporated 2000 samples into the algorithms.
I have prepared notes on a possible approach to improving the effectiveness of migration maps by incorporating ancient autosomal DNA into the calculations. It may be helpful to adopt ancient DNA sample sites as anchor points.
I invite your comments: <>
Cheers, Roy
