Genealogy and Population Genetics

Absolutely fascinating ! Try to locate name relatives of you in Germany, or Austria using the link given below ! (Consider, there are absolute and relative results.) Of course, our names bear a reasonable fraction of pure genetics in them and I am very interested in the assessment of the these true biological relationships in addition to genealogy alone.

A whole bunch of researchers worldwide have dedicated almost their lives to this challenge. Brian Sykes – as one of them – has also described the genetic assessment of relationships by means of mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA-typing in his worth reading books “The Seven Daughters of Eve” and “Adam´s Curse – A Future Without Men ?”. In Innsbruck, funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences my Institute in collaboration with the Institute of Legal Medicine of the Innsbruck Medical University and others are also going to analyse Tyrolean migration based on population genetics (http://www.tirol-studie.at/).

With respect to the occurrence of the name “Gassner” in Austria, it is well imagineable that they were actually originating from the Swiss Kanton of Wallis. Lots more of details might be found here: http://www.gassner-ahnenforschung.de. Probably, I will also collect more informations hiking through the mountains in the border region in between Austria and Switzerland set for this August.