Findmypast adds European and Latin American Collections

https://blog.findmypast.com/europe-2637162101.html

Quoting from the Findmypast.com blog entitled, "Over 100 Million New European Records Now Online:"

Over 114 million new European births, baptisms, marriages, banns, deaths and burials are now available to search and explore on Findmypast. The new additions consist of transcripts sourced from the International Genealogical Index, a database compiled from a variety of sources from around the world. The span nearly five centuries (1502 to 1960) of history and cover 20 European nations, including: 

The Netherlands
Austria
Ukraine
Belgium
Spain
Sweden
Russia
Germany
Italy
Norway
Hungary
Czech Republic
Switzerland
Portugal
Luxembourg
Iceland
Lichtenstein
Finland
Denmark
Gibraltar 

The release marks the latest step in our efforts to provide more opportunities for discovery around the world. Since January 2019, over 67 million records from Central America have been added to our collections and a further 20 million + records from South America, Asia and the Middle East will be added to the site in the near future.

This marks a substantial addition to the greater genealogical community. Findmypast.com is well known for its huge collection of records from the British Islands and these new records indicate that they are decisively moving growing their international presence. Findmypast.com has over 9 billion records and over 1 billion of these are not available anywhere else online. 

3rd Annual Conference of the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage

https://sdusmp.org/New2/2019-annual-conference/

Quoting from the website of the Sons and Daughters of The Middle Passage,

The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of people from Africa were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade. “The triangular trade system was so named because of the route it took.  The ships embarked from European ports, and stopped in Africa to gather captives.  After this, they set out for the “New World” (North America, South America, and the Caribbean) to deliver their kidnapped victims, and then returned to the point of origin. The transport conditions were horrendous and millions of enslaved people died on these voyages.  

Here is a short explanation of the mission of the organization:

Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage (SDUSMP) is a lineage society dedicated to the memory of our freed and enslaved ancestors and to the education and historic preservation of the artifacts and landmarks of slavery in the United States of America and its economic, psychological, and cultural impact on today’s society. Lest we forget.  SDUSMP is a non-profit, charitable 501(c)3 organization. 

This year's conference is part of the 400 Year Commemoration (1619-2019) of the first Africans arriving to British Colonial America. You only have a short time left to get the Early Bird pricing. Here is the information about the cost of the tickets.

Our theme for 2019 is the 400-year commemoration of the first documented arrival of Africans in British Colonial America. For more information about the conference, please see our website. The conference is co-sponsored by the New Jersey Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society. Early Bird Pricing will be available until May 20, 2019. Hotel discounts extended to May 14, 2019. Buy tickets here. Ticket prices start at only $50.00. Use code LEGACY2019 for a $2.00 discount. AAGHS members use AAHGS2019 and Sons & Daughters members use SDUSMP2019 (subject to verification).

You can click on any one of the links to find out more information.

http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07eg9avhuc1ae4f1be&llr=dynbje9ab

The History of the Development of Genealogical DNA: Part Six: What do You Need to Know?

Once we, as genealogists, start getting into the nitty-gritty of understanding genealogical DNA testing and learning about its history and development, the question arises about how much of the technical, detailed scientific side of DNA testing do we really need to know to do genealogical research. Notwithstanding the fact that every class or presentation I have seen included some level of an explanation of these details. For example, I presently have well over a thousand DNA match results from Ancestry.com and 8,151 DNA matches from MyHeritage.com. None of the close matches are surprising or helpful. What do I do with close to 10,000 DNA matches? How will knowing the scientific details of genetics help me?

Many of those who are teaching genealogists about DNA seem duty-bound to explain some level of DNA. After studying the history of genetics and reading everything from the comic book version to textbooks on the discovery and development of DNA, I am still wondering how much of what I have learned actually helps me do genealogy. Well, I have decided that more history won't hurt. So here I go with the development of genetics in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

Unfortunately, at the beginning of the 20th Century, the big deal was the eugenics movement. I have already written about this movement but it is part of the story that needs to be repeated. Here is a quote from the DNA-Worldwide.com timeline in an article entitled "1900s - The Eugenics Movement."

This was an immensely popular movement in the first quarter of the 20th century and was presented as a mathematical science, which could predict the traits and characteristics of human beings. 

The darker side of the movement arose when researchers became interested in controlling the breeding of human beings, so that only the people with the best genes could reproduce and improve the species. It was often used as a sort of 'scientific' racism, to convince people that certain 'racial stock' was superior to others in terms of cleanliness, intelligence etc. It shows the dangers that come with practicing science without a true respect for humanity as a whole. 

Many people could see that the discipline was riddled with inaccuracies, assumptions and inconsistencies, as well as encouraging discrimination and racial hatred. However, in 1924 it gained political backing when the Immigration Act was passed by a majority in the U.S. House and Senate. The Act introduced strict quotas on immigration from countries believed by eugenicists to have 'inferior' stock such as Southern Europe and Asia. When political gain and convenient science combine forces we are left even further from truth and a society that respects those within in. This is not too dissimilar from the tobacco industries of the 80’s and the sugar industries of the current decade.

The horrific culmination of this movement was the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis before and during World War II. Remnants of the movement still survive to this day.

It is convenient that the science of genetics began to develop right after the turn of the century. Archibald Edward Garrod, a physician in England, was the first person to connect a human disorder with Mendel's Laws of Inheritance. His findings published in 1902 were the first to attribute a biochemical basis for the part genes played in inheritance. Here is a citation to a republication of his article.

Garrod, A E. “The incidence of alkaptonuria: a study in chemical individuality. 1902.” Molecular medicine (Cambridge, Mass.) vol. 2,3 (1996): 274-82.

Progress continued during the early part of the Century as shown by the quote from Wikipedia: History of genetics.

In 1910, Thomas Hunt Morgan showed that genes reside on specific chromosomes. He later showed that genes occupy specific locations on the chromosome. With this knowledge, Morgan and his students began the first chromosomal map of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In 1928, Frederick Griffith showed that genes could be transferred. In what is now known as Griffith's experiment, injections into a mouse of a deadly strain of bacteria that had been heat-killed transferred genetic information to a safe strain of the same bacteria, killing the mouse.

It was not until 1944 that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was identified as the substance responsible for the genes transforming ability rather than a protein. This discovery was made by Oswald T. Avery (1877-1955), Maclyn McCarty (1911- 2005) and Colin MacLeod (1909-1972). As with many great scientific discoveries, the involvement of DNA in genes was not readily accepted by the scientific community. The discovery of the helical form of DNA was one important factor in the acceptance of DNA as the basis for inheritance. This discovery of the helical nature of the DNA molecules is the real beginning of what we know about DNA today. The double helix structure of DNA was made possible by using X-ray diffraction microscopes and the mathematics of helix transformation was first published by Francis Crick and James D. Watson. Here is the citation to their publication:

Watson, James D., and Francis Crick. 1953. "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid". Nature. 171 (4356): 737-738.

The modern study of genetics at the level of DNA is known as molecular genetics. See Wikipedia: History of genetics. From the use of X-ray diffraction in the discovery of DNA, we can see that there is a parallel development of electronic technology and advances in molecular genetics. In 1972, Walter Fiers and his team at the University of Ghent were the first to determine the sequence of a gene: the gene for bacteriophage MS2 coat protein.

Gene sequencing is the process of determining the order of nucleic acid residues in biological samples. Here is where we get into the process of understanding the significance of all those strings of the letters ATGC associated with the present-day complex work being done with entire genome sequencing. Here is a good short summary from Wikipedia: Human genome. (By the way, I use Wikipedia for a very simple reason: it is a safe way to avoid claims of copyright infringement).

The human genome is the complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as DNA within the 23 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria. These are usually treated separately as the nuclear genome, and the mitochondrial genome. Human genomes include both protein-coding DNA genes and noncoding DNA. Haploid human genomes, which are contained in germ cells (the egg and sperm gamete cells created in the meiosis phase of sexual reproduction before fertilization creates a zygote) consist of three billion DNA base pairs, while diploid genomes (found in somatic cells) have twice the DNA content. While there are significant differences among the genomes of human individuals (on the order of 0.1%), these are considerably smaller than the differences between humans and their closest living relatives, the chimpanzees (approximately 4%) and bonobos. 

The first human genome sequences were published in nearly complete draft form in February 2001 by the Human Genome Project and Celera Corporation. Completion of the Human Genome Project Sequence was published in 2004. The human genome was the first of all vertebrates to be completely sequenced. As of 2012, thousands of human genomes have been completely sequenced, and many more have been mapped at lower levels of resolution. This data is used worldwide in biomedical science, anthropology, forensics and other branches of science. There is a widely held expectation that genomic studies will lead to advances in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and to new insights in many fields of biology, including human evolution.

None of this would have been possible without high-speed computers with massive amounts of memory. Here is a graphical representation of the idealized human diploid karyotype, showing the organization of the genome into chromosomes. This drawing shows both the female (XX) and male (XY) versions of the 23rd chromosome pair. Chromosomes are shown aligned at their centromeres. The mitochondrial DNA is not shown.

By Courtesy: National Human Genome Research Institute - Modified from Human Genome ProjectFrom en: with same file name, contributor: en:User:TedE, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=889311

What parts of all this are presently being used for genealogical purposes? Why do we have to keep repeating all of this scientific jargon that seems to get more and more impenetrable as time goes on? Again, how does all this help me sort out thousands of potential relatives?

Stay tuned, this isn't over yet.

See these previous posts:

Part One: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-history-of-development-of.html
Part Two: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of.html
Part Three: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of_5.html
Part Four: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of_7.html
Part Five: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of_10.html

Getting the Rest of the Gold out of the Google Goldmine for Genealogists Part One

My most popular video has always been "Using the Google Goldmine for Genealogy." In that video, I talked about several of the Google apps that are helpful to genealogists. But that video was published back in 2016 and I have continued to develop and use more Google apps and added in quite a few from Google's Chrome browser. So it is time to update both the list of beneficial and free apps, but also add another video with the additional golden benefits from Google.

The "Using the Google Goldmine for Genealogy" video is hosted on the Brigham Young University Family History Library YouTube Channel where we have continued to add videos. At the time of this post, there are 427 videos posted. That number continues to increase every week. But in addition to the posting my videos on the BYU Family History Library YouTube Channel, I have reactivated my own YouTube Channel. I am also helping to produce the Show Me videos for The Family History Guide.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4cT2_EjTMVVJgaF5Gdwl1Q?view_as=subscriber

I am just getting started posting videos on my own channel, but I would appreciate any views on that Channel and if you like, you can subscribe. 

OK, so here we are in 2019 and I am going to update and add to the Google Goldmine for Genealogists. 

In the 2016 video, I highlighted the following Google apps:

• Google Books
• Google Play
• Google Image Search
• YouTube
• Google Scholar
• Google+
• Google Translate
• Blogger and Blog Search
• Google Maps
• Google Earth

I also mentioned Wikipedia which is not owned or operated by Google. Since I made that original 2016 video, Google+ has been discontinued by Google. 

But there are still more apps from Google that turn out to be tremendously helpful to genealogists and practically everyone else. One important area that I did not mention in the first video is the entire world of Chrome and Chrome extensions. So here is the new list:

• Google Help
• Google Search
• Google Newspapers Archive
• Google Drive
• Google Docs including Sheets, Slides, Forms, Draw and more
• Google Keep
• Google Trips
• Chrome Web Store
• Chrome Extensions

One thing you do need to know about Google is the G Suite, the paywall version of the Google apps for businesses. Many of the advanced Google apps and features are only available for this version. There is a free version for non-profit corporations, but otherwise, the features are available on a fee per user basis. 

This is Part One to a series on each of these apps. By the way, there are hundreds of Chrome extensions and I will only highlight a very few. Stay tuned. 

The History of the Development of Genealogical DNA: Part Five: Discovering the Gene

From ancient times, familial resemblance and hybridization have been the basis for speculation concerning the method of transmission of the information from a parent organism to its child. Aristotle realized that there had to be some method of transferring the traits (information) from the parent but he assumed, as did all those who followed him, that the transmission occurred due to nutrient substances that targeted different parts of the body and were diverted to a reproductive path. This Aristotelian theory is often referred to as "spontaneous generation" and was taught and accepted well into the 19th Century.

By Chiswick Chap - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55504461

A response to this theory that attempted to reconcile religious beliefs about the creation with the slowly developing science, held that all of the individual humans since the creation were alive as an almost infinite number of tiny homunculi in the sperm, like an infinite series of Russian dolls. With this view, every newly born child was a special creation dating back to Adam. See Wikipedia: Homunculus. The homunculus theory also made the assumption that humans were unique in their method of transmitting information from generation to generation.

The idea that physical traits could be altered by selection was ingrained in the world's cultures. For example, there is the story in the Bible of Jacob and sheep in Genesis 30:25-43. The fact that we eat corn on the cob is also an example of selective breeding or artificial selection as opposed to "natural" selection.

Even Darwin and his contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace who also elaborated on the concept of natural selection, were unable to contribute much in the way of an explanation about how physical traits were transferred or the mechanism of transfer from one generation to another. The causative factor in initiating the changes or natural selection was an idea developed originally by the ancient Greeks and is usually identified by the phrase "survival of the fittest." Darwin got the mechanism for transmittal wrong. His theory was that the changes were made through a process called "pangenesis." Here is a short explanation from Britannica.com, "What Darwin Got Right (and Wrong) About Evolution."

According to Darwin’s pangenesis, however, “gemmules” were the seeds of cells, supplied by each parent during conception. Gemmules were produced by all the organs and other structures in the body of each parent. The gemmules from the mother and the father would mix with one another in the fertilized egg. If there were enough of these seed cells and if they developed in the proper way, the offspring would be healthy and viable. Birth defects, such as an underdeveloped organ, resulted either from a lack of gemmules provided by that same organ in the parents’ bodies or from a linkup between the wrong gemmules to build that organ. Darwin also posited that children bore a stronger resemblance to one parent than to the other because the gemmules coming from one parent may be stronger, better adapted, or more numerous than those coming from the other parent.

Gregor Mendel's observations put him on the right track, but his findings were universally ignored for many years. His observations and those of subsequent researchers mandated a more sophisticated view of the mechanism for the transmission of inherited traits initiated with the re-discovery of Mendel's work in 1900. Discoveries and modifications of what was known as genetics began to appear almost constantly and accelerated in step with the advent of generally available computer technology.

 At this juncture, from the standpoint of a genealogist rather than a microbiologist or geneticist, I need to confront the issue of the complex technical scientific structure of genetics and its relationship to the genealogical DNA experience. I am not particularly interested in becoming a geneticist so the question arises about exactly how much do I need to know about genetics to use DNA testing for genealogical research?

When I think about an answer to this question, I think about my recent driving trips across the United States. We drove a total of about 10,000 miles from Utah back and forth and while living on the East Coast. During that entire time, not once did I have to worry about how my car operated. As a matter of fact, I do know a considerable amount about the workings of internal combustion engines and have spent a great deal of time replacing parts etc. But what did I really need to know about my car while I was driving across the country? How to put in gas. When to get the oil changed and tires checked. The most complicated thing I did on the trip was to have a battery replaced, change two air filters and replace the windshield wipers. Oh, I also got the car washed.

What does this have to do with genealogy and DNA? What do I need to know about DNA to use it for genealogical research? Hmm, I just repeated my question. Maybe the answer is really in the question. I think the answer is not a whole lot. All the parts of DNA testing that have to do with genes, X chromosomes, Y chromosomes, mitochondria, and so forth are in the category of nice to know.  The DNA testing companies provide me with the information I need to do my research. When I have my own research in a family tree and the companies give me a list of people I am "related" to, it is entirely up to me as to how I go about using that data. But you are essentially telling me that I have to know how to overhaul an engine to drive across the country to tell me I have to be a geneticist to do genealogical research.

I am not through with what we do need to know. One thing that the history of genetics helps all of us to understand is that humans are all humans. We all belong to the same species. The fact that we can demonstrate genealogical relationships with DNA tests should indicate that we all share the same DNA. So what do we need to know? I will presently try to answer that question as I continue this series.

See these previous posts:

Part One: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-history-of-development-of.html
Part Two: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of.html
Part Three: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of_5.html
Part Four: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of_7.html

The History of the Development of Genealogical DNA: Part Four: The Dark Side

When I was in graduate school studying linguistics at the University of Utah, our Linguistics Department was part of the Anthropology Department. More recently, linguistics has become a separate department in the College of Humanities. We had just started studying some of the languages spoken in Africa and were impressed by their complexity and especially by their phonology. At the same time, I was working on an extensive National Science Foundation project helping to compile an English/Shoshone, Shoshone/English dictionary.

During that time period, the Anthropology Department hired a new assistant (then called a secretary). Some of us got to talking to her and started explaining what we were doing and studying. She was amazed, She happened to be from South Africa and could not believe that we would study a "native" language since everyone knew that they were primitive people and had only a few words in their vocabulary. Honestly, she did not know that all the people surrounding her in Africa had any "language" abilities. She did not last a week in her new job.

Our world society is saturated with concepts such as primitive, backward, and other such ideas that classify people based on ignorance and prejudice. As a linguist, I learned that all human languages (ALL) have the same degree of complexity. There are no "primitive" languages and as I have now spent the last few years studying genetics, I now know that there are no "primitive" people. Distinctions, when they are commonly made, are based on levels of material culture.

This concept of some cultures and some people as "inferior" has pervaded our world culture as interracial warfare. Genetics took a dark turn in the late 1800s due to the efforts of what is called the "eugenics movement." The idea of selective breeding dates back to ancient times. Eugenics is described as follows from Wikipedia: Eugenics.

Eugenics (/juːˈdʒɛnɪks/; from Greek εὐγενής eugenes 'well-born' from εὖ eu, 'good, well' and γένος genos, 'race, stock, kin') is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population by excluding (through a variety of morally criticized means) certain genetic groups judged to be inferior, and promoting other genetic groups judged to be superior. The definition of eugenics has been a matter of debate since the term was coined by Francis Galton in 1883. The concept predates the term; Plato suggested applying the principles of selective breeding to humans around 400 BCE.

Eugenic policies spread across the world including the United States. Here is a further description of the effects of the eugenics policies from the same Wikipedia article.

Such programs included both positive measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly "fit" to reproduce, and negative measures, such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction. Those deemed "unfit to reproduce" often included people with mental or physical disabilities, people who scored in the low ranges on different IQ tests, criminals and "deviants," and members of disfavored minority groups. 

Being actively involved in teaching genealogy, I come into frequent contact with the attitudes and issues associated with eugenic concepts and the beliefs that members of one "racial" group are superior to others. In the past week, I heard an account of a person who obtained a DNA test that indicated that she had "African" ancestry. The account was that she was devasted and appalled. Racial prejudice has become a national issue around the world and despite the spread of DNA testing, there are still active efforts to promote racial purity at the expense of out-of-favor minorities.

Rather than entirely disappearing, eugenics has simply become more possible through gene selection and genome editing. Although we would like to ignore these negative aspects of genetics, they do exist and the widespread availability of DNA testing for "genealogical" purposes may end up over time with some unintended and undesirable consequences.

See these previous posts:

Part One: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-history-of-development-of.html
Part Two: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of.html
Part Three: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of_5.html

The History of the Development of Genealogical DNA: Part Three: Early Views

By Margaret A. McIntyre - "The cave boy of the age of stone"[1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2897126

Almost everything you think you know and everything you may have seen depicted in movies, books, or other media about "cavemen" is totally wrong. Quoting from the following book:

Reich, David. 2019. Who we are and how we got here: ancient DNA and the new science of the human past, (ebook).

The study of the human past-- as of art, music, literature, or cosmology -- is vital because it makes us aware of aspects of our common condition that are profoundly important and that we heretofore never imagined.

I think another quote from David Reich in the same book talks about our ancestry that is also important for us, as genealogists, to understand.  Here is the quote:

The problem is not just that people have mixed with their neighbors, blurring the genetic signatures of past events. It is actually far more difficult, in that we now know, from ancient DNA, that the people who live in a particular place today almost never exclusively descend from the people who lived in the same place far in the past. Under the circumstances, the power of any study that attempts to reconstruct past population movements from present-day populations is limited.

The past is far more complex than any of the simplistic, unfounded conclusions that we may draw from our limited knowledge of the initial conditions of our human existence. Whatever we know now about human genetics will undoubtedly be looked upon by our descendants as just as foolish and misguided as our views of medicine and genetics dating back to Aristotle and as continued to be practiced and believed well into the 20th Century and even into the 21st Century.

One more quote from David Reich:

Today, many people assume that humans can be grouped biologically into "primeval" groups, corresponding to our notion of "races," whose origins are populations that separated tens of thousands of years ago. But this long-held view about "race" has just in the last few years been proven wrong -- and the critique of concepts of race that the new data provided is very different from the classic one that has been developed by anthropologists over the last hundred years. 

It is quite common among those that I frequently come in contact with to hear stories from those who are taking DNA tests about the "racial" surprises they are encountering. These discoveries, including the ones alluded to by the quote above, challenge all of our concepts of race and dismiss out of hand any claims to "racial superiority."

Up until the mid-1800s, the concepts associated with inheritance relied heavily on environmental factors as the cause of genetic changes. Charles Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, published in 1859. although clearly relying on the idea of inherited traits is devoid of any mention, other than external forces, of the terms "gene" or "genetics" The mechanism for the changes noted by Darwin began to be explored by Gegor Mendel between 1856 and 1863. His paper, "Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden" ("Experiments on Plant Hybridization"), was first presented at two meetings of the Natural History Society of Brno in Moravia on 8 February and 8 March 1865 and then after publication in 1866 in the Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brünn was ignored and forgotten. See Wikipedia: Gegor Mendel.

Chromosomes were not discovered until 1882 by the German biologist, Walther Flemming. Here is a quote from the DNA Learning Center: Walther Flemming about him and his discovery:

Walther Flemming was born in Sachsenberg, Mecklenburg, now in Germany. He was a military physician during the Franco-Prussian War. Flemming held positions at the University of Prague (1873-76), and at the University of Kiel (1876-1901). 

Flemming was one of the first to devote his time to cytology, the study of chromosomes. Cell division had been described as early as 1842 by Carl Nageli, who thought it was an anomalous event. Flemming was the first to detail the chromosomal movements in the process of mitosis. In 1879, Flemming used aniline dyes, a by-product of coal tar, to stain cells of salamander embryos. He was able to visualize the threadlike material as the cells divide. He described the whole process in his book Zell-substanz, Kern und Zelltheilung (Cell-Substance, Nucleus, and Cell-Division), which was published in 1882. 

Here is the citation to his book.

Flemming, Walther. 1882. Zellsubstanz, Kern und Zelltheilung mit 24 Textbildern und 8 Tafeln. Leipzig: Vogel.

The word "gene" was not coined until 1905 by the Danish scientist Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen (1857-1927).  See Etymonline.com/word/gene.

Is it any wonder that what we presently know about the subject of genetics and particularly DNA testing should be considered to be only the barest of beginnings about the complexity of these subjects?

In about 1900, Mendel's forgotten work was "rediscovered. Here is a quote from the National Human Genome Research Institute, 1900: Rediscovery of Mendel's Work.

Three botanists - Hugo DeVries, Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak - independently rediscovered Mendel's work in the same year, a generation after Mendel published his papers. They helped expand awareness of the Mendelian laws of inheritance in the scientific world. 

The three Europeans, unknown to each other, were working on different plant hybrids when they each worked out the laws of inheritance. When they reviewed the literature before publishing their own results, they were startled to find Mendel's old papers spelling out those laws in detail. Each man announced Mendel's discoveries and his own work as confirmation of them. 

By 1900, cells and chromosomes were sufficiently understood to give Mendel's abstract ideas a physical context.

Two years later, in 1902, Archibald Garrod observed that the disease alkaptonuria was inherited according to the rules set forth by Mendel. See the following:

Garrod, A. E. The incidence of alkaptonuria: a study in chemical individuality. Lancet, II:1616-1620. 1902.

One of the main limitations on the rapid advancement of understanding genetics was the physical limitations of the test equipment available at the time and the lack of computers to tabulate and help explain the processes involved. Rapid advances did not begin until the advent of computers and highly sophisticated testing procedures and equipment in the 1990s.

To be continued, of course.

See these previous posts:

Part One: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-history-of-development-of.html
Part Two: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-history-of-development-of.html