Israel Pickholz wrote:

"There is obviously something that I misunderstand about haplogroups.

There are two of us blessed with the Pickholtz surname in R-M269 who
have a perfect match for 37 markers.

A third Pickholz is also R-M269, but he does not match us at all in
twelve. I assume that if he upgrades to 37 markers, we will likely get
a match of some sort.

But that third Pickholz is a perfect Y-12 match to a fourth Pickholtz
whose haplogroup is R-P25. Shouldn't the fact that they are in different
haplogroups preclude the possibility of their being a good match at any
level?"

When FTDNA reports no match at 12 markers, it means that there was not a
perfect match of all twelve markers, and there was no 11 marker match.
Anything less, for example 10 matching markers, is reported as "no match".

In the tree of Haplogroup R, the P25 mutation is three mutations away >from
the root of the tree. P25 is also known as R1b1. M269 is two mutations
further down the same branch, also known as R1b1a2. So the M269 group is
a subset of the P25 group, identified by a couple of more recent mutations.

I suspect that the designation of subgroups isn't always perfectly reliable.
If a marker has mutated one way, there may be some chance that it will
mutate back to an "older" value, taking its owner back toward the root of
the tree.


You might want to read this - http://www.familytreedna.com/public/r1b/
And this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_%28Y-DNA%29

Elan Caspi
Belmont, CA