Ancestry.com DNA version 10

[Roman Collector]

I got an e-mail from Ancestry.com that my DNA ethnicity estimate had been updated. This is now version 10. I'm pretty sure that each of my ancestors tried to kill each other at some point.

Post your results if you feel comfortable sharing them.

[CPK]

Interesting! What do the different colors represent?

[Roman Collector]

8 minutes ago, CPK said:

Interesting! What do the different colors represent?

Distinct genetic groups associated with a geographic area. For example, "Northern Italian" is different from "Southern Italian" and "Sicilian."

 

[CPK]

Ah okay. I've never dabbled with Ancestry.com. Personally, I'm 100% American, 😉 but I know my ancestors came mostly from Scotland/Wales, and Czechoslovakia.

 

[Ocatarinetabellatchitchix]

74% France (what a surprise !)

13% England and Northwestern Europe

13% Scotland

 

[Ryro]

[Ryro]

Yeah, when your ancestors are this good looking, they kinda get around😘

[Prieure de Sion]

 

I am a mix of 2/3 east European (sure Rus - Viking 😄 ) and 1/3 West England & Scandinavian Viking...

 

I think... my Ancestors are Scottish and Irish Druids and Celtic Warriors, fighting against Claudius Legions. Later comes the Vikings - my Ancestors fight with Alfred the Great against the Northmens. One day they were captured and were taken to Scandinavia by the Vikings. Then my ancestors went to the Rus Vikings with Ivan the Boneless and Ubba. 

That is certainly how it will have been 😄 

[arizonarobin]

what happens when a Scott runs off with a Scandinavian 😄 44% Norway, Sweden, Denmark and 42% Scotland, Ireland

[Ocatarinetabellatchitchix]

28 minutes ago, arizonarobin said:

what happens when a Scott runs off with a Scandinavian 😄 44% Norway, Sweden, Denmark and 42% Scotland, Ireland

ANSWER: It results in a blond girl with blue eyes ? 🤭

[Deinomenid]

1 hour ago, arizonarobin said:

what happens when a Scott runs off with a Scandinavian

 

At least that's a change  in the order of running off. It used to  be  Scandinavians running off with Scots women.  Icelandic  DNA on the female side  is 2/3rd Scots or  Irish, From "intermarriage." Now there's a  euphemism!

 

98.6% British Isles.

1.3% French or German

Balance "broadly northwestern Europe" here.  According  to 23andme

 

 

 

[DonnaML]

Autosomal DNA results from Ancestry and the other companies are most useful for finding close or distant relatives with greater or lesser degrees of genetic matching. The ethnicity estimates are just that -- estimates -- and, while entertaining, need to be taken with a grain of salt, except for certain highly endogamous and/or localized groups of people. Keep in mind that the estimates aren't based on comparisons of your DNA with DNA taken from the remains of people who lived in specific locations hundreds of years ago. Rather, they're derived from comparisons of your DNA with each company's database of DNA derived from living people who stated that their grandparents and/or more distant ancestors lived in specific locations. And the companies take people's word for it. In reality (speaking about people of recent European origin who don't come from highly endogamous and/or localized ethnic groups), there has been so much migration and intermarrying within Europe over the last couple of thousand years that there are only minor genetic differences, if any, between (for example) "German" and "French" DNA; it's basically impossible to tell from DNA, except very generally, precisely where in Europe your ancestors may have lived.

That said, I belong to a group (Ashkenazi Jews) that, although hardly localized, was very highly endogamous for a period of well over 1,000 years, from the first millennium until the 20th century, except for occasional admixture with Sephardic Jews. Not only because of religious strictures against intermarriage, but because from not long after the time Christianity became the official religion of the late Roman Empire, and then most of Europe, it was not permitted for Jews to marry Gentiles without converting to Christianity. Thus, the children of such intermarriages were lost to the Ashkenazi gene pool. Taken together with all the forced or coerced conversions to Christianity, not limited to the Iberian peninsula, there are actually far more Gentiles with Ashkenazi (and Sephardic) ancestry than the converse. For example, I've been doing genealogical research about my family for the last 30 years, and know the names of almost 250 direct ancestors back to the 16th century. Every one of them Jewish.  Pretty much all Ashkenazi Jews are related to each other genetically, in multiple ways, within the last 1,000 years (or far less), no matter where in Europe their recent ancestors lived, and even if there's no paper trail showing a relationship within the last several hundred years.

So it's not at all surprising that Ancestry says the following about my genetic history:

"100% Jewish Peoples of Europe

Your community with a connection to this ethnicity region. Your connection to this ethnicity region may come through ancestors from this community.

Ashkenazi Jews in Central & Eastern Europe

Ashkenazi Jews in Central Europe

Ashkenazi Jews in Bohemia"

Note that even this attempt to localize the places in Europe where my Ashkenazi ancestors came from isn't particularly accurate; my most distant known ancestors all come from Western Europe, specifically near the Rhine, and more specifically from the triangle where Southwest Germany, Northwest Switzerland, and Northeast France (Alsace) meet. I have no known ancestors from Bohemia. I do have ancestors from Poland and Lithuania as well as northern/northeastern German lands, so that part is correct. From what I've read, even though "German" and "Eastern European" Ashkenazi Jews largely separated centuries ago, there was enough pre-existing genetic closeness, as well as subsequent migrations and intermarrying, that nobody has succeeded in finding a way to definitively distinguish the two groups genetically.

The other companies to which I've submitted DNA also show 100% Ashkenazi ethnicity, except for one or two which give me a couple of percent Sephardic ancestry. (There was an oral tradition that one branch of my mother's family, who lived in Schlochau in Westpreussen -- now Czluchow in Poland -- at least back to the  mid-1700s, had come from Spain originally.)

[Parthicus]

From my family history, I know that all 4 of my great-grandparents on my mother's side were born in Sicily and emigrated to the United States.  On my father's side, two emigrated from Calabria (the "boot-tip" of Italy) and two were born in the US, 1 of "irish" and the other of "English" ancestry.  (We don't know much about these mysterious Irish and English ancestors.)  And the results of my Ancestry.com testing:

So, 74% Italian and 26% British Isles, which is pretty darn close to the expected 75%-25% (and surely well within any reasonable error bars).  The "Italian" even correctly picked up mostly Southern Italian, including both Sicily and Calabria as likely regions.  For the rest, I show less Irish than expected, and a fair bit of Scottish (the highest non-Italian portion, in fact).  Well, there was quite a bit of movement between Ireland and Scotland, so they're genetically pretty similar, and my supposed "English" ancestor may well have been more Scottish than English- who would ask too closely in America?  So, no big surprises for me, mostly confirmation of what I already knew.

[Steppenfool]

I am 99% british with the smallest dash of Scandanavian. The result didn't lend itself to much investigation. 😂

Edited March 2, 2023 by Steppenfool

[John Conduitt]

On 3/1/2023 at 8:17 PM, DonnaML said:

The ethnicity estimates are just that -- estimates -- and, while entertaining, need to be taken with a grain of salt, except for certain highly endogamous and/or localized groups of people. Keep in mind that the estimates aren't based on comparisons of your DNA with DNA taken from the remains of people who lived in specific locations hundreds of years ago. Rather, they're derived from comparisons of your DNA with each company's database of DNA derived from living people who stated that their grandparents and/or more distant ancestors lived in specific locations. And the companies take people's word for it. In reality (speaking about people of recent European origin who don't come from highly endogamous and/or localized ethnic groups), there has been so much migration and intermarrying within Europe over the last couple of thousand years that there are only minor genetic differences, if any, between (for example) "German" and "French" DNA; it's basically impossible to tell from DNA, except very generally, precisely where in Europe your ancestors may have lived.

This is true, although they're getting better now they have a lot more data. It means any inaccuracies are averaged out, so it doesn't matter if some people made mistakes in what they reported.

I don't know that it's impossible to tell where our ancestors lived, although it can't be hugely accurate. Minor differences in DNA are quite easily detected, so what matters is that Ancestry have identified the correct ethnic group to go with that difference. My ancestry is all English back to the 1600s, with no Europeans at all. But DNA picks up the regions you'd expect it to contain from historical migration - Saxon and Viking in particular. That is despite the fact that they had no Saxons or Vikings contributing to their database. You'd also expect no French, Spanish or Eastern European, as is the case, although I suspect my Scottish might have Scots Irish in it.

When it comes to the very localised groups (with dotted lines), in my case they are accurate, based on my known ancestors. I suspect these are much more recent groupings than 'the Saxons'. In my case they will have a huge number of people on their database with that DNA to compare - it won't work well with groups that have fewer contributors.

[DLTcoins]

Fun with numbers. With each generation going back, the number of direct lines doubles. We each have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, and so on. If we count a generation as 25 years, a baby born today would be the direct descendant of more than 1 million ancestral lines in the 20th generation, around the year 1500. If we go back to the 40th generation, about the year 1000, the number of lines explodes to more than 1 trillion! Yet the total human population in the year 1000 is estimated at less than 400 million... 🤔

Edited March 4, 2023 by DLTcoins

[JAZ Numismatics]

On 3/1/2023 at 3:17 PM, DonnaML said:

...there are actually far more Gentiles with Ashkenazi (and Sephardic) ancestry than the converse.

I resemble that comment! My conjecture is that my ancestors were forcibly converted during the Ukrainian pogroms of the 19th century. The first generation may only have been ostensibly Christian, but by my grandparents' generation, everyone was staunchly Catholic. Either that, or my gentile ancestors were enjoying a bit of canoodling with the Jews.

[Nerosmyfavorite68]

The Lee part of the family is fairly easy to trace back to England (and I think France, if my 25 year old recollection is right about what my grandmother said). I've never been able to find grandmother's genealogy stuff.  The James family claimed ancestry with the train robbers.

 

[DonnaML]

14 hours ago, DLTcoins said:

Fun with numbers. With each generation going back, the number of direct lines doubles. We each have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, and so on. If we count a generation as 25 years, a baby born today would be the direct descendant of more than 1 million ancestral lines in the 20th generation, around the year 1500. If we go back to the 40th generation, about the year 1000, the number of lines explodes to more than 1 trillion! Yet the total human population in the year 1000 is estimated at less than 400 million... 🤔

I'm sure you're aware of the simple explanation: massive numbers of people marrying cousins, whether close or distant, known or unknown. An example from my own maternal grandfather's family, where first cousin marriages between people living in rural areas of northeast Prussia (such as Pomerania) were extremely common in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the pool of potential Jewish marriage partners in the region was quite small: several of my grandfather's first cousins had only 6 different individuals as great-great-grandparents, instead of the full number of 16, as a result of first cousin marriages in several successive generations. Once most of my grandfather's family moved from rural Pomerania to Berlin in the 1870s, the first cousin marriages pretty much came to an end, because all of a sudden there were thousands of marriage partners to choose from.

[DLTcoins]

1 hour ago, DonnaML said:

I'm sure you're aware of the simple explanation: massive numbers of people marrying cousins, whether close or distant, known or unknown. An example from my own maternal grandfather's family, where first cousin marriages between people living in rural areas of northeast Prussia (such as Pomerania) were extremely common in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the pool of potential Jewish marriage partners in the region was quite small: several of my grandfather's first cousins had only 6 different individuals as great-great-grandparents, instead of the full number of 16, as a result of first cousin marriages in several successive generations. Once most of my grandfather's family moved from rural Pomerania to Berlin in the 1870s, the first cousin marriages pretty much came to an end, because all of a sudden there were thousands of marriage partners to choose from.

Yes, of course. I was having fun. For better or worse, each of us is our own cousin many times over!

[Ancient Coin Hunter]

According to 23and me's first analysis:

65% British Isles

10% German and French

10% Scandinavian

10% Eastern European

4% Southern European

1% North Africa or Middle East, most likely an ancestor who lived before 1600 C.E.

Also, I had more Neanderthal DNA than 85% of respondents, which might explain alot. 😸

Edited March 6, 2023 by Ancient Coin Hunter

[Redaz]

Matches up my paper trial fairly well. All my ancestors came over by the revolutionary war.

[kirispupis]

Here's mine:

This roughly corresponds to what I know of my family, though with an interesting twist:

- My mother's father was 100% Luxembourgish. Tracing his family to the 17th century, they mostly remained in Luxembourg.

- My mother's mother's family were mutts. They came from all over, but could be traced to an original colonist. Frederic Remington was on this side of the family.

- My father's father was Sephardic and had lived for some generations in the Ottoman Empire, and before that in Spain.

- My father's mother was Ashkenazi and they lived in Austria for one generation, but before that emigrated from Ukraine.

 

What I find most interesting is that the Sephardic side is all over the place. There's some Southern European, Western Asian, and North African in there. It also appears that some were lumped under "Ashkenazi Jewish" which I suspect is an inaccurate amalgamation. This coincides with my theory about the Sephardic side in that they:
- Either followed Phoenician traders or were Phoenician traders
- Before their arrival in Spain, they weren't of one particular nationality. They came from across the Mediterranean.
- Some perhaps arrived from the area around Judea after the Roman invasions (perhaps these are being counted as Ashkenazi) while others were already there or migrated separately.
- They did not intermarry with locals while in Spain and the Ottoman Empire

Another interesting tidbit was on my mother's mother's side. The ancestry information I have about her side is:
- Her father's last name was Remington and they were descended from John Remington, who was born in England in 1599 and died in Massachusetts in 1667.
- Her mother's last name was Eastwood, and both of her parents were born in England.

However, I only have 1.4% British & Irish. I wound expect it to be at least 12.5% and probably closer to 14% or 15%. This was the most lawless side of the family. My grandmother's father died in prison and the family's favorite hobby was shooting at cars on the thruway. From this data, it seems likely that there was something going on...

[John Conduitt]

4 minutes ago, kirispupis said:

However, I only have 1.4% British & Irish. I wound expect it to be at least 12.5% and probably closer to 14% or 15%. This was the most lawless side of the family. My grandmother's father died in prison and the family's favorite hobby was shooting at cars on the thruway. From this data, it seems likely that there was something going on...

Bear in mind that people who were living in England will not all show up as 'English' in Ancestry's DNA stats.

My ancestry is totally English on paper (back to the 1700s at least, and likely much further for the majority) but my DNA profile is 54% 'England and Northwestern Europe' (which also covers Belgium, Luxembourg, north-east France and French Switzerland), 20% Scottish/Welsh, 19% Germanic and 7% Scandinavian. So I'd expect 95% English DNA but it's somewhere between 0-54%, i.e. at best half.

Given I have between 19-73% 'French-German' and 7% Scandinavian DNA with no sign of any ancestors from those places, I imagine the DNA is reaching back a lot further to the Saxon and Viking invasions, and the general migration that came from northern Europe from before the arrival of the Celts to the arrival of the Huguenots.

Your 'French-German' DNA could therefore very well include DNA you got from 'England', given it's indistinguishable.

[JeandAcre]

On 3/1/2023 at 12:17 PM, DonnaML said:

Autosomal DNA results from Ancestry and the other companies are most useful for finding close or distant relatives with greater or lesser degrees of genetic matching. The ethnicity estimates are just that -- estimates -- and, while entertaining, need to be taken with a grain of salt, except for certain highly endogamous and/or localized groups of people. Keep in mind that the estimates aren't based on comparisons of your DNA with DNA taken from the remains of people who lived in specific locations hundreds of years ago. Rather, they're derived from comparisons of your DNA with each company's database of DNA derived from living people who stated that their grandparents and/or more distant ancestors lived in specific locations. And the companies take people's word for it. In reality (speaking about people of recent European origin who don't come from highly endogamous and/or localized ethnic groups), there has been so much migration and intermarrying within Europe over the last couple of thousand years that there are only minor genetic differences, if any, between (for example) "German" and "French" DNA; it's basically impossible to tell from DNA, except very generally, precisely where in Europe your ancestors may have lived.

That said, I belong to a group (Ashkenazi Jews) that, although hardly localized, was very highly endogamous for a period of well over 1,000 years, from the first millennium until the 20th century, except for occasional admixture with Sephardic Jews. Not only because of religious strictures against intermarriage, but because from not long after the time Christianity became the official religion of the late Roman Empire, and then most of Europe, it was not permitted for Jews to marry Gentiles without converting to Christianity. Thus, the children of such intermarriages were lost to the Ashkenazi gene pool. Taken together with all the forced or coerced conversions to Christianity, not limited to the Iberian peninsula, there are actually far more Gentiles with Ashkenazi (and Sephardic) ancestry than the converse. For example, I've been doing genealogical research about my family for the last 30 years, and know the names of almost 250 direct ancestors back to the 16th century. Every one of them Jewish.  Pretty much all Ashkenazi Jews are related to each other genetically, in multiple ways, within the last 1,000 years (or far less), no matter where in Europe their recent ancestors lived, and even if there's no paper trail showing a relationship within the last several hundred years.

So it's not at all surprising that Ancestry says the following about my genetic history:

"100% Jewish Peoples of Europe

Your community with a connection to this ethnicity region. Your connection to this ethnicity region may come through ancestors from this community.

Ashkenazi Jews in Central & Eastern Europe

Ashkenazi Jews in Central Europe

Ashkenazi Jews in Bohemia"

Note that even this attempt to localize the places in Europe where my Ashkenazi ancestors came from isn't particularly accurate; my most distant known ancestors all come from Western Europe, specifically near the Rhine, and more specifically from the triangle where Southwest Germany, Northwest Switzerland, and Northeast France (Alsace) meet. I have no known ancestors from Bohemia. I do have ancestors from Poland and Lithuania as well as northern/northeastern German lands, so that part is correct. From what I've read, even though "German" and "Eastern European" Ashkenazi Jews largely separated centuries ago, there was enough pre-existing genetic closeness, as well as subsequent migrations and intermarrying, that nobody has succeeded in finding a way to definitively distinguish the two groups genetically.

The other companies to which I've submitted DNA also show 100% Ashkenazi ethnicity, except for one or two which give me a couple of percent Sephardic ancestry. (There was an oral tradition that one branch of my mother's family, who lived in Schlochau in Westpreussen -- now Czluchow in Poland -- at least back to the  mid-1700s, had come from Spain originally.)

@DonnaML, along with your own, very engaging and enlightening family history (also with a shout-out to @JAZ Numismatics), your observations about the commercial DNA industry are particularly incisive.

It's been years ago, so I couldn't venture to comment on the extent to which things have improved, but I had two of them done, from different companies.  At that point, at least, they really operated as a business, rather than a science.  (As I sometimes like to say, In a world reeking of false dichotomies, this Ain't one of 'em.)  One memorable instance was the very first DNA test that the Black historian and PBS host, Henry Louis Gates, had done.  His results came back as 100% white.  His comment was that the company obviously thought they knew what he wanted to hear.  And, as @DonnaML pointed out, the databases aren't just limited to contemporary submissions; as such, they're mutually proprietary.  That in itself makes this stuff cross the line from 'science' to 'business.'  In terms of the irreducibly arbitrary limitations of what they're starting from (Not the data they do have, in and of itself), it's like, garbage in, garbage out.

Correspondingly, my results have varied widely over time, not just between the two companies but within them.  In terms of percentages, this has ubiquitously included the ostensibly 'easy' stuff, running to the Celtic and other European descent.  ...Never mind the sides of the family which lack any independent documentation (generally by design; read on!), which was the primary  motivation in the first place.

Regarding those, the 'residual' (except, add the level of subjective engagement, and that summarily becomes the wrong word) Ashkenazi descent, also likeliest to come from the Rhine, has repeatedly appeared, disappeared, and reappeared in the results.  

Same with the West African.  And in that instance, at least, I can't take the percentages very seriously.  Here it really has to be largely reducible to the inexorable limitations of the respective databases.  ...When my mom was born (the 'darkest' of nine children), the family were still actively 'passing for white,' having fully internalized the attendant racism in the process.  And back to when I was much lower to the ground, and prettier than I'll ever be again, Grandma never liked me.  I'm reporting that not just to give you an idea of the familial dynamics, but to underscore the prominence of this component of the descent, likelier than not at the merely genetic level.

...So, yeah, the farther out you venture into your genetic pool, the less help these outfits are likely to be.  Caveat emptor!