Ancestry.com DNA version 10

[John Conduitt]

10 hours ago, JeandAcre said:

@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!

 

A decade ago they didn't have the data and if your ethnic group hadn't tested much, your results were garbage. My wife had an Asian 4x great grandmother - and no other Asian DNA - and it has found her very precisely, without me telling them.

I think where it struggles it's because of the way DNA is inherited i.e. randomly. You will have inherited more DNA from some very distant ancestors than some relatively close ancestors. So it might say you're 10% German because you happened to have inherited a big segment from a Saxon that's travelled down unbroken for 100s of years, but mention nothing of your Scottish roots on a different side of your family where the chance selection of DNA each generation has given you very little.

[JeandAcre]

Many thanks for this, @John Conduitt.  I forget who it was who mentioned some of this a little more implicitly, but but your expansion of the point is nothing short of enlightening.  It's sounding as if I really just need to get retested.

[KenDorney]

No great surprises for me, as I knew most of what they reported.  Though its interesting to see the percentage so high.

[rhj959]

I have always been interested in family history and traced back many many generations on both my parents side. They all came from the north west of the Isle of Anglesey. An island in Wales known for it's last stand against Suetonius Paulinus in AD 60-61. It was a centre for the Celtic Druids and an important source of copper in during the Roman occupation. Some 18 round ingots of copper, eight with Roman stamps, have been found on the island, two on Parys Mountain, a huge open cast mine.  When copper coins were short in the early 1800s copper from Parys Mountain were used to make the huge 'Druid ' Penny tokens and Two pence tokens.  I have several.

When I took my DNA test I was not surprised to see the results -98% Welsh 2% Norwegian. The Vikings did raid the north coast of Anglesey.  I'm rather happy that I don't have any Anglo-Saxon or Norman blood in me - especially when Wales are playing rugby in the 6 Nations Competition!

[John Conduitt]

1 hour ago, rhj959 said:

I have always been interested in family history and traced back many many generations on both my parents side. They all came from the north west of the Isle of Anglesey. An island in Wales known for it's last stand against Suetonius Paulinus in AD 60-61. It was a centre for the Celtic Druids and an important source of copper in during the Roman occupation. Some 18 round ingots of copper, eight with Roman stamps, have been found on the island, two on Parys Mountain, a huge open cast mine.  When copper coins were short in the early 1800s copper from Parys Mountain were used to make the huge 'Druid ' Penny tokens and Two pence tokens.  I have several.

When I took my DNA test I was not surprised to see the results -98% Welsh 2% Norwegian. The Vikings did raid the north coast of Anglesey.  I'm rather happy that I don't have any Anglo-Saxon or Norman blood in me - especially when Wales are playing rugby in the 6 Nations Competition!

That's pretty amazing. Lucky the Vikings got involved or there wouldn't have been much variety in the Anglesey gene pool! 🤣