ancestry. com changed my ethnicity estimate.

All that STILL adds up to whore

The whole thing seems rather arbitrary.

My great grand parents came from Naples, but they listed me with NO Italian at all - until I put them on my tree, then they discovered my Italian ancestry. OP, did you change your tree before they revised your ethnicity?

What do you look like, OP?

The African miscalculation could be within the margin of error, but how do you go from being 16% British to only 1%? I have never really believed that this testing was very accurate. It is good for solving cold case crimes.

In the ad for this bullshit company on TV here in NZ, a woman states she discovered she was 2% Jewish.......yeah right, is a crock of shit

It's a conspiracy. The liberals are out to make you blacker so you'll vote for them.

How in God’s great earth can a blood test discern Portuguese from Spanish? Impossible, I say. Unless you’re Basque, who are suspected of being pre-Indo-European people from over 40,000 years ago.

r4 There used to be a bar at the bottom that had a huge range. One of mine was 3-32 percent.

R5, I could believe that. Some Jewish communities have been insular for centuries, no?

I got the NatGeo test. It’s disappointing because it’s useless for genealogy purposes, but interesting for other reasons. It traces my ancestors from Africa, through Canaan, a jog through Afghanistan, then into Europe. Nothing in it could identify me as a modern ethnic group, though. It’s all 10,000s of thousands of years ago.

I’m about 2% Neanderthal and a tiny bit Denisovan.

It was expensive. I think it was $200.

Don’t Jews have a lot of genetic markers? I understood that they are more likely to have cleft lips, and other genetic problems. The guys go bald early, too.

I am trying to figure out how to explain it but the tests don't actually reveal where you're from. "Italian" or "Cameroon" means that people from those areas are more likely to have that DNA profile... but everyone from Italy doesn't have "Italian" DNA. You could be a 100th generation Neopolitan boy but your DNA indicates you're East Asian. It's unlikely but DNA inheritance is random and doesn't strictly correspond to region of birth. Maybe some ancestor of our Neapolitan boy moved to Naples from China 101 generations ago and by chance his DNA is what was passed down over the generations.

It gets even more complicated because you inherit DNA from your mom and your dad and each test tells you about one or the other. Your Y DNA (from your dad) could suggest you're Russian while your mta DNA (from your mom) says you're Portuguese. Which is more important to you-- knowing your paternal or your maternal heritage? That's the test you bought, yet it is only half the story until you fork out for the other one. But again, it's just chance whatever DNA has been passed down to you. Of course it's more likely that a certain set of profiles will be passed down in certain areas, but there's nothing inherently ethnic about any profile.

I am doing a terrible job of explaining this (I am not a scientist). The DNA tests are like a horoscope-- meaningless. Making you feel like you're English or Dutch or Italian is smoke and mirrors and a way to sell these stupid tests, nothing more, nothing less.

OMG. You're like totally black.

Also, R12, there were wars and conquest and migration.

I wonder what a DNA test would show about families with an ancestor sired in East Germany in 1945. How many are Russian? Lots, I bet.

After the war, the Germans in their eastern conquests (Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Russia, Hungary) were kicked out, even if those families were there for centuries or longer.

I have never wanted to know about this stuff enough to willingly hand over my DNA. What difference does it make if you’re 3% of something?

That all said, there are commonalities that nationalities share, even differences between groups that live close. The Dutch are really tall. The Sicilians are short. Etc.

Funny, my husband just logged in to his account and his numbers changed today too.

[quote] R15: I have never wanted to know about this stuff enough to willingly hand over my DNA. What difference does it make if you’re 3% of something?

As part of a general interest in genealogy, it’s a hobby, and hobbies often make no sense to people who are not interested.

It’s also a way of stretching your brain. The more you learn, the more interesting it is. There are certain rules, like men (in the past) only marry women, usually within a certain age range. If they have children, there are rules about that. Usually after 9+ months of marriage, usually until age 40, max, and so forth. It’s like a crossword puzzle.

When the rules are broken, that’s usually interesting.

It’s a way of learning history, religion, culture, human psychology, too.

I live near where my ancestors once lived. I’ve found their graves; toured their homes (from 1760, still standing); seen their artwork; found library records of them; and their writing. I even know some of their quirks. It’s fascinating.

Here is an article about another kind of testing and the problems with drawing conclusions from these tests in general.

This is my updated test. They added Ireland which doesn’t seem right.

DL Sleuths, any ideas here?

I have a family member who died on Feb 14, 1759. He’s buried in a row with people with the same last name, but there’s something very strange. The only mention of him that I can find is his gravestone.

It says that he’s 20 years, 7 months, and his parents are John and Sarah.(Also not mentioned elsewhere as having married.)

There’s a John and Mary who had a son of his age and name. I suspect this Mary was referred to as Sarah on the grave marker. Does anyone know if that makes sense?

I would ask to speak to a manager...

[quote]r17 Funny, my husband just logged in to his account and his numbers changed today too.

This could be a whole Lifetime Original Movie ! !

[italic]WHO ARE YOU?? - THE LYNN FIELDING STORY

Did you take a second saliva test? And that one is a lot more detailed than the one my brother took. It's more specific.

My test said I was 50% hetero.

This has got to be a mistake.

R25 damn that test, which company did you use?

Yes, OP, it can change, although not as much as what happened to you. The test just tells you where others are that share your same DNA make-up, which in turn depends on how many others took the test. So your test says the current people in Italy and Spain (who took the test) share the same DNA as you.

The accuracy improves with more people taking the test. It's less accurate for Asians overall because not as many Asians have taken the test.

I'm posted this because I once wrote on DL (on a different thread) how good ancestry. com really was, but I no longer recommend it, so don't waste your hard earned money on that rip off. I also forgot to mention that on my old estimate I had 1% finland/russia, and 6% north african and these regions don't show up on my new estimate.

I'm not a scientist but I can't understand how come some regions appear on one test and then completely disappear on others. It's so weird.

On a different note, I really so happy having yoruba blood in me from Benin, but 5% is a little bit too high, given the fact that I look like any regular white guy from the south.

OP, Ancestry should've sent you an email explaining your results changed based on their having more DNA matches to yours, as in thousands more. The initial results are based off a small sample of DNA matches, not their whole database.

[quote]How in God’s great earth can a blood test discern Portuguese from Spanish? Impossible, I say. Unless you’re Basque, who are suspected of being pre-Indo-European people from over 40,000 years ago.

It's true Spain and Portugal are some of the most genetically similar pair of countries in Europe, but the two nations have rarely intermingled in the last few centuries. Their mutual isolation should facilitate efforts to distinguish the two countries, though I agree that the margin of error would be high.

A recent study has been performed to break down the ancestry of Latin Americans in more detail, including by differentiating Portugal and Spain as sources of ancestry. As you can see below, Brazilians derive a large part of their ancestry from Portugal and very little from Spain, whereas the opposite applies to the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, which is exactly the pattern expected. So, separating countries on DNA tests is feasible even if they're so similar genetically.

My DNA profile changed, too. It’s more in alignment with the country of origin of my ancestors, less generalized. It makes more sense.

[quote]The Dutch are really tall. The Sicilians are short.

Except for the ones that aren't

They changed mine, too, but only very little.

I went from 20% Irish/Scottish to 52%. That is both expected and unexpected because my mom's side of the family left Ireland less than 100 years ago, but my great grandmother had been born in England. It's possible she was of Irish descent, but it seems odd that grandma used to stress that.

Sounds like you're upset because you're more black than you are comfortable with.

23andMe recently updated their ancestry compositions, adding several new ancestral regions to Africa and Asia. So now my 0.1% Sub-Saharan African result has disappeared and in its place is 0.3% South Asian.

So, you're still white. Congrats.

R21, is your surname Winchester?

Siblings don't have the same genetic percentages because they don't inherit the exact same genes from their parents, unless the siblings are identical twins.

R38, no. Something equally as English.

I guess I’m looking for someone to tell me that Sarah is a nickname for Mary, or something like that. Did you know that Nancy is an oldtimey nickname for Anne? Yep.

In the process of writing R21, I could see that Sarah has to be the same person as Mary. Maybe it’s her middle name? Otherwise, John had to be born with no written record; John & Sarah married with no written record; their son born and died with no written record other than the grave marker; and then John & Sarah died with no written record and no grave. It would be nice to be able to prove it, though.

That makes the young fella my 6th great uncle.

Same. For the past three years, I was:

Great Britain: 59%

Ireland: 23%

Europe West: 12%

Iberian: 5%

And little trace bits from Scandiavia and the Caucuses

—

As of this week:

Great Britain, Wales, Northern Europe: 52%

Ireland and Scotland: 43%

Germanic Europe: 3%

Norwegian: 2%

...basically, I am Richard Spencer’s ethnic dream mix. I really needed that little bit of Iberian to add some spice to my glowing whiteness. Alas. Maybe next Ancestry update will take me back to African roots!

Mine too. I went from being 80% Chinese to 75% African American. Wtf? Damn you, AncestryDNA.

r42 LOL, that never happened.

Same here, I lost what little bit of English I had and became more Iberian. It makes sense since my ancestors are Portuguese on both sides of my family going back the four generations that I know of.

Mine changed quite a bit. Lost almost all of the British/Irish (which never made sense in the first place), added some French.

Updated Estimate

Greece and the Balkans 50%

Refined from: Europe South 69%

Italy 43%

Refined from: Europe South 69%

France new 6%

England, Wales & Northwestern Europe 1%

Decreased by 14%

Migrations

No Longer in Estimate

Ireland/Scotland/Wales 7%

Caucasus 5%

European Jewish 2%

Europe East 2%

Besides this dubious at worst, nascent at best, genetic analysis, do any of you keep your family genealogies?

My ancestry estimate changed from:

67% Asia East: Philippines & Guam

27% Polynesia: Hawaii

4% Asia South

2% Asia Central

To:

99% Philippines

1% Spain

My ancestral makeup has been simplified.

I do, R46. I even keep my great uncle in the downstairs freezer.

Through the process of thinking through R21 so as to write it out, I realized that, of course Sarah is the same person as Mary. I’ll bet Sarah was Mary’s middle name, and what she usually went by. My ancestors did that a lot. It’s annoying of them. Anything else is too unlikely or coincidental.

Thanks for reading and your patience with my question!

So, in other words, all these tests are just a big load of bullshit.

Oh yeah. Just a ripoff trading on people's gullibility.

All this tells us is that our ancestors were big whores.

Re: keeping genealogies. My mom is 100% Irish. Both her parents were born in Ireland so that's the simple part. My father's mother was 1/2 mostly- Pennsylvania Dutch, some Swiss in there and her mother might have been English background, and the other half unknown because she had a father who died when she was an infant. My father's father was from mostly English stock via 200 years in Appalachia. (far western Virginia). But family members who have had their DNA tests have come up with wildly different results. The most detailed (from 23 and me) indicated a lot of Iberian (well, Ireland was settled by Iberians 7000 years ago), and dribs and drabs of lots of different kinds of Eastern European in addition to the Irish, English and North Sea/Scandinavian that would be expected (and a tiny amount of native American). That result seems to be an outlier. The others who had DNA tested were told that they were mostly British and Irish. But none of these tests ever showed very much German at all, which was mysterious given these many generations of Pennsylvania Dutch on my grandmother's side that we have ample documentation about. What was forgotten in all of that was my grandmother's father because we never gave much thought to him since she never know him at all, nor any of his family. Finally someone from his family reached out on the internet for information on him, because she was doing genealogy and I saw her query. She was so thrilled to find his descendants. And through her, we learned that his background was totally English. So my father would have been probably 3/4 English and maybe a bit more, and less than 1/4 German, perhaps as little as an eighth. And my generation would be, at most less than 1/8th and more likely 1/16 German. And my nephew, who had his DNA done would be less than 1/16th and maybe only 1/32nd German. So the mystery was explained by good old-fashioned genealogy of a never-thought-of direct ancestor.

However, what these test tell me is that there are really no great markers separating northern Europeans - there were so many invasions and battles and I'm sure rapes through the centuries that there's not very much pure anything there....

I feel cheated. I was told less than a year ago: 51% English; 29% Scandinavian; 11 Irish/Scottish; 5% Iberian Peninsula; 1% Middle East....

Now just two areas and they took all the Scandinavian out: 82% England/Wales/Northwestern Europe and 18% Irish/Scottish/

WTF?

I just looked at my most recent DNA update. It makes more sense and more accurate now than it did last year. I verified a newly-added ethnicity by looking at a leaf and confirming an ancestor who provides the new ethnicity listed. I think the DNA program and the family tree template are excellent.

I see a major class action lawsuit.

We need Erin and her pushup bra...

Why didn't you use 23andMe? It's great. Google money.

Ancestry was founded by Mormons.

I want an estimated IQ. Would so prefer it from them than my actually taking an IQ test.

Fascinating r53. How do you maintain these records?

Any East Asian DLers have those volumes of family records handed down over centuries? I have a friend who has his family's — once handwritten, earlier volumes have typically been redone (printed with ancient printing presses) before the originals fall apart.

They'd make amazing collections, but families won't sell them of course.

I had Ancestry check my DNA and it connected me to my cousins who I am in contact with, for 70+ years.

It also connected me to my far-er distant cousins across the country. On that side, my great uncles moved across the country about 1910. One was a missionary to the Indians and died, we think, in Colorado. The other made it to Oregon, and his great grandchild also took the test and show as related to me.

I'm 50% French Basque. But I don't think they have enough of a sample to figure that out. But I notice OP does have a Basque mention. Maybe I will try it now.

Ancestry doubled the sample size, hence the radical changes in the update. As more people take the test, the results will continue to change. If you need to confirm your results you should take another test from a different provider.

OP should go (back) to college. S/he could rake in the Affirmative Action scholarships!

Ancestry expanded the number of people and sub-groups in the Reference Panels. You are being compared to modern populations. Mine changed only on the margins (Scottish/Irish vs. British Isles, etc.) My husband's on the other hand, now shows his nearly 50% German side, though his definite 50% Italian is now 27% Italian and 14% Greek. Given the Greek colonies in southern Italy, it makes sense.

Estimates at the subcontinent level have always been estimates, just that. Two revisions ago, Ancestry showed me with 25% Scandinavian, which made NO sense except for the Vikings and Normans into England. Now I'm down to less than 5% Norweigian, which is doubtless the same phenomenon.

I just did Ancestry earlier this year, and my new update changed a lot too. The biggest change was I went from Iberian Peninsula at 19% on the original (which was a surprise) to zero now. I read this article about the update, but don't know why Iberian Peninsula disappeared (I haven't had time to delve into it, but in the Q&A about the updates on the site, they even joke about it):

[quote]*With my Iberian Peninsula region gone, should I quit matador’s school?* Remember, your ethnicity estimate is not a complete picture of your past. So, if you’ve taken up a new hobby to celebrate your diverse heritage, enjoy—though sangrias and siestas might be safer than angry bulls.

R54 EnglandNorthwestern Europe has a ton of Scandinavian influence. Read the Ancestry ethnic description. The Celtic tribes came in from central Europe, then they were invaded by the Jutes (Denmark) and the Angles and Saxons (German), they mixed with the Celts. Then Danish Vikings. Then the Romans came in and mixed with the locals and then pulled out of the area. The the Normans from France—a mix of Gaul/French Celtic and Nordic poeple who had previously invaded France took over the British Isles. Over time the Brits developed some signature mutations but really we are mutts from central European migrants, Romans, Danes and Scandinavians, and French Normans, who were basically Celts who’d been overtaken by Vikings, too.

I read that Julius Caesar killed a quarter of Gaul when he conquered. Must have been really messy.

[quote]23andMe recently updated their ancestry compositions, adding several new ancestral regions to Africa and Asia. So now my 0.1% Sub-Saharan African result has disappeared and in its place is 0.3% South Asian.

Same here.

When my brother did ancestry it showed us as having a different father! Totally different DNA. Then he went to 23&me and it showed us having the same father.

23&me thinks my cousin on my father's side is from my mother's side.

I read this article in Cracked last year. Make of it what you will.

I am not black at all, mores the pity. Who wants this too white skin? The older I get the more blotchy it gets. People had said my grandmother was half Cherokee but I can attest to the fact that my skin is too damn white, no Indian in it.