For all forty-something years of my life, I believed I was part Cherokee. Mom said Dad was about 25%. Well, I discovered that "Dad" isn't even dad.😅 we shared 0% DNA. Then I discovered that my cousin is also my brother because we have the same father. His mom is my mom's little sister. I was born out of wedlock and was a "dirty secret" that never came out until they were both deceased. I gained 2 brothers, and lost 3 sisters 😅 my aunt is my stepmom, my cousin is my brother and I'm still confused. 😅
Happens a lot more than people realise. I spent 39 years wondering why I didn't look at all like any other Polish people I was aware of. My mum was almost entirely Welsh, but my dad apparently was a combo of English and Irish.
Genetics does not mean as much as people think it does. I don't mean genomics tests are not factual. I mean those facts don't matter in your life. You didn't "lose" or "gain" any siblings. They have the same role in your life as they ever did.
My brother found out he was my half brother before my mom died, then he did a test to confirm. We both have different father’s. You’ve got to wonder how many family trees this DNA analysis has affected. People just swept things under the rug or honestly weren’t sure cuz they had no tests years ago.
When someone shows me a detailed family tree I always wonder how many illegitimate births it contains and how all it takes is just one to bring the whole charade down.
My grandpa is over 50% Italian. And we all know this before anyone took a DNA test. I took one. And I had no Italian at all. Which is was actually feeling like maybe I wasn't related. Like there was a secret nobody told me. Then, this morning I got a notification that my DNA has been updated. Now I'm 18% Southern Italian. I was so happy when I seen that
@AnjelLee-f8c people are paranoid about taking a DNA test. But the thing is. If they have your close relatives DNA, especially your grandparents, parents, or siblings. Then they already have everything they need. It's not like you don't exist until you take a DNA test. If they wanted to manipulate your DNA some how. They would. It's not that hard to do.
I sent my DNA to one of those ancestry/ heritage sites. I found out that I'm from mixed European descent. The results came back 40 % German shepherd 25 % English bulldog 20 % Irish setter 15 % French poodle I may have sent it to the wrong place.
I was never confused because I recognise what the word estimate means and I took the time to understand their processes. My estimates have changed many times. Each time it's become more accurate, These days it directly reflects what my social and genetic research tells me about my ancestry.
Question for you,: Does Ancestry update your results automatically as their data bases improve, or do you need to retake the test to get the most recent analysis?
@@ickster23 It just updates as they publish their new findings. You can't roll back or view earlier predictions but I don't really care because I see a consistent trend towards improvement.
Unfortunately the companies (not just Ancestry) sell there kits on the phrase "where you're from", which is very, very misleading. These calculators are *similarity calculators* , they do NOT tell one "where you're from." Also, unfortunately very few people bother to look at the uncertainty in their result. Customers all too often do not click through to see their range bars and try to understand them.
With this last Ancestry update, I'm throwing all my ethnicity estimates out the window. It's been all over the place with new regions coming and going with each update. This last update though was like I'm a totally different individual. I understand variation and I watched this video, but I have still come away that that as of now these ethnicity estimates mean nothing. at least in my case.
True! Don't focus on percentages. They're false. Build your family tree and follow the documents to find out where your family is from. Keep searching & good luck. 💪🏾
Thank you! (Speaking of cleaning headstones, I've been so tempted to make a reaction video about the woman who is using what looks like pink oven cleaner... but I'm not sure my blood pressure can take it!)
I have never cleaned a headstone. My parents have a metal marker in a lawn cemetery. The thing to remember is it's an estimate, and you don't inherit dna from all your ancestors.
Clear explanation for deciphering one’s DNA results which continually frustrate me due to my ethnicity forever changing, so much so I don’t know what I am. And I certainly have no idea what/which part of me I have inherited from my mother and father.The last time I checked on Ancestry and asked, they responded saying they haven’t broken our results down yet as to which parent contributed what. All of this has confused and frustrated me. New subscriber. Thank you.
I did Ancestry and 23&Me. I have genealogy records back to the 1500’s on all 4 grandparents so it was easy for me to check. They were both very close although they gave me less French than I thought I would have. What I liked was they kept sending me updates as their testing was refined and got my French up to where records showed it to be. What totally blew me away was they were able to tell me the exact 3 areas of North America that my ancestors settled in from Europe and that told me that the tests were legit! Because of my records, I didn’t do the tests to find out what I was, I did it to find relatives that are 3rd and 4th cousins where our linkage was back about 100years. I think it’s a great service especially for linking with family and for adoptees who would like to know their ethnicity and find birth relatives.
in 23 & me i'm 100 inbreed my heritage too , ftdna i'm 87 iberius , 13 % British isles ancestry i'm spanish portugues basque , galizian , catalunia , aquitania , skotia , ha ha ha i no longer inbreed
My Mom's Dad's line came straight from Norway. Her Mom's German side came over in the early 1700's. My Dad's English/Irish heritage (mid-1800's). The best they could do for me was I am from the entirety of Northwest Europe, including the Shetlands & Orkney's.
My late wife, was a white, fair haired woman with blue eyes and suspected Irish ancestry. At age 17, already pregnant, she married her first husband. He was a white, fair haired, blue eyed Irishman. Their first child had darkish skin, black hair and Brown eyes. Until and including her death, some 65 years later, no one could explain this anomaly. Just after her death, I got an update on her DNA analysis which showed she was 30% native north American. Problem solved ? Let's hope so. Mark born 09/02/1966, please note.
It is interesting that the parents had recessive genes and that was their phenotype but they had a child with dominant genetic traits like black hair and brown eyes. I suppose it's possible but it must be very rare.
Must have been quite a surprise. It is not impossible for people you describe to have children of differing coloring to themselves. I once saw a picture of a Mexican couple of Mestizo origin and their six children. He was skinny, and pink skinned, she, rather fat and yellow skinned. The children, the two eldest were black skinned, the two middle were yellowish skinned and the two youngest pink skinned, and light haired. I am male, I been married twice, I have four children, 3 from one wife, 1 from the other, all red haired. I am Southern European, both parents dark haired, I am dark haired, and four red headed children. Dna test, I find I am a carrier for red hair, no one in the family knows of any red heads.
@@Ponto-zv9vf It is not unusual or strange for two dark haired parents to have redheads or blonds because they can carry the recessive genes and dominant genes will mask that you carry those traits. What is more difficult to explain is people with recessive traits having children with dark hair and dark eyes. The reason being to have recessive traits like blue eyes and blond hair or red hair you only have the recessive traits so you don't carry the dominant traits. I know people will say it happens and is possible but I have my doubts. I guess anything is possible but I'd be inclined to suspect something else.
Certainly if you are relying on genealogical companies, like Ancestry or My Heritage, where people cut and paste bits from each other's trees into their own trees, without checking if they are accurate.
That’s just not true. Mine revealed a whole new branch of my ancestry (by an extra-marital birth) that was, and would always have remained, invisible in any official paper records.. I followed it up and eventually all was revealed. The results are not pinpoint accurate but it is unrealistic and naive to expect that. My own results also raised questions about another branch. It’s a very good guide.
Another great video! 🤗 I'm curious if Ancestry will do a DNA update this year? I know they never announce them ahead of time, but it's always fun to see how our percentages have changed from the previous one.. 🌎 (Like you said.. sometimes they change a LOT.. 😆)
So cool how much mine changed. Def matches my ancestors tho in my family tree. My sister had just done hers a few months back and hers changed a lot also with the update. She now only has three regions for hers while mine and our other sister has 5. Technically hers shows 4 but the French shows less than 1% when I look on my chromebook, but when on the app on my phone it shows France as 0% but includes it because it's still a tiny amount, and not completely zero. She asked why it changed so much, and I explained the more ppl who get the test, the larger the database gets, and the more precise they can make the regions. So cool hearing this explanation and that I was basically right. I didn't know for sure why the amounts changed, but guessed based on logic and getting actual clinical DNA testing done due to the genetic disorder I have. That's how they explained my variants. I have a variant of uncertain significance for the dchs1 gene and it's only been seen in .0009% of their databases. I have yet to find any literature on my specific variant at all and I am really good at researching.
I never considered my ethnicity estimates to be much more than entertainment. My matches and shared matches have been the real valuable information for confirming research.
I think it is more important for adoptees, and people who don't know their actual ancestry. Many Australians know they have British and Irish ancestry but are not sure, and other groups have immigrated to Australia like German speakers from Germany itself or places once controlled by Germany. They don't really know. All my matches are of my ethnic group either fully, or partly.
@@Ponto-zv9vf I can agree sort of agree with that. I have a friend who’s adopted and she had exhausted all attempts to find out about her heritage so she tried a DNA test. It did give her a good idea of her ethnic background but it was still communication with her strongest shared matches that got her closest to her actual parentage. She wasn’t able to nail it down to her actual parents but now she knows that half of her background is Croatian on her father’s side. She still has no info on her Mother.
Well done! Folks need to have at least a basic understanding of statistics (sample size, probability, confidence level, etc) before getting too focused on these results. You did a great job explaining that, especially how confidence increases with increasing sample size ("n"). Over the 10 years or so that I've been observing my results, the "origin" estimates have become more and more aligned with my known pedigree. In the latest set of results my "ancestral origins" estimate is 86% Scotland and N. Ireland; nearly all of my people came to America from what is now N.I. and considered themselves "Scots-Irish" and the few who didn't come from there married someone who did.
Statistically, the bigger the sample size, the more accurate the sample. When my nephew sent me the sample kit years ago. It had Scandinavia, several countries combined under Western Europe, and Ireland with Wales. Now it has individual countries broken down even further.
One "ethnicity estimate" factor that has less to do with sample size is migration. In my case, I expected to see more French in the mix. The same goes for my British Isles background. Remember all of the places that the Vikings invaded? Many of my French ancestors came from Normandy...so that might pump up my Norwegian percentage.
That’s been the tricky thing with ancestral lines in the British Isles - what is “British” and what is “Viking invaders.” That has gotten better over the years.
@@MichaelTheophilus906 If you are from old, Northern landed families, your DNA may stick more -narrower circle for permitted marriage. In our case, massive Norman % and a little Iberian -and no German/French/Irish/Scottish in spite of being on the soil since 1069.
Great video again,they're always interesting and very informative. Here in the UK,my ethnicity has just changed.England and Northern Europe has gone up 6% to 80%.Wales down 11% to 2%,Scotland down 3 to 5%,Germanic Europe up from 0 to 5% and Sweden/Denmark down from 2 to 0%. Look forward to watching your videos again.
Hello to the UK from the US. I manage my grandmother’s AncestryDNA account, and the update brought her English percentage up 19% to 68%, her Scottish percentage down 26% to 13%, her Irish percentage up 3% to 9%, her Danish percentage up from 0% to 5%, her “Germanic Europe” percentage up 4% to 5%, her Baltic percentage down 3% to 0%, and her Welsh percentage down 2% to 0%.
My dna from my mom is from the British Isles. My dad's is Dutch, German , Swiss with a little English and Scot. I've charted my tree back to the 3rd and 4th century. Both sides are descended from Royalty, which makes it easy. My mom is decended from James I/VI of Scotland and England, and my dad from James V of Scotland. The lines actually meet a second time with James II. One is descended from Alexander and the other through James III.
New iteration has greatly simplified my estimates-now only Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Cornwall. All sorts of other regions have come and gone, and disparities between me and my sister are largely gone also. The new estimates are now basically what we thought we were before doing the test. 😂
My husband was born & raised in Slovenia. He's never been to Russia. His Ancestry DNA was 99% Russian. Why? Because centuries ago, a group of Russian Slavs migrated south to the Adriatic area. History & DNA results go hand in hand.
A few years ago, a reporter for the CBC in Toronto and her identical twin sister took some of this type of test. It turned out they had different ethnic backgrounds! So much for the accuracy.
I have been working with someone born in England who found roughly 25% of his admixture was from native American and/or Spanish origins. He matched my father, so I knew he was Mexican, which was a total surprise to him! We believe we have been able to figure out who his paternal grandfather was using his shared matches and traditional genealogy.
My DNA shows a small percentage of Scadinavian/Danish ancestry. I assumed it was from the so called Vikings who had descendants throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland where the great majority of my ancestors came from. However, I discovered, on Ancestry, a branch of my family going back to Norman English who in turn were descended from Vikings who settled in Normandy and then conquered England in 1066.
It could be. The Normans were of Scandinavian origins and settled in France, but over time, some Normans could of had zero Scandinavian and 100% French ancestry, and any range in between.
@@AmyJohnsonCrowi am Italian and that's the Japanese version of southern Italian lol Mario bros.Im in the North here we are more Germanic North: The Austrian region of North Tyrol East: The Austrian region of Salzburg
@xh4r744 I’m not sure if you’re referring to the mustache. If so, that was my “impersonation” of what someone said in a workshop, not what I thought Italians are like.
@@AmyJohnsonCrow yes read my comment but it’s incorrect stereotype.We are multiethnic country.Ignorance makes people believe we’re a specific race or a single ethnicity.Every region is a like a different country and dialect
I already know I'm Irish, English and Polish because of my family history. Ancestry DNA gives a percentage. Their estimates are broad, but the research I did through tracing my families from public records and family members gave me pretty accurate info. You have to be willing to put the time into searching.
I took an Ancestry DNA test about eight years ago, and the results came back with a 50% Scots, 50% Irish background, and this was entirely consistent with what I already knew about my ancestry. Then the reference panel got updated, and the results changed to 73% Scots, 12% Irish and 14% English, and 1% Norwegian. Since then, a new reference panel shows my ancestry as 49% Scots, 28% English/Welsh, and 16% Irish, with the remaining smaller percentages coming from Cornwall and elsewhere, with 1% being central European. The Cornish ancestry itself is confirmed by a Y-DNA test I took via Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) that showed a large number of matches to men with Cornish surnames. So, given these changes, there is no way any ancestry DNA-type test can tell you precisely where you're from, only indicate general probabilities. I've always wondered why my English results are as high as they are, particularly on my paternal side. One of my maternal great-grandmothers had American ancestry that came by way of England, and on my paternal side, I have no known English ancestors in paper records. A clue came to me when I remembered that my paternal grandmother's mother's maiden surname was Hewitt. She was born in Ireland, but so far as I can tell, Hewitt is a surname that is not native to Ireland. It is much more commonly found in England and sometimes in Scotland. It appears to be derived from the old Norman surname Huot, which is derived from the personal pet name for 'Hugh'. It's more than likely that this ancestor was descended from Hewitts who may have migrated from England to Ireland about 400 years ago (along with many, many other English families) and settled in the Dublin region before branching out to what is now Northern Ireland and other parts of Ireland itself.
The trouble is the Hewitt’s were Norman settlers to England, and the Normans themselves were Norse Viking settlers in France so genetically they would have been Scandinavian 🤔
@@roboparks The haplomarkers are taken from local samples, in Scotland you could be of Germanic descent if you were from the south east( Anglo/ Saxon Northumbria) , from the north east you could be of Pictish descent , the north west coast and islands you be of Gaelic Irish or Nordic Vilking decent, from Dumbarton down to the borders Brythonic Briton descent, add into the mix the Flemish , and the Normans who settled in Scotland, with all these variables it really begs the question…. What is it to be “genetically Scottish” ?
wow very interesting. I took a DNA test this July. I was told by my father his parents were all Swedish and spoke Swedish but were born and grew up in Kronoby Finland. to my surprise my test came back 47 percent Finnish ! my grandparents were indeed Finnish not Swedish. I was also 7 percent swedish { 5 percent from my mom!} 2 percent Norweigan, 22 percent enlgish, 10 percent Irish, 8 percent Scottish, and 4 percent French. my estimates just changed last week. 48 percent Finnish, 2 percent swedish , 33 percent English, 4 percent Irish, 4 percent Scottish, and 3 percent Netherlands.
My partner is more Finnish than Norwegian too despite being able to trace back some 3-400 yrs in Norway. Turns out the border was blurred somewhat and many people crossed rivers etc which were deemed as borders hence the mix. With Finnish Sami in the mix it makes sense.
I knew both sides of my family came from Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands. Took the Ancestry test just to see what it would say. They nailed it. The test zeroed in on Friesland, with the farther flung ancestry including England, Scandinavia, and Iceland, probably due to the influence of marauding bands of Vikings a thousand years ago.
I have always felt British and was proved correct when my DNA showed a good percentage of Celt, Viking and Saxon which apparently are the DNA building blocks of Britain. My DNA also had a good percentage of Northern England which fits with my research as my surname is old English/viking and comes from Cumbria/Northumberland. Cumbria was where my traceable ancestors lived. An example where my DNA profile fitted to my expectations though I was hoping for some surprises.
Mine changed somewhat but the regions stayed the same. My understanding of history is key to understanding how modern borders are meaningless for dna accuracy. My ancestors came from the Baltic coastal area edging towards Denmark. We always considered them German. Ancestry said so until it changed from German to Danish/Swedish. How could this be? Sweden and Denmark once held that territory for long periods so the people there would reflect that. So, my family was German in culture but dna something else.
This is something very, very common everywhere in Europe and has been for centuries. Europeans don't take DNA tests. For good reasons, they identify with their language or its specific dialect they have grown up with, and this also allocates them a region to call home.
I took ancestry this month. Berber and Arab father and mother respectively. I have African grandmothers from Sudan and Chad. I am assigned based on autosomal DNA 28 % Nilotic and 13% Ethiopia. My grandfathers DNA contributed to 19 % Arabic peninsula and 9% North Africa Morocco. It is helpful that I know a head of time where grandmothers are from. Otherwise I would be so confused.
@@AmyJohnsonCrow Thanks for letting me know that. I don't have a membership with them even though I keep getting their emails. I would have had one but they changed my credit card for that without my permission and that really infuriated me even though I got them to reverse the change.
Knowing the history of various regions can be very helpful. It's not actually surprising, for example, that someone with an ancestry estimate primarily from the British Isles would have some small percentage from Italy and Greece. Rome occupied England for some 400 years. And some of their soldiers and servants were of Greek descent. It would be a bit more than credulous to think that there was never any "mixing" with the local populations in 400 years of history.
YEP!!! Bingo. I am so glad you are reporting on this. My Bio Dad remarried a Vietnamese women and had Kids with her...and after he had his children DNA Tested and added to the database, my results then changed me to being part Vietnamese. That's when I deleted my account and knew it was no longer accurate. I had a friend write in to Ancestry explaining there was no way they were German she knew from her great grandmother they with polish. So Ancestry took her word and changed the family results.
They would never change their results based on someone's claims alone. I'm sorry but it's not that arbitrary. Estimates for ethnicity not specific to Europe will need a lot more refinement I'd think.
Something is not right regarding your test. No way could you be part Vietnamese if your mother and father or past relatives do not carry a Vietnamese gene. Or you parenthood needs to be questioned. Or you misunderstand your DNA matches.
Good video. Explains it concisely and clearly. With respect to myself, my ethnicity match 68% Scottish, 42% Irish) is more or less what I expected, what with being Scots-born of some Irish extraction, and even some of the latter will actually be Ulster Scots and therefore actually Scottish.
It will also be because of the constant exchange of people back and forth between Ireland and Scotland for thousands of years. Before the advent of modern fuel-powered transportation, water was the fastest and easiest way to get almost anywhere. This meant the sea created close ties instead of being a barrier.
Well, you made me laugh when you said, "our ancestry DNA didn't stop at the border." Well, yep... that's because my ancestor didn't stop at the border...........LOL
Yes. I've had a chat with a Chinese man whose friend's DNA results showed some Russian heritage as well as North Indian/ Pakistani heritage. The person who took the DNA test looked typical Han Chinese. Turned out that some of his ancestors (mom or dad's side) were from border regions near Russia while the other side of the family had ancestors from the China-India border.
I’ve done my dna with two different companies and had slightly different results. Using DNA, my family tree search and my matches, I’ve been able to piece together somewhat better than just my DNA alone.
@@annehersey9895 I think "we" means European and north African, Middle Eastern... maybe West Asian too. Not sub-Sahara Africa, far east Asia, South Asia, Australia or the Americas.
@@CitizenTurtleIsland I have 1.4 % Neanderthal and I’m from the US so it appears to be everyone. Since we emerged from Africa long ago common ancestors must have mated with Neanderthal-too complicated for me. I try to keep up with research but so much going on today to worry too much about thousands of millennia ago! 😀😀😀
For anyone reading, and maybe this clarifies, maybe this doesn't, but when you take a DNA test, it is absolutely required to refrain from analyzing your results from a modern, "the world as we currently know it" perspective. Do not look at the map and say, "Oh! I have ancestors from X country!" Rather, look at the map as having different regions. Its also an absolute MUST to understand borders, migration, history, trade routes, immigration and how people moved from land to land, not nessessarily from country to country. For example, You may have the regions of Australia and/or New Zealand highlighted in your results. That COULD mean you have connections to Aboriginal, Celt, Anglo Saxon, or Norse cultures/ancestors. When the British Empire gained control of Australia/New Zealand, they used that land to send thousands of their criminals, defects and those banished out of the British Isles. Another example...If "Jewish" shows up in your DNA, it would NOT nessessarily mean your ancestors are from Israel/Middle East. That data could also mean that your ancestors are from Central Europe. If that is the case, youd want to start looking into WWII history and the Holocaust to see if you have any connections to those victims. Norse Viking ties? You may very well also have Anglo Saxon, Pict or Celt connections. Another example... I knew that my results would come back with Swiss German, French and maybe a few other European regions. However what really surprised me was the Scots Irish and Native Durangan (Mexican) connections. With more digging, historical records, historical timelines and countless hours of diving into Ancestry, FindAGrave, Google, obituary records, newspapers and world history, ships records and other sources, I finally tracked down the family I was looking for. I hope maybe this all helps someone else. Stay open minded!
Picture it … Austria WW2 … my grandmother has a liaison with a French soldier mid 1942 … which produces my dad who is now 81 years old. He never knew his biological father. It would be interesting to see what pops up on our dna tests and any French family we may have !! Fascinating stuff.
Saw this years ago, my mom is Mexican of Spanish ancestry... from northern Spain. Ancestry had these ancesters coming from France, right across the Pyrenees mountains. Three years later, our ancesters were back to where they were from.
Napoleon occupied and invaded Spain around 1800 and that could explain the French part. Mexico is made up also of many nationalities but mostly from Spain. The term Spanish is the language, but can also refer to country of origin. Mexico can have native DNA, etc. It gets confusing when they are talking about DNA but use terms like Spanish, Mexican which is another mouthful of confusion. I am born in Puerto Rico but by DNA is 94% europeon.every could try in Europe may have multiple historical DNAs.
@@ralphramirez1545 The connections between Northern Spain and Southern France are much older than that. Look at the Basque and Occitano-Romance languages. The Basque Country is of course split between Spain and France, and, in addition to that, the language of most of Southern France, Occitan, is the closest relative of Catalan (and Catalan is also spoken in part of Southwestern France).
What a great video and what a great host. I really appreciate this information. I was hoping you can help me with something. I kind of saddens me actually the problem I have is I want to find the test that shows with the percentages like you pointed out 45% Scotland, etc. and I’ve understood what you’ve mentioned regarding how it could change or almost evolve in a sense, just because changing and what not but I had two questions first of all. Does your test does ancestry help to show the migration pattern is there one that does that and when I take the test is my DNA much more useful than my last name because my father passed away before I was born, and my mother didn’t think she could give me his last name. My mother and father were not married and so, I have her legal married name from my last name I go about getting those accurate Findings Thank you David
A larger question: why have so many people been persuaded to accept the answer to the question “Who am I?” as being contained in testing estimates by AncestryDNA and other commercial corporations? We aren’t our ancestors. Even if we inherit some individual traits from them; biologists have determined that in many cases, genetic tendencies are activated by environment and experience. Certainly, in terms of behavior. It’s not nature or nurture - it’s nature *and* nurture. It seems natural to want to know where we come from, but that’s tied to the more ultimate question of identity: who are we? And the answer to that isn’t just found in where we came from. It also depends on our current circumstances and what we want for our future. What our values are. Commodifying this question - who am I? - yields shallow results that are ultimately unsatisfying.
Well, the DNA connections are satisfying to me because my values seem to be much more similar to those of the people from where my DNA came from than to those of the people from where I was born and raised. It’s very painful not belonging in your “home town”, having your neighbors be your enemies who’ve stripped you of your most fundamental human rights, threatening and angering and frightening you, and making you wish your ancestors hadn’t immigrated to where they did.
I had my DNA done by 23 and Me, but it was at such variance with my family trees that I had it redone with Ancestry. Ancestry was MUCH better. The Ancestry version has undergone a number of changes since then, but I do feel that it is becoming more accurate.
The thing I don't like about ancestry is they advertise "find out who you are. you are" not who you are decended from, you deserve neither their credits or grievences of an ancestor, particularly when there is so much fake history out there. I took Ancestry and found almost exactly what I expected knowing the history of the family. It is fun to trace a connection to people who lived in the past like watching a movie and having a connection to the story. Not based on my research but I may have had one ancestor who was the most incompetent generals ever created by Napoleon.
The strange thing is that with the technology advancement and refinement of reference panels, I expected the result to be more fragmented. I thought that new regions would appear, that is, the picture would be more colorful. But in fact, there was regions consolidation and merging
It took them a while, but they managed to pinpoint my Swiss ancestry. They also found the Polish , welsh, and English regions. Close enough for government work.
I know that I’m approximately 50% Norwegian; my mother was full Norwegian with immigrant parents. My father was a little fuzzier. Initially I was told by him that his family was mostly Irish. According to my cousins, his family is actually Scottish. This makes sense since my paternal grandmother’s maiden name was McMurtry. However, the company I used for DnA sent me an update to let me know that I had a high percentage of … Guatemalan? And other Central American countries. I don’t think so.
Ignore those. Most geneticists who don’t work for the popular DNA companies say they ignore everything below about 10-15%. There are several reasons for this. They also never speak of ethnicities; only locations. And even then, they say accuracy is basically regional, and most accurately, continental. Anything more focused than that is guesswork, at this point. For some of the reasons mentioned in the video. Also, current “ethnicity” testing fails to account for travel, which is a big flaw in the whole system. People have always migrated, voluntarily or not, in the big picture. But currently, only Y-chromosome DNA and mitochondrial DNA take migration into account, or can be compared to more ancient DNA samples taken from skeletal remains. But the general tests don’t test for those. You have to test at FamilyTree DNA or a couple of other companies that offer those tests. (Autosomal DNA, which most companies like Ancestry test, taken only from cell nuclei, don’t last very long so don’t survive in ancient bones; also, autosomal DNA recombines in every person, so after just a few generations their origin can’t be pinpointed.) That’s why, when the document trail runs out in family research, autosomal tests aren’t very helpful. And ethnicity isn’t genetic at all. Ethnicity is socio-cultural.
You forgot Welsh. Those Celts are easier to separate, on a PCA those British and Irish Celts cluster in the extreme western end of Europe. The English unfortunately cluster with Northern French, Low Countries, and Germany, not so easy to separate.
Well those are all Culture Names. DNA matches you to Haplogroups . Like R1b-L21 or R1b-m269. The Culture name is just used as a reference for geo-location of where your ancestors came from. DNA Can't tell you your Culture , Religion, Political status . how wealthy your ancestors were, or social status or even Skin Color. Skin color requires a Forensic SNP test.
23andMe seems to be most accurate so far. Based on my family tree, about 85% of my family comes from Germany in the 1700's/1800's, and 23andMe states I'm 93% German from Baden-Wuerttemberg, which seems pretty accurate. Ancestry has me at 57% Germanic europe, 31% England, 9% Ireland, and 3% Spain, with the Germanic Europe having increased over 10% since last I checked. I anticipate the numbers will further normalize to a higher percentage of Germanic Europe.
Many people of Italian descent reside in Switzerland and have for many generations speaking an Italian dialect... which is one of Switzerland's 3 official languages.. .. Nothing unusual about someone who comes up with Italian ancestry, claiming they are from Switzerland ......
They are not really Italians, they are Swiss people who have similar ancestry to people in Northern Italy, and speak a variety of Romance similar to Northern Italian languages. Italian Swiss are a minor ethnic group compared to Swiss Germans and Swiss French.
@@Ponto-zv9vf so..... People in Northern Italy are not Italians????There are approximately 3 different dialects spoken in Southern Italy, and a different dialect in Northern Italy... That is like saying that the people who speak "low German" instead of "high German" are not really German at all...They might disagree...
Wow, I didn't realise how many people took this seriously. The statistical analysis is everything. I saw someone saying that the larher the sample the more accurate, but in this situation it is working with a very biased sample. You really should think about who takes part in these tests and how diverse a population they represent. Then have a look at the human population on earth. So it is just for entertainment value for middle class, mainly English speaking people.
@@gaynor1721I did as well, it finally found the small amount of Spanish 23andme had reflected for years. My German-Scandinavian went way up but since my UK history is Eastern in areas with heavy Viking/Germanic invasions it’s consistent with what I know. My sister and Moms dna shifted along with and matches.
Northumberland was a part of Northern England, until Scotland invaded and conquered it while the Angles and Saxons were busy fighting the Viking invaders. Edinburgh was the northernmost borough (Strategic Hamlet, in Vietnam War terms) at the time of its founding.
My surname, while generally recognized as Scottish today, is derived from the Strother surname, which emerged in a part of Northumberland that is close to the border region between Scotland and England. For a time, Northumberland was a kind of no-man's land that was neither exclusively Scottish or English in character, but something more like Anglo-Scottish.
I think it’s worth asking yourself what the difference between English and Scottish is. Although the dialects of Northern England are considered to be dialects of English just because of the fact that they’re in England, the dominant forms of both Middle and Modern English came from the Mercian dialect of Old English, whereas both the Scots language and Northern English dialects are descended from Northumbrian Old English. Historically, Lowland Scots were closer to Northern English people than they were to Highland Scots, and Northern English people were closer to Lowland Scots than they were to people from Southern England, and those ties remain despite how modern borders have been drawn. Maybe we ought to just revive the Kingdom of Northumbria so that Lowland Scots and Northern English people can be together again as Northumbrians.
I thought I was English. My ethnicity estimate came back 87% Scandinavian. I decided to do an in-depth study of Northumbria. Apparently my Danish ancestors engaged in some rather reprehensible behavior with the native girls along the Humber River.
Good video; I did that test (it was based on a saliva sample) when they first started this service. Have they changed the way they get the sample? Mine showed I was 0 % Irish, although it was assumed my mom’s paternal side was Irish. My wife’s showed she was 0% American Indian which in her family tradition she was like 1/8 Cherokee.
I've wondered that myself having done mine on Ancestry. I've seen some go up while some go down. I was once 47 % Scot and now I am 36 % Scottish and 24% Irish. Some others have changed as well.
I have a question about the veracity of My Heritage DNA regions as compared to that of Ancestry. My DNA was first tested via Ancestry. The matches have changed slightly but still put me in the same regions. England, Germanic Europe and Scandinavia (the latter alternating from time to time between Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands). Nothing else. I downloaded the data and uploaded to My Heritage. This then matched me with the same regions but also matched me at 0.9% with the Middle East. From the same data! I then uploaded to My True Ancestry, which does a match with ancient DNA from archaeological sites. It bore out the Ancestry regions. I am Celt, Viking, Saxon. So, the question is, where's the rogue 0.9% Middle Eastern on My Heritage coming from?
My grandfather was black, even though the regions have slightly changed, i'm still around 25 percent black, I have also got British, Germanic, Scandinavian, French and Native American DNA. And I was born in England 😅
My first analysis showed a small % from the Piedmont region. Made genealogical sense. Next time I looked, that disappeared. That makes no sense. After so many years, it showed a 1% NE Asian (Attila and that bunch) and that made sense. Next time, I looked, that disappeared. It may make sense if you are breaking down the difference between Wales and England but on a global scale it is not worth bothering with.
My mother did her test with Ancestry. I did mine with MyHeritage and FTDNA. Mum got three regions. Sweden, Finland and Denmark . I got 90% Scandinavia and 8% Finland. All om my matches come from Scandinavia down to 80 cM. And it make sense because all these companies test autosomal components from the last 500 yrs or so. If I want to know where my ancestors lived a thousand years ago in the Viking age or back in Roman Empire autosomal testing is not adequate. Then you have to look for haplogroups and haplotypes.
One thousand years ago, all Europeans had the same ancestors. Pedigrees collapse occurs with the passage of time. Of course we don't inherit dna from all our ancestors.
English is a nationality and many groups settle in England from other areas. So it more complex than that...its like saying I am 100% american, or Mexican, or Italian. All have outside DNA influence but the numbers they give are based on the nationality used today.
Going by total ethnicity is ok, but it is the segment DNA ethnicity that is far more important. Finding the lineage history of a segment requires knowledge of the ethnicity, geography, nationality, etc. Gedmatch is a great tool to determine the ethnicity of a segment, and when you combine it with AncestryDNA maps, trees, shared matches, etc, the brick walls can be brought down.
I had something similar. Last summer Ancestry DNA said I was 73% England and NW Europe.,13% Swedish/Danish and 6% Scottish, plus some small bits. Now it tells me I have Zero Swedish/Danish, 57% English and NW Europe, 13% Sottish, 24% German and 6% Dutch!!!!
I had a very similar experience! My Dad told me we were Scottish & Irish & English on his Dad's side. Originally, it gave me Scottish, Irish & Welsh, plus Swedish & Danish & a few other things, along with the Northwestern European piece at about 16%. Now it's around 37% non descript Northwest European. It was way more descriptive the first time!! When it changed, it left me sick!! It took away all my Scottish & Swedish, left me with little Irish, and 2% Danish & 1% Finnish (?????). I felt deceived. I was never told the results would change and could change yet again! I'm on Social Security and can't afford all the expensive programs they want you to buy to trace your history. After this horrible experience, I've decided this is nothing more than a parlor game to get our money, and we will never know the truth. Part of why I am so disgusted is that I went around telling people I was certain nationalities, and now I'm not!!!??? 😑 Maybe I will be again next week?? They should have warned us they didn't really know anything other than the disclaimer on the percentages. I will never recommend a DNA test to anyone I know. It's useless!!
My paternal lineage is from Germany, I've taken the Y- 111 chromosome test which has enabled me to trace my surname to southern Germany in the 1400s. I've been a Ancestry member since 2019, they have yet to show my german ethnicity. My top 3 ethnicities from Ancestry are 66% England & Northwestern Europe. 12% Scotland. 6% Ireland. With 4% Wales. 3%Cornwall.
To detailed to go into it here but check the German hordes that moved throughout Europe many went west, south etc. Your DNA may be German but it gets confusing since many moved to what is now called England ..check our on google nationalities historically that made up england. Good place to start
It does seem to me like these are slices in time... my first estimate was pretty amazing, it showed the ancient roots of the Scots-Irish people, with LOTS of Danish (from the conquests) and a smidge of North African/ Iberian, reflecting the trade routes. Also was a bit of Finnish, reflecting a known Jewish ancestor from White Russia. But later they updated, the Danish was gone, and they had added Appalachia. So it does seem like they just fast forwarded in time and gave me a more modern slice of data.
My mom, both sides of her family could trace her ancestry back to Germany for about 6 generations all since coming from Germany and a couple generations before coming to the US. (she was born in 1942) and it had her 50% English…
I took the DNA test some years back and had something like 98% British ancestry with (if I remember correctly) 2% Scandinavian. My parents are of Welsh origin. As time went by my % Welsh kept increasing - today I am (so the test now says) 100% Welsh. This sounds like it may actually be more correct as my niece has started to create a family tree (admittedly only on my father's side), but we don't find anyone not born in Wales for something like 5 generations. Its odd, my parents actually met in London while young and married in the early 1930s. I am retired now and live in Switzerland. The mothers of my children are not Welsh. The kid's ancestry shows that they are (about) 50% Welsh - so that agrees with expectations.
I have an Ancestry account. And it had an option where it compared you to famous people. I'm supposed to be distant cousin to Elvis Presley, Walt Disney, Fay Wray and others. Not sure if that's accurate but it's interesting.
For years my DNA results from Ancestry showed that I was Scot, Irish, English, Welsh, Norwegian and Swedish. Now, suddenly in July it pops up that I am 1% from Cameroon and Congo. What on earth can explain that?
![[DRAGON BALL LEGENDS REVEALS ＆ STUFF] LEGENDS FESTIVAL 2024 Special Edition Part 1](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mV5bGIswTtQ/mqdefault.jpg)
For all forty-something years of my life, I believed I was part Cherokee. Mom said Dad was about 25%. Well, I discovered that "Dad" isn't even dad.😅 we shared 0% DNA. Then I discovered that my cousin is also my brother because we have the same father. His mom is my mom's little sister. I was born out of wedlock and was a "dirty secret" that never came out until they were both deceased.
I gained 2 brothers, and lost 3 sisters 😅 my aunt is my stepmom, my cousin is my brother and I'm still confused. 😅
Happens a lot more than people realise. I spent 39 years wondering why I didn't look at all like any other Polish people I was aware of. My mum was almost entirely Welsh, but my dad apparently was a combo of English and Irish.
Haha Beverly hillbillies
Genetics does not mean as much as people think it does. I don't mean genomics tests are not factual. I mean those facts don't matter in your life. You didn't "lose" or "gain" any siblings. They have the same role in your life as they ever did.
My brother found out he was my half brother before my mom died, then he did a test to confirm. We both have different father’s.
You’ve got to wonder how many family trees this DNA analysis has affected. People just swept things under the rug or honestly weren’t sure cuz they had no tests years ago.
When someone shows me a detailed family tree I always wonder how many illegitimate births it contains and how all it takes is just one to bring the whole charade down.
I really like your map comparison for the change in ethnicity estimates as they gather more data! Great video!
Thank you! I'm so glad you like it!
My grandpa is over 50% Italian. And we all know this before anyone took a DNA test. I took one. And I had no Italian at all. Which is was actually feeling like maybe I wasn't related. Like there was a secret nobody told me. Then, this morning I got a notification that my DNA has been updated. Now I'm 18% Southern Italian. I was so happy when I seen that
Great. I would like to get a DNA update as well. I am going for Cherokee. Where can I get it?
@@mtauren1 ancestry is where I got mine
You Mr first mistake was to do that test.
@AnjelLee-f8c people are paranoid about taking a DNA test. But the thing is. If they have your close relatives DNA, especially your grandparents, parents, or siblings. Then they already have everything they need. It's not like you don't exist until you take a DNA test. If they wanted to manipulate your DNA some how. They would. It's not that hard to do.
Thank God. There is nothing like having good old Southern European DNA.
It's easy to tell that you're an expert in the field and an expert in teaching through your way of speaking. Top notch video
I sent my DNA to one of those ancestry/ heritage sites. I found out that I'm from mixed European descent. The results came back
40 % German shepherd
25 % English bulldog
20 % Irish setter
15 % French poodle
I may have sent it to the wrong place.
Hilarious! Thanks for the laugh! 🤣
I really needed this laugh. Thank you very much!😂😅
😂
LOL!
got to watch those French poodles!
I went to Ancestry. I “discovered” my background added up to some 150%, which I first found odd, but then decided I must simply be extraordinary.
I was never confused because I recognise what the word estimate means and I took the time to understand their processes. My estimates have changed many times. Each time it's become more accurate, These days it directly reflects what my social and genetic research tells me about my ancestry.
Question for you,: Does Ancestry update your results automatically as their data bases improve, or do you need to retake the test to get the most recent analysis?
@ickster23 It is automatically updated. You don’t need to retest.
@@ickster23 It just updates as they publish their new findings. You can't roll back or view earlier predictions but I don't really care because I see a consistent trend towards improvement.
You can view one version back.
@@gavanwhatever8196 I very much wish they would allow you to view previous estimates.
My DNA estimates changed wildly. Fortunately my family has many records & family photos & legal documents so the DNA is icing for me. Love it.
Unfortunately the companies (not just Ancestry) sell there kits on the phrase "where you're from", which is very, very misleading. These calculators are *similarity calculators* , they do NOT tell one "where you're from." Also, unfortunately very few people bother to look at the uncertainty in their result. Customers all too often do not click through to see their range bars and try to understand them.
AncestryDNA says I am 100% from the country I was born in, the range being 99 to 100%. Now, does that mean to you, it's accurate?
What's it to you anyway? Deal with your own insecurities, never mind others'.
With this last Ancestry update, I'm throwing all my ethnicity estimates out the window. It's been all over the place with new regions coming and going with each update. This last update though was like I'm a totally different individual. I understand variation and I watched this video, but I have still come away that that as of now these ethnicity estimates mean nothing. at least in my case.
True! Don't focus on percentages. They're false.
Build your family tree and follow the documents to find out where your family is from. Keep searching & good luck. 💪🏾
Mind you, Ancestry recently told me I had a "strong" connection to the Channel Islands, before they deleted that completely.
Well done. This is such a touchy subject for people who don’t understand the science. (2nd only to how to properly clean a headstone)
Thank you! (Speaking of cleaning headstones, I've been so tempted to make a reaction video about the woman who is using what looks like pink oven cleaner... but I'm not sure my blood pressure can take it!)
I have never cleaned a headstone. My parents have a metal marker in a lawn cemetery. The thing to remember is it's an estimate, and you don't inherit dna from all your ancestors.
dnland , says i'm inbreed 100% the most accurate reading , saying people in Canada share my DNA , its misleading , because it is not Canada origin
I have watched a number of youtube videos on that subject , is there one you could recommend?
@@Ponto-zv9vf think again , about it how you inherited 2% of Neanderthals DNA ? how does it reach today in your gene ?
I'd been researching both sides of my family decades prior to having my DNA identified via ancestry. I found the results to reflect my research.
Clear explanation for deciphering one’s DNA results which continually frustrate me due to my ethnicity forever changing, so much so I don’t know what I am. And I certainly have no idea what/which part of me I have inherited from my mother and father.The last time I checked on Ancestry and asked, they responded saying they haven’t broken our results down yet as to which parent contributed what. All of this has confused and frustrated me. New subscriber. Thank you.
Your voice is so calming
I did Ancestry and 23&Me. I have genealogy records back to the 1500’s on all 4 grandparents so it was easy for me to check. They were both very close although they gave me less French than I thought I would have. What I liked was they kept sending me updates as their testing was refined and got my French up to where records showed it to be. What totally blew me away was they were able to tell me the exact 3 areas of North America that my ancestors settled in from Europe and that told me that the tests were legit! Because of my records, I didn’t do the tests to find out what I was, I did it to find relatives that are 3rd and 4th cousins where our linkage was back about 100years. I think it’s a great service especially for linking with family and for adoptees who would like to know their ethnicity and find birth relatives.
Yes, I have done dna tests to prove my family tree, I knew my ethnic background, and as for relatives I am related to everyone of my ethnic group.
Yup the few regions they showed for journeys was exactly where my ancestors came over to in the americas
in 23 & me i'm 100 inbreed my heritage too , ftdna i'm 87 iberius , 13 % British isles ancestry i'm spanish portugues basque , galizian , catalunia , aquitania , skotia , ha ha ha i no longer inbreed
My sister tested for 2% Iberian (Spanish), yet both Dad in from English/Irish and Mom is from Scottish ancestry.
I have found that 2nd-4th cousins have no interest.
My Mom's Dad's line came straight from Norway. Her Mom's German side came over in the early 1700's. My Dad's English/Irish heritage (mid-1800's). The best they could do for me was I am from the entirety of Northwest Europe, including the Shetlands & Orkney's.
Ha, I am one quarter Norwegian, Irish, Scottish, German.
Same basically
My late wife, was a white, fair haired woman with blue eyes and suspected Irish ancestry. At age 17, already pregnant, she married her first husband. He was a white, fair haired, blue eyed Irishman. Their first child had darkish skin, black hair and Brown eyes. Until and including her death, some 65 years later, no one could explain this anomaly. Just after her death, I got an update on her DNA analysis which showed she was 30% native north American. Problem solved ? Let's hope so. Mark born 09/02/1966, please note.
It is interesting that the parents had recessive genes and that was their phenotype but they had a child with dominant genetic traits like black hair and brown eyes. I suppose it's possible but it must be very rare.
Must have been quite a surprise. It is not impossible for people you describe to have children of differing coloring to themselves. I once saw a picture of a Mexican couple of Mestizo origin and their six children. He was skinny, and pink skinned, she, rather fat and yellow skinned. The children, the two eldest were black skinned, the two middle were yellowish skinned and the two youngest pink skinned, and light haired. I am male, I been married twice, I have four children, 3 from one wife, 1 from the other, all red haired. I am Southern European, both parents dark haired, I am dark haired, and four red headed children. Dna test, I find I am a carrier for red hair, no one in the family knows of any red heads.
@@Ponto-zv9vfthnx for the info, esp abt the Mestizo family. It's strange & fascinating how all the genes mix and appear!
I can think of a very obvious reason.....
@@Ponto-zv9vf It is not unusual or strange for two dark haired parents to have redheads or blonds because they can carry the recessive genes and dominant genes will mask that you carry those traits. What is more difficult to explain is people with recessive traits having children with dark hair and dark eyes. The reason being to have recessive traits like blue eyes and blond hair or red hair you only have the recessive traits so you don't carry the dominant traits. I know people will say it happens and is possible but I have my doubts. I guess anything is possible but I'd be inclined to suspect something else.
Increasingly, these ancestry dna tests are sounding as reliable at unveiling your past as a fortune cookie is your future.
Certainly if you are relying on genealogical companies, like Ancestry or My Heritage, where people cut and paste bits from each other's trees into their own trees, without checking if they are accurate.
That’s just not true. Mine revealed a whole new branch of my ancestry (by an extra-marital birth) that was, and would always have remained, invisible in any official paper records.. I followed it up and eventually all was revealed. The results are not pinpoint accurate but it is unrealistic and naive to expect that. My own results also raised questions about another branch. It’s a very good guide.
Sometimes they are just plain wrong!
@@claymor8241 "The results are not pinpoint accurate..." That's something people should consider before they cut and paste.
About as reliable as performing 40 cycles with PCR!
Another great video! 🤗 I'm curious if Ancestry will do a DNA update this year? I know they never announce them ahead of time, but it's always fun to see how our percentages have changed from the previous one.. 🌎 (Like you said.. sometimes they change a LOT.. 😆)
I wouldn't be surprised. My last update was a year ago.
I got my update today - 10th October 2024.
@@gaynor1721 You're right.. They updated it. Looks different! 😲
They just did. It's different..and is puzzling a bit.
So cool how much mine changed. Def matches my ancestors tho in my family tree. My sister had just done hers a few months back and hers changed a lot also with the update. She now only has three regions for hers while mine and our other sister has 5. Technically hers shows 4 but the French shows less than 1% when I look on my chromebook, but when on the app on my phone it shows France as 0% but includes it because it's still a tiny amount, and not completely zero. She asked why it changed so much, and I explained the more ppl who get the test, the larger the database gets, and the more precise they can make the regions. So cool hearing this explanation and that I was basically right. I didn't know for sure why the amounts changed, but guessed based on logic and getting actual clinical DNA testing done due to the genetic disorder I have. That's how they explained my variants. I have a variant of uncertain significance for the dchs1 gene and it's only been seen in .0009% of their databases. I have yet to find any literature on my specific variant at all and I am really good at researching.
I never considered my ethnicity estimates to be much more than entertainment. My matches and shared matches have been the real valuable information for confirming research.
Yes - the ethnicity estimate is pretty much the least useful part.
I think it is more important for adoptees, and people who don't know their actual ancestry. Many Australians know they have British and Irish ancestry but are not sure, and other groups have immigrated to Australia like German speakers from Germany itself or places once controlled by Germany. They don't really know.
All my matches are of my ethnic group either fully, or partly.
@@Ponto-zv9vf I can agree sort of agree with that. I have a friend who’s adopted and she had exhausted all attempts to find out about her heritage so she tried a DNA test. It did give her a good idea of her ethnic background but it was still communication with her strongest shared matches that got her closest to her actual parentage. She wasn’t able to nail it down to her actual parents but now she knows that half of her background is Croatian on her father’s side. She still has no info on her Mother.
Smart.
True😂
This is an EXCELLENT description of Ethnicity Estimates and why it keeps changing- the comparison to map making is simple and effective.
Well done! Folks need to have at least a basic understanding of statistics (sample size, probability, confidence level, etc) before getting too focused on these results. You did a great job explaining that, especially how confidence increases with increasing sample size ("n"). Over the 10 years or so that I've been observing my results, the "origin" estimates have become more and more aligned with my known pedigree. In the latest set of results my "ancestral origins" estimate is 86% Scotland and N. Ireland; nearly all of my people came to America from what is now N.I. and considered themselves "Scots-Irish" and the few who didn't come from there married someone who did.
Statistically, the bigger the sample size, the more accurate the sample. When my nephew sent me the sample kit years ago. It had Scandinavia, several countries combined under Western Europe, and Ireland with Wales. Now it has individual countries broken down even further.
One "ethnicity estimate" factor that has less to do with sample size is migration. In my case, I expected to see more French in the mix. The same goes for my British Isles background. Remember all of the places that the Vikings invaded? Many of my French ancestors came from Normandy...so that might pump up my Norwegian percentage.
That’s been the tricky thing with ancestral lines in the British Isles - what is “British” and what is “Viking invaders.” That has gotten better over the years.
The French are not a single people. They are like Joseph's coat of many colors. I think that's the point, no nationality is homogeneous ethnically.
@@Ponto-zv9vf Right. Same for all Europeans.
@@MichaelTheophilus906 If you are from old, Northern landed families, your DNA may stick more -narrower circle for permitted marriage. In our case, massive Norman % and a little Iberian -and no German/French/Irish/Scottish in spite of being on the soil since 1069.
Great video again,they're always interesting and very informative.
Here in the UK,my ethnicity has just changed.England and Northern Europe has gone up 6% to 80%.Wales down 11% to 2%,Scotland down 3 to 5%,Germanic Europe up from 0 to 5% and Sweden/Denmark down from 2 to 0%. Look forward to watching your videos again.
nearly the same as mine. But also my Norwegian and Scottish has gone. now its saying Northern Ireland. Quite sad, its messing with my head a little.
Hello to the UK from the US. I manage my grandmother’s AncestryDNA account, and the update brought her English percentage up 19% to 68%, her Scottish percentage down 26% to 13%, her Irish percentage up 3% to 9%, her Danish percentage up from 0% to 5%, her “Germanic Europe” percentage up 4% to 5%, her Baltic percentage down 3% to 0%, and her Welsh percentage down 2% to 0%.
That was a great video! You are well spoken. ❤❤❤
My dna from my mom is from the British Isles. My dad's is Dutch, German , Swiss with a little English and Scot. I've charted my tree back to the 3rd and 4th century. Both sides are descended from Royalty, which makes it easy. My mom is decended from James I/VI of Scotland and England, and my dad from James V of Scotland. The lines actually meet a second time with James II. One is descended from Alexander and the other through James III.
New iteration has greatly simplified my estimates-now only Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Cornwall. All sorts of other regions have come and gone, and disparities between me and my sister are largely gone also. The new estimates are now basically what we thought we were before doing the test. 😂
My husband was born & raised in Slovenia. He's never been to Russia. His Ancestry DNA was 99% Russian. Why? Because centuries ago, a group of Russian Slavs migrated south to the Adriatic area. History & DNA results go hand in hand.
A few years ago, a reporter for the CBC in Toronto and her identical twin sister took some of this type of test. It turned out they had different ethnic backgrounds! So much for the accuracy.
I have been working with someone born in England who found roughly 25% of his admixture was from native American and/or Spanish origins. He matched my father, so I knew he was Mexican, which was a total surprise to him! We believe we have been able to figure out who his paternal grandfather was using his shared matches and traditional genealogy.
My DNA shows a small percentage of Scadinavian/Danish ancestry. I assumed it was from the so called Vikings who had descendants throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland where the great majority of my ancestors came from. However, I discovered, on Ancestry, a branch of my family going back to Norman English who in turn were descended from Vikings who settled in Normandy and then conquered England in 1066.
If you found that from someone’s tree on Ancestry, you’ll want to go back and verify it. Once you get back that far, it’s mostly wishful thinking.
It could be. The Normans were of Scandinavian origins and settled in France, but over time, some Normans could of had zero Scandinavian and 100% French ancestry, and any range in between.
I'm confused I lost my Scottish DNA and it turned into Denmark
Bahahah the mustache, you’re hilarious Amy 😂
I have admit, I had fun with that 😂
@@AmyJohnsonCrow I feel compelled to find a place for a mustache in one of my videos now😂
@@AmyJohnsonCrowi am Italian and that's the Japanese version of southern Italian lol Mario bros.Im in the North here we are more Germanic North: The Austrian region of North Tyrol
East: The Austrian region of Salzburg
@xh4r744 I’m not sure if you’re referring to the mustache. If so, that was my “impersonation” of what someone said in a workshop, not what I thought Italians are like.
@@AmyJohnsonCrow yes read my comment but it’s incorrect stereotype.We are multiethnic country.Ignorance makes people believe we’re a specific race or a single ethnicity.Every region is a like a different country and dialect
I already know I'm Irish, English and Polish because of my family history. Ancestry DNA gives a percentage. Their estimates are broad, but the research I did through tracing my families from public records and family members gave me pretty accurate info. You have to be willing to put the time into searching.
I took an Ancestry DNA test about eight years ago, and the results came back with a 50% Scots, 50% Irish background, and this was entirely consistent with what I already knew about my ancestry. Then the reference panel got updated, and the results changed to 73% Scots, 12% Irish and 14% English, and 1% Norwegian. Since then, a new reference panel shows my ancestry as 49% Scots, 28% English/Welsh, and 16% Irish, with the remaining smaller percentages coming from Cornwall and elsewhere, with 1% being central European. The Cornish ancestry itself is confirmed by a Y-DNA test I took via Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) that showed a large number of matches to men with Cornish surnames.
So, given these changes, there is no way any ancestry DNA-type test can tell you precisely where you're from, only indicate general probabilities.
I've always wondered why my English results are as high as they are, particularly on my paternal side. One of my maternal great-grandmothers had American ancestry that came by way of England, and on my paternal side, I have no known English ancestors in paper records.
A clue came to me when I remembered that my paternal grandmother's mother's maiden surname was Hewitt. She was born in Ireland, but so far as I can tell, Hewitt is a surname that is not native to Ireland. It is much more commonly found in England and sometimes in Scotland. It appears to be derived from the old Norman surname Huot, which is derived from the personal pet name for 'Hugh'.
It's more than likely that this ancestor was descended from Hewitts who may have migrated from England to Ireland about 400 years ago (along with many, many other English families) and settled in the Dublin region before branching out to what is now Northern Ireland and other parts of Ireland itself.
The trouble is the Hewitt’s were Norman settlers to England, and the Normans themselves were Norse Viking settlers in France so genetically they would have been Scandinavian 🤔
The percentages aren't Important. What's matters is what haplomarkers actually match.
@@roboparks The haplomarkers are taken from local samples, in Scotland you could be of Germanic descent if you were from the south east( Anglo/ Saxon Northumbria) , from the north east you could be of Pictish descent , the north west coast and islands you be of Gaelic Irish or Nordic Vilking decent, from Dumbarton down to the borders Brythonic Briton descent, add into the mix the Flemish , and the Normans who settled in Scotland, with all these variables it really begs the question…. What is it to be “genetically Scottish” ?
I know where I am from. I was born on a certain day in a certain place.
@@MichaelTheophilus906 Great to know people just appear out of thin air….. and here’s us thinking it was the stork all along
Thanks for the explanation, as I often wondered why my data changed. I lost Norwegian and gained Wales and Luxembourg.
otzi the bad boy went sneaking everywhere i suppose ha ha ha
4.50 to 5.10 is very delicately put, good advice.
wow very interesting. I took a DNA test this July. I was told by my father his parents were all Swedish and spoke Swedish but were born and grew up in Kronoby Finland. to my surprise my test came back 47 percent Finnish ! my grandparents were indeed Finnish not Swedish. I was also 7 percent swedish { 5 percent from my mom!} 2 percent Norweigan, 22 percent enlgish, 10 percent Irish, 8 percent Scottish, and 4 percent French. my estimates just changed last week. 48 percent Finnish, 2 percent swedish , 33 percent English, 4 percent Irish, 4 percent Scottish, and 3 percent Netherlands.
My partner is more Finnish than Norwegian too despite being able to trace back some 3-400 yrs in Norway. Turns out the border was blurred somewhat and many people crossed rivers etc which were deemed as borders hence the mix. With Finnish Sami in the mix it makes sense.
@PatsyStone73 interesting. Yes my family goes back hundreds of years in Kronoby. I have cousins there. Those vikings got around lol 😆
I knew both sides of my family came from Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands. Took the Ancestry test just to see what it would say. They nailed it. The test zeroed in on Friesland, with the farther flung ancestry including England, Scandinavia, and Iceland, probably due to the influence of marauding bands of Vikings a thousand years ago.
I have always felt British and was proved correct when my DNA showed a good percentage of Celt, Viking and Saxon which apparently are the DNA building blocks of Britain.
My DNA also had a good percentage of Northern England which fits with my research as my surname is old English/viking and comes from Cumbria/Northumberland.
Cumbria was where my traceable ancestors lived.
An example where my DNA profile fitted to my expectations though I was hoping for some surprises.
Mine changed somewhat but the regions stayed the same. My understanding of history is key to understanding how modern borders are meaningless for dna accuracy. My ancestors came from the Baltic coastal area edging towards Denmark. We always considered them German. Ancestry said so until it changed from German to Danish/Swedish. How could this be? Sweden and Denmark once held that territory for long periods so the people there would reflect that. So, my family was German in culture but dna something else.
This is something very, very common everywhere in Europe and has been for centuries. Europeans don't take DNA tests. For good reasons, they identify with their language or its specific dialect they have grown up with, and this also allocates them a region to call home.
I took ancestry this month. Berber and Arab father and mother respectively. I have African grandmothers from Sudan and Chad. I am assigned based on autosomal DNA 28 % Nilotic and 13% Ethiopia. My grandfathers DNA contributed to 19 % Arabic peninsula and 9% North Africa Morocco. It is helpful that I know a head of time where grandmothers are from. Otherwise I would be so confused.
Thanks for this information. I did a DNA test with them two years ago Maybe I need to have it checked again. 🤔
You don’t need to test again. They’ll update the test you already did.
@@AmyJohnsonCrow Thanks for letting me know that. I don't have a membership with them even though I keep getting their emails. I would have had one but they changed my credit card for that without my permission and that really infuriated me even though I got them to reverse the change.
1.52: Ireland/Scotland/Wales are a separate category from Great Britain which consists of Scotland, Wales and England?
When I first took the test, the region in the ethnicity estimate was "Ireland/Scotland/Wales." Now it's been split into separate regions.
Knowing the history of various regions can be very helpful. It's not actually surprising, for example, that someone with an ancestry estimate primarily from the British Isles would have some small percentage from Italy and Greece. Rome occupied England for some 400 years. And some of their soldiers and servants were of Greek descent. It would be a bit more than credulous to think that there was never any "mixing" with the local populations in 400 years of history.
Thanks for the great, easy to understand explanation. It will help a lot of people!
Don't worry about the ethnicity thing, you should still visit Italy. You'll love it.
YEP!!! Bingo. I am so glad you are reporting on this. My Bio Dad remarried a Vietnamese women and had Kids with her...and after he had his children DNA Tested and added to the database, my results then changed me to being part Vietnamese. That's when I deleted my account and knew it was no longer accurate. I had a friend write in to Ancestry explaining there was no way they were German she knew from her great grandmother they with polish. So Ancestry took her word and changed the family results.
They would never change their results based on someone's claims alone. I'm sorry but it's not that arbitrary. Estimates for ethnicity not specific to Europe will need a lot more refinement I'd think.
Something is not right regarding your test. No way could you be part Vietnamese if your mother and father or past relatives do not carry a Vietnamese gene. Or you parenthood needs to be questioned. Or you misunderstand your DNA matches.
These tales of convoluted genealogy always make me think of the song `I'm my own Grandpa`
Good video. Explains it concisely and clearly.
With respect to myself, my ethnicity match 68% Scottish, 42% Irish) is more or less what I expected, what with being Scots-born of some Irish extraction, and even some of the latter will actually be Ulster Scots and therefore actually Scottish.
I'm glad you liked the video!
It will also be because of the constant exchange of people back and forth between Ireland and Scotland for thousands of years. Before the advent of modern fuel-powered transportation, water was the fastest and easiest way to get almost anywhere. This meant the sea created close ties instead of being a barrier.
@@soccerchamp0511 Yeah, to a degree. The story of my y-DNA haplogroup is basically of going back and forth between the Hebrides and Ulster.
Well, you made me laugh when you said, "our ancestry DNA didn't stop at the border." Well, yep... that's because my ancestor didn't stop at the border...........LOL
People changed nationality like part of Denmark went to Germany, and there are Italians, Italian Swiss, in Switzerland.
Yes. I've had a chat with a Chinese man whose friend's DNA results showed some Russian heritage as well as North Indian/ Pakistani heritage. The person who took the DNA test looked typical Han Chinese. Turned out that some of his ancestors (mom or dad's side) were from border regions near Russia while the other side of the family had ancestors from the China-India border.
I’ve done my dna with two different companies and had slightly different results. Using DNA, my family tree search and my matches, I’ve been able to piece together somewhat better than just my DNA alone.
what about my 2% Neanderthal ? where is the sample population for that?
There in museums, and dna libraries. There are quite a few Neanderthal remains, and many of those have been dna tested.
@@GrimmJaw496 It’s recently been shown we all have some Neanderthal in us-usually 1-3% so you are good!
@@annehersey9895 I think "we" means European and north African, Middle Eastern... maybe West Asian too. Not sub-Sahara Africa, far east Asia, South Asia, Australia or the Americas.
@@CitizenTurtleIsland I have 1.4 % Neanderthal and I’m from the US so it appears to be everyone. Since we emerged from Africa long ago common ancestors must have mated with Neanderthal-too complicated for me. I try to keep up with research but so much going on today to worry too much about thousands of millennia ago! 😀😀😀
For anyone reading, and maybe this clarifies, maybe this doesn't, but when you take a DNA test, it is absolutely required to refrain from analyzing your results from a modern, "the world as we currently know it" perspective. Do not look at the map and say, "Oh! I have ancestors from X country!" Rather, look at the map as having different regions. Its also an absolute MUST to understand borders, migration, history, trade routes, immigration and how people moved from land to land, not nessessarily from country to country.
For example, You may have the regions of Australia and/or New Zealand highlighted in your results. That COULD mean you have connections to Aboriginal, Celt, Anglo Saxon, or Norse cultures/ancestors. When the British Empire gained control of Australia/New Zealand, they used that land to send thousands of their criminals, defects and those banished out of the British Isles.
Another example...If "Jewish" shows up in your DNA, it would NOT nessessarily mean your ancestors are from Israel/Middle East. That data could also mean that your ancestors are from Central Europe. If that is the case, youd want to start looking into WWII history and the Holocaust to see if you have any connections to those victims.
Norse Viking ties? You may very well also have Anglo Saxon, Pict or Celt connections.
Another example...
I knew that my results would come back with Swiss German, French and maybe a few other European regions. However what really surprised me was the Scots Irish and Native Durangan (Mexican) connections. With more digging, historical records, historical timelines and countless hours of diving into Ancestry, FindAGrave, Google, obituary records, newspapers and world history, ships records and other sources, I finally tracked down the family I was looking for.
I hope maybe this all helps someone else. Stay open minded!
Thank you for sharing this info. It can be so confusing 🤦🏼♀️
i have like 17 regions in mine so its always changing, but it's kind of cool to see it change!
Picture it … Austria WW2 … my grandmother has a liaison with a French soldier mid 1942 … which produces my dad who is now 81 years old. He never knew his biological father. It would be interesting to see what pops up on our dna tests and any French family we may have !! Fascinating stuff.
Great explanation!
Thank you! I hope it was helpful!
Saw this years ago, my mom is Mexican of Spanish ancestry... from northern Spain. Ancestry had these ancesters coming from France, right across the Pyrenees mountains. Three years later, our ancesters were back to where they were from.
Napoleon occupied and invaded Spain around 1800 and that could explain the French part. Mexico is made up also of many nationalities but mostly from Spain. The term Spanish is the language, but can also refer to country of origin. Mexico can have native DNA, etc. It gets confusing when they are talking about DNA but use terms like Spanish, Mexican which is another mouthful of confusion. I am born in Puerto Rico but by DNA is 94% europeon.every could try in Europe may have multiple historical DNAs.
@@ralphramirez1545 The connections between Northern Spain and Southern France are much older than that. Look at the Basque and Occitano-Romance languages. The Basque Country is of course split between Spain and France, and, in addition to that, the language of most of Southern France, Occitan, is the closest relative of Catalan (and Catalan is also spoken in part of Southwestern France).
I think you would be a great classroom teacher.
Great Video Amy
Thank you, Brian! I appreciate the kind words 😁
What a great video and what a great host. I really appreciate this information. I was hoping you can help me with something. I kind of saddens me actually the problem I have is I want to find the test that shows with the percentages like you pointed out 45% Scotland, etc. and I’ve understood what you’ve mentioned regarding how it could change or almost evolve in a sense, just because changing and what not but I had two questions first of all. Does your test does ancestry help to show the migration pattern is there one that does that and when I take the test is my DNA much more useful than my last name because my father passed away before I was born, and my mother didn’t think she could give me his last name. My mother and father were not married and so, I have her legal married name from my last name I go about getting those accurate Findings
Thank you
David
A larger question: why have so many people been persuaded to accept the answer to the question “Who am I?” as being contained in testing estimates by AncestryDNA and other commercial corporations? We aren’t our ancestors. Even if we inherit some individual traits from them; biologists have determined that in many cases, genetic tendencies are activated by environment and experience. Certainly, in terms of behavior. It’s not nature or nurture - it’s nature *and* nurture.
It seems natural to want to know where we come from, but that’s tied to the more ultimate question of identity: who are we?
And the answer to that isn’t just found in where we came from. It also depends on our current circumstances and what we want for our future. What our values are. Commodifying this question - who am I? - yields shallow results that are ultimately unsatisfying.
But solves my curiosity
Well, the DNA connections are satisfying to me because my values seem to be much more similar to those of the people from where my DNA came from than to those of the people from where I was born and raised.
It’s very painful not belonging in your “home town”, having your neighbors be your enemies who’ve stripped you of your most fundamental human rights, threatening and angering and frightening you, and making you wish your ancestors hadn’t immigrated to where they did.
The blood of our ancestors still runs through our veins. Of course we are our ancestors.
I had my DNA done by 23 and Me, but it was at such variance with my family trees that I had it redone with Ancestry. Ancestry was MUCH better. The Ancestry version has undergone a number of changes since then, but I do feel that it is becoming more accurate.
The thing I don't like about ancestry is they advertise "find out who you are. you are" not who you are decended from, you deserve neither their credits or grievences of an ancestor, particularly when there is so much fake history out there. I took Ancestry and found almost exactly what I expected knowing the history of the family. It is fun to trace a connection to people who lived in the past like watching a movie and having a connection to the story. Not based on my research but I may have had one ancestor who was the most incompetent generals ever created by Napoleon.
The strange thing is that with the technology advancement and refinement of reference panels, I expected the result to be more fragmented. I thought that new regions would appear, that is, the picture would be more colorful. But in fact, there was regions consolidation and merging
It took them a while, but they managed to pinpoint my Swiss ancestry. They also found the Polish , welsh, and English regions. Close enough for government work.
Great analogies, Amy! Perfectly put! :)
This feels like an ancestry ad, are you connected with them? Appreciate your explanations.
I used to work for them, but I am not affiliated with them now.
I know that I’m approximately 50% Norwegian; my mother was full Norwegian with immigrant parents. My father was a little fuzzier. Initially I was told by him that his family was mostly Irish. According to my cousins, his family is actually Scottish. This makes sense since my paternal grandmother’s maiden name was McMurtry.
However, the company I used for DnA sent me an update to let me know that I had a high percentage of … Guatemalan? And other Central American countries. I don’t think so.
What do you think when your test shows .1% and .2%?
Ignore those. Most geneticists who don’t work for the popular DNA companies say they ignore everything below about 10-15%. There are several reasons for this. They also never speak of ethnicities; only locations. And even then, they say accuracy is basically regional, and most accurately, continental. Anything more focused than that is guesswork, at this point. For some of the reasons mentioned in the video.
Also, current “ethnicity” testing fails to account for travel, which is a big flaw in the whole system. People have always migrated, voluntarily or not, in the big picture. But currently, only Y-chromosome DNA and mitochondrial DNA take migration into account, or can be compared to more ancient DNA samples taken from skeletal remains. But the general tests don’t test for those. You have to test at FamilyTree DNA or a couple of other companies that offer those tests. (Autosomal DNA, which most companies like Ancestry test, taken only from cell nuclei, don’t last very long so don’t survive in ancient bones; also, autosomal DNA recombines in every person, so after just a few generations their origin can’t be pinpointed.) That’s why, when the document trail runs out in family research, autosomal tests aren’t very helpful. And ethnicity isn’t genetic at all. Ethnicity is socio-cultural.
@@Historian212 Thank you for getting back to me.
As a mixed Scottish/Aboriginal man( both grandfathers were Aboriginal- Cree/Qjibwa), this video wad fascinating. 🤔
Both my parents are French, I know their is German and Lowlands ancestors but what shocked me was Scottish @ 15% happy with that.
It annoys me when the results show your Irish ancestry, Scottish ancestry, British ancestry but not English ancestry.
You forgot Welsh. Those Celts are easier to separate, on a PCA those British and Irish Celts cluster in the extreme western end of Europe. The English unfortunately cluster with Northern French, Low Countries, and Germany, not so easy to separate.
My report from Ancestry shows English ( and N-W European) and Welsh ancestry.
There is an English category
Well those are all Culture Names. DNA matches you to Haplogroups . Like R1b-L21 or R1b-m269. The Culture name is just used as a reference for geo-location of where your ancestors came from. DNA Can't tell you your Culture , Religion, Political status . how wealthy your ancestors were, or social status or even Skin Color. Skin color requires a Forensic SNP test.
23andMe seems to be most accurate so far. Based on my family tree, about 85% of my family comes from Germany in the 1700's/1800's, and 23andMe states I'm 93% German from Baden-Wuerttemberg, which seems pretty accurate. Ancestry has me at 57% Germanic europe, 31% England, 9% Ireland, and 3% Spain, with the Germanic Europe having increased over 10% since last I checked. I anticipate the numbers will further normalize to a higher percentage of Germanic Europe.
Once I looked at my tree knowing possible ethnicities, I no longer ruled out these areas of the world or the possibility that they were there.
Many people of Italian descent reside in Switzerland and have for many generations speaking an Italian dialect... which is one of Switzerland's 3 official languages.. .. Nothing unusual about someone who comes up with Italian ancestry, claiming they are from Switzerland ......
Or Brazilians that has, or Americans, or Argentinians as many immigrated elsewhere.
They are not really Italians, they are Swiss people who have similar ancestry to people in Northern Italy, and speak a variety of Romance similar to Northern Italian languages. Italian Swiss are a minor ethnic group compared to Swiss Germans and Swiss French.
@@Ponto-zv9vf so..... People in Northern Italy are not Italians????There are approximately 3 different dialects spoken in Southern Italy, and a different dialect in Northern Italy... That is like saying that the people who speak "low German" instead of "high German" are not really German at all...They might disagree...
don't forget Romansh . .. another official language of CH.
Wow, I didn't realise how many people took this seriously. The statistical analysis is everything. I saw someone saying that the larher the sample the more accurate, but in this situation it is working with a very biased sample. You really should think about who takes part in these tests and how diverse a population they represent. Then have a look at the human population on earth. So it is just for entertainment value for middle class, mainly English speaking people.
I wish they’d do an update, nothing has been refined in over a year.
I got my update today - 10th October 2024.
@@gaynor1721I did as well, it finally found the small amount of Spanish 23andme had reflected for years. My German-Scandinavian went way up but since my UK history is Eastern in areas with heavy Viking/Germanic invasions it’s consistent with what I know. My sister and Moms dna shifted along with and matches.
What do you think about linking to Genomelink? I'm with ancestry now
Northumberland is classed as Scotland according Ancestry. They think north of Hadrians wall is Scotland when it’s not it’s English
Northumberland was a part of Northern England, until Scotland invaded and conquered it while the Angles and Saxons were busy fighting the Viking invaders. Edinburgh was the northernmost borough (Strategic Hamlet, in Vietnam War terms) at the time of its founding.
My surname, while generally recognized as Scottish today, is derived from the Strother surname, which emerged in a part of Northumberland that is close to the border region between Scotland and England. For a time, Northumberland was a kind of no-man's land that was neither exclusively Scottish or English in character, but something more like Anglo-Scottish.
Under king David of Scotland almost all of the Isle was Scotland ( sort of).
I think it’s worth asking yourself what the difference between English and Scottish is.
Although the dialects of Northern England are considered to be dialects of English just because of the fact that they’re in England, the dominant forms of both Middle and Modern English came from the Mercian dialect of Old English, whereas both the Scots language and Northern English dialects are descended from Northumbrian Old English.
Historically, Lowland Scots were closer to Northern English people than they were to Highland Scots, and Northern English people were closer to Lowland Scots than they were to people from Southern England, and those ties remain despite how modern borders have been drawn.
Maybe we ought to just revive the Kingdom of Northumbria so that Lowland Scots and Northern English people can be together again as Northumbrians.
@@stevestruthers6180 Now it is part of England 🏴🏴🏴
I thought I was English. My ethnicity estimate came back 87% Scandinavian. I decided to do an in-depth study of Northumbria. Apparently my Danish ancestors engaged in some rather reprehensible behavior with the native girls along the Humber River.
Good video; I did that test (it was based on a saliva sample) when they first started this service. Have they changed the way they get the sample? Mine showed I was 0 % Irish, although it was assumed my mom’s paternal side was Irish. My wife’s showed she was 0% American Indian which in her family tradition she was like 1/8 Cherokee.
AncestryDNA still uses a saliva sample.
I've wondered that myself having done mine on Ancestry. I've seen some go up while some go down. I was once 47 % Scot and now I am 36 % Scottish and 24% Irish. Some others have changed as well.
I have a question about the veracity of My Heritage DNA regions as compared to that of Ancestry. My DNA was first tested via Ancestry. The matches have changed slightly but still put me in the same regions. England, Germanic Europe and Scandinavia (the latter alternating from time to time between Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands). Nothing else.
I downloaded the data and uploaded to My Heritage. This then matched me with the same regions but also matched me at 0.9% with the Middle East. From the same data!
I then uploaded to My True Ancestry, which does a match with ancient DNA from archaeological sites. It bore out the Ancestry regions. I am Celt, Viking, Saxon.
So, the question is, where's the rogue 0.9% Middle Eastern on My Heritage coming from?
Thank-you for this very informative video.
My grandfather was black, even though the regions have slightly changed, i'm still around 25 percent black, I have also got British, Germanic, Scandinavian, French and Native American DNA. And I was born in England 😅
My first analysis showed a small % from the Piedmont region. Made genealogical sense. Next time I looked, that disappeared. That makes no sense. After so many years, it showed a 1% NE Asian (Attila and that bunch) and that made sense. Next time, I looked, that disappeared. It may make sense if you are breaking down the difference between Wales and England but on a global scale it is not worth bothering with.
My mother did her test with Ancestry. I did mine with MyHeritage and FTDNA. Mum got three regions. Sweden, Finland and Denmark . I got 90% Scandinavia and 8% Finland. All om my matches come from Scandinavia down to 80 cM.
And it make sense because all these companies test autosomal components from the last 500 yrs or so.
If I want to know where my ancestors lived a thousand years ago in the Viking age or back in Roman Empire autosomal testing is not adequate. Then you have to look for haplogroups and haplotypes.
One thousand years ago, all Europeans had the same ancestors. Pedigrees collapse occurs with the passage of time. Of course we don't inherit dna from all our ancestors.
I traced my family to the 1730’s and it was 100% English. Ancestry DNA’s results for me were 100% Irish.
English is a nationality and many groups settle in England from other areas. So it more complex than that...its like saying I am 100% american, or Mexican, or Italian. All have outside DNA influence but the numbers they give are based on the nationality used today.
Going by total ethnicity is ok, but it is the segment DNA ethnicity that is far more important. Finding the lineage history of a segment requires knowledge of the ethnicity, geography, nationality, etc. Gedmatch is a great tool to determine the ethnicity of a segment, and when you combine it with AncestryDNA maps, trees, shared matches, etc, the brick walls can be brought down.
Yes, I was 30% French. Then 8% English Now no French but 2% Swedish. I can't wait until next update to see what I am now 🙂
I had something similar. Last summer Ancestry DNA said I was 73% England and NW Europe.,13% Swedish/Danish and 6% Scottish, plus some small bits. Now it tells me I have Zero Swedish/Danish, 57% English and NW Europe, 13% Sottish, 24% German and 6% Dutch!!!!
I had a very similar experience! My Dad told me we were Scottish & Irish & English on his Dad's side. Originally, it gave me Scottish, Irish & Welsh, plus Swedish & Danish & a few other things, along with the Northwestern European piece at about 16%. Now it's around 37% non descript Northwest European. It was way more descriptive the first time!!
When it changed, it left me sick!! It took away all my Scottish & Swedish, left me with little Irish, and 2% Danish & 1% Finnish (?????). I felt deceived. I was never told the results would change and could change yet again! I'm on Social Security and can't afford all the expensive programs they want you to buy to trace your history. After this horrible experience, I've decided this is nothing more than a parlor game to get our money, and we will never know the truth. Part of why I am so disgusted is that I went around telling people I was certain nationalities, and now I'm not!!!??? 😑 Maybe I will be again next week?? They should have warned us they didn't really know anything other than the disclaimer on the percentages. I will never recommend a DNA test to anyone I know. It's useless!!
My paternal lineage is from Germany, I've taken the Y- 111 chromosome test which has enabled me to trace my surname to southern Germany in the 1400s. I've been a Ancestry member since 2019, they have yet to show my german ethnicity. My top 3 ethnicities from Ancestry are 66% England & Northwestern Europe. 12% Scotland. 6% Ireland. With 4% Wales. 3%Cornwall.
To detailed to go into it here but check the German hordes that moved throughout Europe many went west, south etc. Your DNA may be German but it gets confusing since many moved to what is now called England ..check our on google nationalities historically that made up england. Good place to start
It does seem to me like these are slices in time... my first estimate was pretty amazing, it showed the ancient roots of the Scots-Irish people, with LOTS of Danish (from the conquests) and a smidge of North African/ Iberian, reflecting the trade routes. Also was a bit of Finnish, reflecting a known Jewish ancestor from White Russia. But later they updated, the Danish was gone, and they had added Appalachia. So it does seem like they just fast forwarded in time and gave me a more modern slice of data.
My mom, both sides of her family could trace her ancestry back to Germany for about 6 generations all since coming from Germany and a couple generations before coming to the US. (she was born in 1942) and it had her 50% English…
I took the DNA test some years back and had something like 98% British ancestry with (if I remember correctly) 2% Scandinavian. My parents are
of Welsh origin. As time went by my % Welsh kept increasing - today I am (so the test now says) 100% Welsh. This sounds like it may actually be
more correct as my niece has started to create a family tree (admittedly only on my father's side), but we don't find anyone not born in Wales for
something like 5 generations.
Its odd, my parents actually met in London while young and married in the early 1930s. I am retired now and live in Switzerland. The mothers of
my children are not Welsh. The kid's ancestry shows that they are (about) 50% Welsh - so that agrees with expectations.
What about the percentages that are under 5% let's say? Do we even take those into consideration?
I don't disagree with anything you said. However, "my heritage" absolutely makes stuff up. Also twenty three and me makes things up as well.
I have an Ancestry account. And it had an option where it compared you to famous people.
I'm supposed to be distant cousin to Elvis Presley, Walt Disney, Fay Wray and others.
Not sure if that's accurate but it's interesting.
For years my DNA results from Ancestry showed that I was Scot, Irish, English, Welsh, Norwegian and Swedish. Now, suddenly in July it pops up that I am 1% from Cameroon and Congo. What on earth can explain that?