I got an updated Ancestry Report from 23&Me today. They have modified their estimates based on new research and better information. According to the paper trail, which extend back to the1600s, I’m 100% British, in fact 100% English. So like the old report this new report largely agrees with that. The percentage British in the my report went from 69% to 75%. I’m still about 12% French/German, but that has now been sub-classified as “Likely from Switzerland,” which is new information. I’m still about 3% Scandinavian but with no breakdown to any particular part of Scandinavia. The remaining 10% is “Broadly Northern European.”
What went away entirely were the three most exotic things in the old report of 0.1% Middle Eastern or North African, 0.1 Iberian, and 0.2% Southern European. I had visions of distant Arab/Jewish, Spanish, or Italian ancestors who had somehow ended up in England and contributed to my genome. But no more. Now I’m an even more generic white guy than ever.
My DNA did not change of course. What changed was 23&Me’s interpretation of to which location those genes are linked.
I got an email from 23 & me saying my results will be in tomorrow. It will be interesting to see those results in comparison to ancestry.com and to see what cousins come up this time.
My updated 23andMe report eliminated by more surprising results as well. Gone is the Finnish and Ashkenazi Jewish percentages of my earlier reports. They were tiny in the early reports so I suppose the methods of 23andMe are now more refined.
As more and more people get their DNA done, I think it’s easier to pare down more exactly your heritage. Our son, who is adopted from Korean, did his DNA about 4 years ago and he was shown to be 100% Asian with the map circling all of Asia. Be got a revised heritage map a few months ago and all that’s in the circle now is China, Japan and Korea. It got rid of all the south east Asian countries. He still is listed as 100% Asian, though.
emilybee, My D is all adopted from South Korea. So the DNA did not break down percentages of the various Asian countries? When he was a baby many Korean women told me he was Chinese so have always wondered.
@badgolfer@VeryHappy GEDmatch actually helps with that, since they’ll give you the lengths of the matching segments, not only the total amount. That will tell you how far back your shared DNA is from, and whether it is from one, two, or more sources.
I have traced my ancestors back to the late 1600 and early 1700s to the villages where they originated - all in northern Europe. Other than a possible “wrong side of the blanket” or undisclosed liaison, am I likely to find out anything new by submitting DNA?
My mother did get an Ancestry report a couple years ago. The regions and percentages had no surprises for her. My dad’s side, genealogically speaking, is pretty straightforward (unless one of Napolean’s men left a surprise along the way…)
Yep, not broken down anymore than that. I told him to see if there is one testing company that Asians tend to use over others. I know for instance that My Heritage has a large Jewish population who use them. He said he wasn’t that interested.
A Korean women who was good friends with my sister saw him when he was only 5 months old and told my sister my son looked like “royalty” and not like a peasant, because he had dark brown hair. it’s probably an old wives tale, imo. And his hair is now black.
I have traced my ancestors back to the late 1600 and early 1700s to the villages where they originated - all in northern Europe. Other than a possible “wrong side of the blanket” or undisclosed liaison, am I likely to find out anything new by submitting DNA?>>
I have mine traced to villages in Germany and the Netherlands back to the 1600 and 1700s. Yet the updated Ancestry results show 37% British. I don’t have a single ancestor from there. Catholics keep good baptism records and my ancestors are available through Family History Centers.
My wife did her 23andMe 2 weeks ago so she is awaiting results soon. She is Korean with big eyes (no surgery hah!) so it will be interesting what the results will be. Korea has been a country that has been invaded at various times over the past few centuries by Manchus, Chinese, Japanese and Mongols so I hope there will be some specific breakdowns and not any generic hogwash. Since her parents and grandparents were born on the North Korean side, I’m thinking she’s probably got more Mongol and Chinese along with Korean. Probably not any Japanese or anything else.
“I have mine traced to villages in Germany and the Netherlands back to the 1600 and 1700s. Yet the updated Ancestry results show 37% British. I don’t have a single ancestor from there.”
The Anglo-Saxons, moved to Britain in the 6th and 7th centuries. Some historians say they violently invaded, and some say they migrated and settled. It was probably some of both. In any case a lot of them ended up in what is now England where they partly replaced and partly intermarried with the native Celtic Britons. Culturally, the Celts carried on in Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall, but in England the Celtic language and culture was pretty much completely wiped out. Genetically the Celts are still present to some degree in the genes of the modern English.
These Anglo-Saxon consisted of four Germanic tribes, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes,and Frisians, who spoke different but mutually-intelligible dialects of Old English. The Angles settled primarily in the northern and middle parts of England, the Saxons in the middle and southern parts, and the Jutes in the far southwest in what is now modern Kent. The Frisians mostly stayed home, but the ones who did migrate also settled primarily in the southwest.
Why all this might help explain your 37% British makeup is that these migrating Anglo-Saxons originated from what is now northern Germany, the Netherlands, and southern Denmark. The Anglo-Saxons who migrated became the modern English and the ones who stayed home on the continent became part of the modern Germans and Dutch. And of course in the flow of people and their genes to and from Britain was not limited to a single big migration. In the subsequent centuries the cross-channel traffic has continued, but perhaps at a slower pace. In any case it’s easy to see how an individual from small towns in Germany and the Netherlands could end up sharing a bunch of genes with descendants of the Anglo-Saxons - genes that, while still present to some degree on the continent, have come to be more closely associated with the English over time.
To say all this much more briefly: you may well not have any close British ancestors, but the modern English may be your very distant cousins - both descended from a lot of Germanic common ancestors.
^ This historical perspective is vital to truly tracing roots. If you’re going back (rather than just stopping at today’s DNA results,) you need to stop periodically for this understanding.
And church records are not always indisputable. I’ve seen birth mothers named though they had passed.
My forebears are all from Ireland and Germany, and each time the DNA websites update their estimations, everything changes slightly. They’re doing the best they can, but there’s no point worrying too much about small percentages and slight geographical differences. The Scots go to Ireland, the Irish go to Scotland, the Anglo-Saxons and Normans go from the continent to the British Isles and back. I am sure there are similar known paths in other parts of the world.
@ProfessorPlum168 My daughter is adopted from China and has large, rounder eyes and lighter brown hair than many Chinese. She did Ancestry and 23 and Me, and both put her at about 97 Chinese. Over the last couple years, they have both gotten more specific with Asian countries and ethnicities. Initially, they just had something generic like East Asian. But if I look at some of the various genetic calculators on Gedmatch, she has a healthy dose of Siberian in there, too.
@Barbalot - I’m hoping 23andMe will be specific enough for a region as opposed to a country. For example, if it turns out my wife has some say Manchurian DNA (a likely possibility), I hope it would say something like northeast China instead of just plain 'ol China. Or if she has Mongol DNA, not even sure what it would say - Mongolia? northern China? Siberian? If it gets to the point where specific regions can be specified, I’ll probably do it myself.
^^ The East Asian subcategories on the 23&Me ancestry report are:
Chinese
• Mainland China
• Taiwan
Chinese Dai
Philippines
Indonesian, Thai, Khmer & Myanmar
• Cambodia
• Indonesia
• Laos
• Malaysia
• Myanmar
• Thailand
Japanese
Korean
• North Korea
• South Korea
Manchurian & Mongolian
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Mongolia
Siberian
Vietnamese