Ancestry Tests

[LP]

Is this is big data at work?

Name, Surname, Relatives, Address, Suburb, State, Country, Email Address, ISP, Bank Details, etc., etc., etc.. All recorded and documented way before a saliva sample is collected or analysed.

I fear the gene testing sites publish an alarming amount of doxx level content, sure it's not nefarious in nature and some of it may even be anonymised, but it's not ignored in compiling the results either and that is basically what the scientific reviews of the industry found relating to the race / ethnicity analysis. Techno fortune telling.

Anyway, I'm not interested in kyboshing your fun, make of it what you will.

[Mav]

The police love this stuff. It used to be that if the police wanted to match a DNA sample from a crime scene and their database didn't show a match, they had to wait until the culprit was arrested and had to give a DNA sample. Or if they had a particular suspect in mind, they either had to get an order for a DNA sample or they had to try to obtain a DNA sample from something he or she discarded with saliva or blood on it (the old offer the suspect a drink and then take it off for analysis when s/he'd finished with it routine). A crook with something to hide would do his or her best to keep intimate samples away from prying eyes.

Recently, the police have matched DNA via these DNA matching sites and even if the crook hadn't submitted a sample, they were able to turn up relatives who had. They solved quite a few cold cases that way.

But DNA matching sites have now changed their terms of service so that users have to opt in to allowing police to access their data and police aren't happy.

[crashlander]

I feel that this is something I must do some day, even if I can't realistically afford it now. I have considerable interest in my family tree and have close to 25 000 people in my family tree at this time, going back to 40 BC (if Welsh 'records' are to be believed, including considerable numbers of European royalty.
I feel it is a good joke that I can consider myself a 'distant' member of the British royal family, and I treat it that way. If I rolled up at Buckingham Palace and said, "G'day, guys, I'd like to see my cousin 10 time removed, Lilibet, they'd throw me out the door.
Besides, I think I have a better claim to the French throne: there is a lot less competition.   

One thing I have learnt is that I'm a walking European Union: there are only a handful out countries that I haven't found ancestors in yet (Finland, Albania, Romania), but I am working on that ...

One interesting thing I have learnt is that many of my Scottish ancestors weren't all that Scottish. Close to half of them were Normans who came to Scotland with David I. A large portion of the rest were Vikings, especially those who considered themselves 'highlanders'.
That goes for the English too.

Another interesting thing is the number of weirdos I've managed to find. Three of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok, for example (for fans of the TV show Vikings), The Swan Knight (the basis for Wagner's opera Lohengrin, no less), El Cid (Spain's national hero. I'm related through both of his daughters) and Magnus Maximus (the last of the great Pretenders from the north, he actually became Caesar of the Western Empire before getting too greedy and going for the Top Job). Mt favourite strange ancestor, though, is Thorfinn Skullsplitter. That is a great name.

[LP]

But DNA matching sites have now changed their terms of service so that users have to opt in to allowing police to access their data and police aren't happy.

It is interesting to see how much of this stuff is being used to tell people "What they are!", but when I look at the roots of this technology it's probably best suited to tell you what you aren't!

Most of the science I read on these sorts of issues will follow a process of elimination, with whatever is left probably being the most likely answer.

[spf]

Was this testing DNA in general, mtdna (mothers side), or Y (fathers side)? Some sites offer really specific testing (FamilyTreeDna) was one.

[DJC]

I did my first test through National Geographic's Human Genome Project, then through Dr Stephen Oppenheimer's EthnoAncestry Project.  Those analyses found that my male gene type is R1a1-2a, one of the British Isles' 50 male founding clans.  The R1a1-2a gene type arrived in the British Isles around 6,500 years ago and is observed today around the Thames or the Severn, to a lesser extent in Kent, Cumbria and East Anglia.  My father's ancestors were from Cumbria and probably lived in the same area for 6,000 years.  Before arriving in the British Isles, my paternal ancestors were horse nomads from Central Asia.

My mother's ancestors spent the last Ice Age on the Iberian Peninsula, then walked northwards along the Atlantic coastline as the ice sheets melted, arriving in Britain around 7,000 years ago.

Since those first DNA tests, I have tested with Ancestry and MyLivingDNA and uploaded my DNA results to MyHeritageDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, FamilyFinderDNA, GEDMatch and My True Ancestry.

Apart from connecting with many close and distant cousins, I have discovered the identity of my maternal grandmother's father, a family mystery for 120 years, and made contact with my mother's previously unknown half-brother.

I'm particularly interested in how I'm linked to ancient DNA extracted from the skeletal remains of folk who died long ago.  Apart from the Cheddar Man (7150BCE) and the Amesbury Archer (1450BCE), I share DNA with Bell Beaker Folk from England (2150BCE) and the Czech Republic (2215BCE), Norse-Gaelic and Norse from Iceland, Denmark and Sweden (935CE, 875CE and 1050CE) and seven Celtic and Briton gladiators from York (250CE).

The only issue I have with DNA testing is that it can become all-consuming 

It's also not something you would want to pursue if you're a bigot and/or hold racist beliefs  :

[cookie2]

I can proudly state that I have no known Collingwood or Essendon supporters in my ancestral lines.

[Lods]

Was this testing DNA in general, mtdna (mothers side), or Y (fathers side)? Some sites offer really specific testing (FamilyTreeDna) was one.

Just making the distinction between 'ethnicity' and 'relationship'....

In terms of relationship the test has indicated matches on both my mother's and father's side. (aunts, uncles, cousins)
In that respect with around a dozen known relatives having used the same test it is quite accurate.

The ethnicity factor is a little harder to split because my parents had similar ancestral breakdowns....mostly Irish/English.

It is definitely indicative of my mother's side...The European Jewish shows up in relations on her side and a 'Victorian settlers' component comes from the fact that her parents were from farming families in the Seymour/Avenel/Nagambie area before moving to the Riverina in NSW in the early 1900s.

I can't identify a distinctive ethnicity that I can attribute to my father's side alone.

[DJC]

The ethnicity estimates offered by the various DNA testing companies are very much estimates and will vary according to each company's reference sample, estimation methodology and timeframe.

Ancestry's ethnicity estimate changes periodically and my latest version is England and NW Europe 55%, Germanic Europe 5%, Norway 4%, Baltics 2%, Finland 1%, Scotland 13%, Sweden and Denmark 15%, and Wales 5%.

MyHeritage's ethnicity estimates are updated infrequently and mine has remained as follows for some time; Ireland/Scotland/Wales 33.7%, Scandinavia 27%, Eastern Europe 26.9%, Iberian Peninsula 9.2%, Italy, 1.7%, and Western Asia 1.5%.

My Living DNA is a relatively new company and most of its reference sample is from the British Isles.  It's estimates are based on where your ancestors were likely to have been up to 1,500 years ago, much further back than other DNA companies.  My ethnicity estimate is Great Britain and Ireland 97.6% (broken down into areas within mainly England but also Ireland, Scotland and Wales), and South Germanic 2.3%.

Family Tree DNA's ethnicity result is England/Wales/Scotland 44%, Central Europe, 42%, Ireland 13%, and Finnish 1%.  FTDNA also provides an estimate of your ancient European origins and mine is Metal Age Invader 16%, Farmer 46% and Hunter-Gatherer 39%.

Eurogenes is accessible via GEDmatch and its estimate is North Artlantic 44.44%, Baltic 21.73%, West Mediterranean 13.33%, West Asian 6.44%, East Mediterranean 5.05%, Red Sea 1.32%, South Asian 1.21%, Siberian 0.82%, Sub-Saharan 0.35%. Amerindian 0.22%, and Oceanic 0.10%

I could go on but folk would start to nod off!

Based on my great great grandparents' places of birth, my ethnicity is England 93.75% and Swedish 6.25% (the Irish were a generation further back).  Of course, that doesn't take into account ancestral migration and the Norse contribution to the English (and Scottish, Welsh and Irish) genepools. 

What does it all mean?  Take it with a grain of salt 

[mateinone]

Long time no speak, but this topic is of a fair bit of interest to me as it is a bit of a hobby of mine.

I have done a number of people's DNA for them and done a lot of research. The ethnicity side is literally just a "fun" thing, it is basically irrelevant, but the actual DNA matching can have some quite amazing results, depending on how far back you go and how much time and effort you put into it.

I was able to find my grandfather on my father's side through a connection with a 3rd cousin once removed on Ancestry and a second cousin twice removed on MyHeritage, well that an a lot of detective work, but it was quite cool, to eventually get to know the history of this side of the family, to provide my mum with photos as and to finally confirm the connection through asking someone on my grandfather's side of the family to take a test. But I have so far helped find missing dad's, cousins, sisters etc, so it can be quite rewarding in helping people connect.

My own the journey was crazy, my father's side in particular were connections with DNA (and public records) back to the 4th President of the USA ( James Madison), but also to a number of families who had written family history books, which once I came across these were really amazing. The oldest public record I could find was a connection to a family member living in Norwich in the UK in the 900s, but it is quite difficult around this era, because really public records are limited to landowners mainly, but honestly all of that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Also if researching your Irish heritage it can be particularly difficult because a lot of public records were burnt, but what you can do when you believe you have matches is actually contact specific parishes in the regions and ask them to confirm records..
So let's say your 5x Great Grandparents traveled to Australia (let's say Port Fairy as that was a common destination for Irish immigrants) in 1850 or so, they will appear on birth certificates for their children (born from 1853) as well as their death certificates, but you will need to check their parish (usually death certificate is a really good place for this) to get the parish they were from in Ireland to get more details.

Anyway that is already so much info, but overall I would strongly suggest that it is worth getting your dna done (I suggest Ancestry purely because a number of sites .. my heritage/gedmatch/familydna etc) allow you to upload your ancestry DNA file to their database for matches, but ancestry doesn't give you the same option.

It can be a lot of fun, but also time consuming and you have to be prepared to know you could be shocked by your results if you start digging.

There are great communities out there to help as well. I done most of my research with English, Irish, USA, Victoria and Tasmanian records, with just a little overlap into NSW and Germany, by far the easiest records I found to source were from Victoria and Tasmania.

Anyway hope all is well, time for me to pop away again