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Actually, the problem is that the database of Native American DNA is incomplete, so it would still be possible to have a recent Native American ancestor and not be able to confirm it with DNA because there is no DNA in the database from people from that particular ancestral group to which you can be compared.
It gets more difficult because Native tribes intermarried with one another, absorbed European and African individuals, and sometimes died out, further complicating analysis of the DNA.
That's why those who think they might have Native american ancestors need to trace the paper trail to see if they can find them.
That to me sounds like people are rationalizing there being no genetic evidence that they have Native American ancestors. If you are stuck on the idea, no amount of evidence can persuade you. One could claim that the paper trail is somehow wrong as well.
The people concerned, if they were honest with themselves know that they are not Native American, and any Native American ancestry that they may have might not show up. If all you had was one person of one reason 350 years ago, it may not show up in your genetic testing at all. In short, those genes didn't get passed on to you.
And of course, genetic testing pulls people in the uncomfortable place of saying their grandparents were liars. The paper trail does that as well.
The whole thing is too complex to really claim any ancestry once you go back 4 or more generations.
Plus a lot is not known. Maybe there is a selective process that takes place after recombination. Do certain chromosomes possibly have preference when it comes to conception and survival -- even for the gametes? Spermatozoa definitely compete to get to the eggs, some spermatozoa wander aimlessly while others head straight to the egg -- what makes some sperm more ambitious?
Plus the Indians had to have been pretty inbred since there wasn't much transportation and when the only mates you can reach by walking, after several generations, the gene pool isn't vast. Inbreeding doesn't lead to vigorous DNA. Natural selection can also play a role in which DNA makes it into the next generation but also there is a lot of randomness.
And like you pointed out -- we don't have the genetic profiles of those ancestors in question. You'd need them to compare with their various descendents to know how much of them made it into those descendents.
Plus I suspect that in many cases the "Indian" was already mixed -- it can be cultural who gets called what and that can put things back another generation or two.
I have my pedigree back complete for four generations and the fifth generation is complete except for one couple, whom I have hopes of eventually identifying. That brick wall is one of the reasons I did the 23AndMe test. Go six generations back and I have two more brick wall couples. For one male we do have some Y DNA matches, since it is my Dad's direct paternal line, but still cannot identify the common ancestor. The other is my maternal grandfather's line, and despite having Y DNA we are not getting surname matches. I suspect a non-paternal event of some kind there.
People with living children, parents, siblings, and grandparents can do DNA testing and get a tremendous amount of information over four generations without much trouble, if they are willing to spend the money. That info includes being able to trace inheritance to which chromosome of a pair carries it.
Both recombination and the sorting of chromosomes into gametes are random, though some genes located close to one another may have a greater tendency to recombine together. It is the genes which may provide survival advantage, rather than an entire chromosome.
Inbreeding may cause medical problems, but consanguinity if anything would mean that genetic sequences that might identify an ethnic group would be conserved, not diluted.
It is not necessary to have the ancestor's DNA in order to identify an ancestor from whom it most likely came. I have some matches at 23AndMe where the only common ancestor we can identify in extensive pedigrees is seven or more generations back, with geography and migration patterns making another unidentified person unlikely.
I am sure any Native American community considers participation in the society to be the bigger part of tribal identity than DNA. They also often require descent by pedigree, not just DNA. I do not think that a DNA test showing a small amount of Native American admixture is going to get you very far with tribal membership.
You can't say they were liars if you don't test their (the ancestor in question)dna and enough of their descendents.
And in many cases those people have been tested and the paper trail also says negative. Families lie and make up stuff. Just because something is told to you but a relative does not mean it's the gospel handed down from God.
And in many cases those people have been tested and the paper trail also says negative. Families lie and make up stuff. Just because something is told to you but a relative does not mean it's the gospel handed down from God.
But look what science also has found --- we're all very closely related to gorillas if you look at the genetic code.
In fact, the new data confirms that humans and gorillas are about 98 percent identical on a genetic level, said Wellcome Trust researcher and study co-author Chris Tyler-Smith.
In fact, the new data confirms that humans and gorillas are about 98 percent identical on a genetic level, said Wellcome Trust researcher and study co-author Chris Tyler-Smith.
We're 90% the same as a rodent, and we share a lot in common with pretty much any other animal with a backbone.
Yes and in some cases it will come back as SSAfrican. When you're talking about an ancestor from the 19th Century you are only getting about 3% of what may or may not have been a full blood Native. From what I have seen on all 3 major sites there was a lot of NA absorbed into the African American community due to Native American slavery as was the case in Findlay vs. Draper. Native American slavery is not even taught in the United States even though some descendants were slaves right up until Emancipation. I hear lots of people talk about how this one would NEVER EVER have mixed with that one. Its funny because it is a fact that 1 in every 5 of the African Americans during Colonial era were Mulatto. I have yet to see the day when a guy who looks like Chief Dan George or Dan Fogleberg would turn down the opportunity at sex with a woman who looked like Halle Berry, stigma or no stigma(especially at a time when even streetlights were unheard of) unless of course you really were a "Mu" tring to escape "B"ism and trying to get to "W"ism or "I"ism. Then there is the case of Walter Plecker and the Va. Indians whom were intertwined with the FPOC out of necessity for survival in a hostile climate towards ALL minorities to varying degrees of course. The "humbled" Native American sometimes accepted their fate as "one with the FPOC" and intermingle they did. As we all know this resulted in many a beautiful specimen to which it is only logical that AS MANY a White colonist would for love pull up stakes and head for higher ground. (Usher in the Cherokee myth) There were too many instances of this to even give a proper estimate until now.
There are also the cases of fraud where some Whites filed for land allotments with the help of the U.S. agents in charge of enrollment for various locations. I think they call them $5.00 Indians because they would pay to have their names put on the rolls. No doubt that there are thousands of descendants of those families on NA Rolls throughout N.America.
Yes and in some cases it will come back as SSAfrican. When you're talking about an ancestor from the 19th Century you are only getting about 3% of what may or may not have been a full blood Native. From what I have seen on all 3 major sites there was a lot of NA absorbed into the African American community due to Native American slavery as was the case in Findlay vs. Draper. Native American slavery is not even taught in the United States even though some descendants were slaves right up until Emancipation. I hear lots of people talk about how this one would NEVER EVER have mixed with that one. Its funny because it is a fact that 1 in every 5 of the African Americans during Colonial era were Mulatto. I have yet to see the day when a guy who looks like Chief Dan George or Dan Fogleberg would turn down the opportunity at sex with a woman who looked like Halle Berry, stigma or no stigma(especially at a time when even streetlights were unheard of) unless of course you really were a "Mu" tring to escape "B"ism and trying to get to "W"ism or "I"ism. Then there is the case of Walter Plecker and the Va. Indians whom were intertwined with the FPOC out of necessity for survival in a hostile climate towards ALL minorities to varying degrees of course. The "humbled" Native American sometimes accepted their fate as "one with the FPOC" and intermingle they did. As we all know this resulted in many a beautiful specimen to which it is only logical that AS MANY a White colonist would for love pull up stakes and head for higher ground. (Usher in the Cherokee myth) There were too many instances of this to even give a proper estimate until now.
There are also the cases of fraud where some Whites filed for land allotments with the help of the U.S. agents in charge of enrollment for various locations. I think they call them $5.00 Indians because they would pay to have their names put on the rolls. No doubt that there are thousands of descendants of those families on NA Rolls throughout N.America.
I have never heard once that NA (Native American) DNA will come back as SSA (Sub Saharan African), in fact I've heard the opposite from experts. Sometimes it will come back East Asian, other than that it comes back some sort of Native American. I think you are confusing how they test DNA. If you run your DNA against a bunch of samples and it comes back SSA, it's not because you had a match to an African American with SSA, it's because you matched someone actually from SSA with lineage there. Yes if you compared someone with NA DNA to an African American with NA DNA, yes you will see overlap but that's how the results from DNA analysis work.
Of course things always get better as we analyze more DNA, we will also get better at identifying smaller parts.
Autosomal DNA gives you a pretty good indicator moderately far back... maybe 5 generations or so. For example here's a blog post where someone tries to calculate the probability of genetic ancestors vs. actual ancestors:
The probability of having DNA from all of your genealogical ancestors at a particular generation becomes vanishingly small very rapidly; there is a 99.6% chance that you will have DNA from all of your 16 great-great grandparents, only a 54% of sharing DNA with all 32 of your G-G-G grandparents, and a 0.01% chance for your 64 G-G-G-G grandparents. You only have to go back 5 generations for genealogical relatives to start dropping off your DNA tree.
So within 5 generations if you are supposed to have NA ancestry and have no indicators in your DNA then it's pretty unlikely you do, or it's further back.
This is the case with me... I have strong rumors of NA ancestry in one branch (on my mothers side) somewhere 5-7 generations back or so. Neither my mother's or my DNA show any NA at all. This to me makes it much less likely it's legitimate (ironically there's some East African DNA down this line so that might point to mixed ethnic roots to that rumor). The chances of having enough traceable NA DNA from an ancestor 5-7 generations back is pretty likely (remember the above quote is the odds you have *all* ancestors DNA, not just one) though not guaranteed. Maybe the rumors were true but the person they thought was full NA was only half, or 1/5th, etc... Which takes it back even further.
But in the end after all my genealogy research I've learned that rumors or family stories (of ethnicity or of anything) are one of the weakest pieces of evidence for just about anything. There's usually a kernel of truth to them, but the truth may be far different than what the rumored explanation of that little bit of truth. If there is no evidence outside of such stories or rumors then I write them off as just a footnote.
Yes and in some cases it will come back as SSAfrican. When you're talking about an ancestor from the 19th Century you are only getting about 3% of what may or may not have been a full blood Native. From what I have seen on all 3 major sites there was a lot of NA absorbed into the African American community due to Native American slavery as was the case in Findlay vs. Draper. Native American slavery is not even taught in the United States even though some descendants were slaves right up until Emancipation. I hear lots of people talk about how this one would NEVER EVER have mixed with that one. Its funny because it is a fact that 1 in every 5 of the African Americans during Colonial era were Mulatto. I have yet to see the day when a guy who looks like Chief Dan George or Dan Fogleberg would turn down the opportunity at sex with a woman who looked like Halle Berry, stigma or no stigma(especially at a time when even streetlights were unheard of) unless of course you really were a "Mu" tring to escape "B"ism and trying to get to "W"ism or "I"ism. Then there is the case of Walter Plecker and the Va. Indians whom were intertwined with the FPOC out of necessity for survival in a hostile climate towards ALL minorities to varying degrees of course. The "humbled" Native American sometimes accepted their fate as "one with the FPOC" and intermingle they did. As we all know this resulted in many a beautiful specimen to which it is only logical that AS MANY a White colonist would for love pull up stakes and head for higher ground. (Usher in the Cherokee myth) There were too many instances of this to even give a proper estimate until now.
Most of the Indian slavery happened in areas of the Southeast of the US. The African American community at large is not genetically the same with regard to Native American ancestry, even European contributions can vary by region. You see higher frequencies of people in the Southeast US have NA amixture. The majority of the African American community is largey African with more European and a SMALLER group (mostly from the South) with notable Native American contributions above 2%. Current trend... 95% African Americans have less 0-1% Native American genomic admixture. Native Americans did not make a dramatic impact if at all in AA genepool during the colonial era as it did in Latin America due to the demographics.
Also, Native American DNA, rather halpotypes is Asian. Central/South Americans used in the comparison panels have a few distinct alleles that are called "Native American." Native Americans are genomically similar to Asians. African DNA is very distinct and if it says Sub Saharan African, that is what it is. If one has Native American ancestry, even though we don't have Arctic and North American and ONLY Central/South, something should show up or East Asian as proxy.
Last edited by AppalachianGumbo; 07-02-2014 at 02:32 PM..
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Road to DNA
