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If you look into the scientific underpinning of this kind of testing, you will see that it is shaky, at best. Don't put much stock in these myths of x% this, y% that. If you doubt me, just have testing done at different companies, and see how well the results agree. Now, there are some legitimate uses of this kind of testing, such as finding folks that !might! be related, but a connection must be proven by more traditional means.
Exactly. My partner as a gift for my birthday purchased 2 kits from 23andme. Luckily for me I am a low DNA secreter and thus they could not perform the analysis which earned him refund for my kit. His results just came back and what a joke and waste of money 23andme was. It told him nothing about himself that he did not already know. Examples...his ear lobes are attached vs. non-attached, he has brown eyes, he does not have a cleft chin, he is a sprinter. It also had inaccuracies about his sleep patterns and coffee consumption and other odd things that were not accurate.
I would rather pay the money for a real genetic analysis from a clinical company.
No matter what your legal surname is your DNA will match you with blood relatives. If your actual birth father was not a Smith, you will match with people with a different surname. Keep in mind that your Pops may be a Smith but your birth father could also be a Smith - unless you know his surname is something different.
For genealogy purposes you need to be using the names of your direct blood related ancestors.
If you are interested in your (blood related) father's line you need to do the Y-DNA test, which is specific for the father's father's father's ... line.
Your certainly are correct there are a lot of Smiths out there that I may are may not be related to me. My Dad had no brothers.
I think I'd rather not call my grandmother a liar about her so called Indian ancestry. My grandmother was born in 1884 and died in 1959 being part American Indian was not popular during that era, so I'm not sure why she would tell everyone when is was so unpopular to do so. There were a lot of family members who were told by her we were part American Indian not just me and these members were born before my Mom was.
My mother was the youngest of her sibling being born in 1926 her oldest sibling was born in 1902. My grandfather John Andy Bond was born in 1877. My grandfather's Ring surname is R1b1 who came from around Spain so that really doesn't surprise me..Familytree Dna used the term Siberian not Iberian so, you must be saying that Iberian and Siberian is the same thing? I guess what I'm saying is this is a relatively new medium so probably some mistakes are going to made due to the fact that there are so few DNA subjects to draw from. DNA doesn't lie but the interpretation of it may not be a perfect art yet.
As far as my using my Pop's last name and relations that should make no differences as far as DNA interpretation is concerned. Smith is my legal name so until I otherwise can connect this evasive other person to me I will use the name I was born with. Sandy
Your certainly are correct there are a lot of Smiths out there that I may are may not be related to me. My Dad had no brothers.
I think I'd rather not call my grandmother a liar about her so called Indian ancestry. My grandmother was born in 1884 and died in 1959 being part American Indian was not popular during that era, so I'm not sure why she would tell everyone when is was so unpopular to do so. There were a lot of family members who were told by her we were part American Indian not just me and these members were born before my Mom was.
My mother was the youngest of her sibling being born in 1926 her oldest sibling was born in 1902. My grandfather John Andy Bond was born in 1877. My grandfather's Ring surname is R1b1 who came from around Spain so that really doesn't surprise me..Familytree Dna used the term Siberian not Iberian so, you must be saying that Iberian and Siberian is the same thing? I guess what I'm saying is this is a relatively new medium so probably some mistakes are going to made due to the fact that there are so few DNA subjects to draw from. DNA doesn't lie but the interpretation of it may not be a perfect art yet.
As far as my using my Pop's last name and relations that should make no differences as far as DNA interpretation is concerned. Smith is my legal name so until I otherwise can connect this evasive other person to me I will use the name I was born with. Sandy
If you want to trace your father's father's father's line you need to specifically do the Y-DNA test. The haplotype you have is not sufficient.
If you are trying to trace a male blood line you have to use the surname from the blood line. That has nothing to do with your legal or preferred name.
If you prefer Smith, that is fine, but if your direct male line connects to Abercrombie you have to look for men with the surname Abercrombie who match your Y-DNA, not Smiths.
The other issue that needs to be addressed is 23andMe's guessing ethnicity at the speculative and standard level.
My son recently received his results. I was looking them over and noticed that he had received more Sub-Saharan on his X chromosome than I did. Think about this for a moment.
I went back and reviewed my results and noticed they were updated on the same day his results were released. Although 23andMe filled in a few of my previously unidentified segments the company did NOT change the ethnicity on the X chromosome where he and I differed.
On the conservative level, my son and I both had a significant number of the same unidentified segments with some of those missing on the standard level as well. About 2/3 of those missing at the Conservative level were also missing at the Standard level.
I know it's not an exact science but geez louise, he should not have more SS on his X chromosome than his mother.
ETA: Oops! Is this thread restricted to FTDNA? If so, my apologies.
Your percentage of European ancestry is extremely high. Often there is an admixture among Americans no matter their ethnic origins. Many people believe that they have Native American ancestry but it is basically a myth. Studies have shown when there is an admixture of Native Americans it is often with whites. However, this is also a very small percentage. The Finnish ancestry is interesting.
You may be interested in reading this fascinating article about Finnish DNA.
As I've said before, none of these percentages have any real meaning. Until more tissue samples are obtained from and sequenced (don't hold your breath), you just can't know. I repeat, you can't know, regardless of what these companies tell you. And yes, I am a molecular biologist by training and have been involved in the field for years.
All you know is that bits of your dna, the percentages, resemble the dna of people the company "thinks" might be from certain regions. How does the company "know"? IT DOESN'T.
These "tests" are great for cocktail party discussion, even better for online discussion, but as science, but as real information on ancestry, they're a waste of time.
With regards to suggesting possible relations (for further, traditional investigation) there's good value, though, since the patterns they find are relatively stable across generations, but even there, you'd need to know the population statistics, which you don't have, to make more informed use.
KBomar, given each generation gets half of their father's genes and half of their mother's, it is possible that somewhere along the way the Native American genes didn't get passed on. That is especially possible given multiple generations have passed watering it down. Even siblings can have very different genetic makeups.
Yeah this! A lot of your forebears genes to not all get past on to the next generation, even though they were there in the parents.
As research generates more information, some genetic markers, such as SNPs, appear more commonly in some populations than others. However, these genetic markers do not reflect all of the genetic information in a person’s ancestry. With genetic ancestry testing, there are limits to the information available for AI/AN individuals because there are few samples from the AI/AN population in the current databases being used for these tests. Further, these tests do not provide information about all of a person’s ancestors. Kim TallBear describes this limitation well in her articles, including an explanation of how a person with AI/AN ancestry may not show up on a genetic test as AI/AN, or may be told they are of East Asian or other descent (TallBear 2003, TallBear and Bolnick 2004). Brett Shelton and Jonathan Marks have also described the limits of DNA testing with respect to Native identity. There is also some concern, highlighted by Marks and Shelton, that both false positives and false negatives occur in these tests. In other words, genetic ancestry testing using AIMs is not totally accurate or precise. With this testing, an individual can be misidentified as AI/AN even if they do not have the genetic markers that are more common among AI/AN peoples. On the other hand, an individual could be misidentified as non-AI/AN even if they do have the genetic markers found more often in AI/AN groups. For this reason, genetic ancestry testing can be viewed as just one piece of a larger puzzle about an individual’s ancestry.
As I've said before, none of these percentages have any real meaning. Until more tissue samples are obtained from and sequenced (don't hold your breath), you just can't know. I repeat, you can't know, regardless of what these companies tell you. And yes, I am a molecular biologist by training and have been involved in the field for years.
All you know is that bits of your dna, the percentages, resemble the dna of people the company "thinks" might be from certain regions. How does the company "know"? IT DOESN'T.
These "tests" are great for cocktail party discussion, even better for online discussion, but as science, but as real information on ancestry, they're a waste of time.
With regards to suggesting possible relations (for further, traditional investigation) there's good value, though, since the patterns they find are relatively stable across generations, but even there, you'd need to know the population statistics, which you don't have, to make more informed use.
Just the facts, folks.
I do not think this is entirely true. Certainly the bigger the database gets the more likely the estimates will be in the right ballpark. The company gets the information on the birth places of ancestors of folks in the database by asking them. Some people do know where their ancestors lived.
Many of us here have family trees that mesh nicely with our DNA results, including mine and my husband's. DH's mother's recent ancestors were all from England and Ireland, well documented back three or four generations. DH comes up 81% British and Irish. We are waiting on his mother's results.
Of course they match. That's essentially the time span the DNA companies use to build their approach. Consider though, that Britain and Ireland had waves of immigration, from France and Scandinavia, among others, over the years. Is this accounted for? Of course not....
It is ironic too, at least to me, that you take satisfaction in DNA confirmation of what you already know!
As I've said before, none of these percentages have any real meaning. Until more tissue samples are obtained from and sequenced (don't hold your breath), you just can't know. I repeat, you can't know, regardless of what these companies tell you. And yes, I am a molecular biologist by training and have been involved in the field for years.
Having bigger sample groups to compare to doesn't necessarily mean it will become any more accurate or precise. There is no DNA which is totally unique to one area of Europe, for example, so no matter how many samples are collected, it doesn't necessarily mean the ethnicity reports can be broken down any further with anymore accuracy.
Quote:
With regards to suggesting possible relations (for further, traditional investigation) there's good value, though, since the patterns they find are relatively stable across generations, but even there, you'd need to know the population statistics, which you don't have, to make more informed use.
Just the facts, folks.
I'm not really sure what you mean by this - if you have matching DNA with someone, you have matching DNA with them. Segments below a certain threshold which are more likely to be identical by state aren't included. You can be pretty confident that your closest matches are identical by descent.
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It also had inaccuracies about his sleep patterns and coffee consumption and other odd things that were not accurate.
