Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
As someone else said, DNA tests only really cover your Y (father's father's father+) and X (mother's mother's mother+). To try to find more information some who are researching their geneaology ask relatives to perform DNA tests (for example, if your mother had a brother you could find more about the Y DNA from that line). Also to find out the most information one looks at the DNA results and paper records, as far back as one can go. Obviously the paper trail has limits (for instance in your grandfather's case) so DNA does help provide information where no paper records exist, but I wouldn't just look at DNA results as the be-all-end-all, just additional information. Unfortunately some of our origins could never be known or proved. But because oral tradition is part of your heritage I wouldn't lose heart if stories about your family heritage can't be measured through your DNA.
Also, I'm not sure if "Native American" actually shows up in DNA results as such, I think it's more about comparing DNA results of an individual with those who have similar profiles, some of whom may have more of a "paper trail" identifying them as belonging to a certain ethnicity. Also, as is my understanding, DNA identification within the Native American communities can be kind of touchy. During Senator Elizabeth Warren's campaign there were a lot of editorials about the oral traditions of Cherokee heritage in her family and I remember reading that it's not this "one drop of blood" idea used to judge some other ethnicities, but rather identification with and participation in a community - like, if you've been part of a certain community for generations, does it really matter what your DNA says? But I'm not an expert, someone who identifies as part of a native American nation could say more about this.
Also, have you tried using another company such as FtDNA (Family Tree DNA - Genetic Genealogy Starts Here)? I'm not as familiar with 23andme but Family Tree DNA relies a lot upon relationships with other people who have tested and migration patterns based upon genetic profiles, haplotypes, etc. - it's an ongoing process when you see other people who match your profile and where they're from, giving you more information and connections to help your research. It's the group used by a lot of serious geneaologists and has been featured in Henry Louis Gates Jr's programs such as "Finding Your Roots"
Anyway, good luck with your search
*** I don't work for or sell FtDNA, promise! I just have several relatives deeply into genealogical research who have used it. It's pretty cool.
Last edited by tribechamy; 01-31-2014 at 06:10 AM..
Reason: clarification
As someone else said, DNA tests only really cover your Y (father's father's father+) and X (mother's mother's mother+). To try to find more information some who are researching their geneaology ask relatives to perform DNA tests (for example, if your mother had a brother you could find more about the Y DNA from that line). Also to find out the most information one looks at the DNA results and paper records, as far back as one can go. Obviously the paper trail has limits (for instance in your grandfather's case) so DNA does help provide information where no paper records exist, but I wouldn't just look at DNA results as the be-all-end-all, just additional information. Unfortunately some of our origins could never be known or proved. But because oral tradition is part of your heritage I wouldn't lose heart if stories about your family heritage can't be measured through your DNA.
Also, I'm not sure if "Native American" actually shows up in DNA results as such, I think it's more about comparing DNA results of an individual with those who have similar profiles, some of whom may have more of a "paper trail" identifying them as belonging to a certain ethnicity. Also, as is my understanding, DNA identification within the Native American communities can be kind of touchy. During Senator Elizabeth Warren's campaign there were a lot of editorials about the oral traditions of Cherokee heritage in her family and I remember reading that it's not this "one drop of blood" idea used to judge some other ethnicities, but rather identification with and participation in a community - like, if you've been part of a certain community for generations, does it really matter what your DNA says? But I'm not an expert, someone who identifies as part of a native American nation could say more about this.
Also, have you tried using another company such as FtDNA (Family Tree DNA - Genetic Genealogy Starts Here)? I'm not as familiar with 23andme but Family Tree DNA relies a lot upon relationships with other people who have tested and migration patterns based upon genetic profiles, haplotypes, etc. - it's an ongoing process when you see other people who match your profile and where they're from, giving you more information and connections to help your research. It's the group used by a lot of serious geneaologists and has been featured in Henry Louis Gates Jr's programs such as "Finding Your Roots"
Anyway, good luck with your search
*** I don't work for or sell FtDNA, promise! I just have several relatives deeply into genealogical research who have used it. It's pretty cool.
Hopefully anyone who is looking for advice only reads the first line of your reply and decides to skip the rest.
If you mean 23andMe, it's $99.00 It was $300 not too long ago, and I think $1,200 when I first saw the owners (two women from Silicon Valley) on a morning talk show.
There used to be two parts to it; the genealogy part and the health part, but the federal authorities closed the health part.
Haven't read the entire thread so it's possible someone has mentioned this.
Many NA tribes - including the southern tribes that ended up in Oklahoma - Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole - have not participated to any significant extent with the companies that market DNA tests to the public. So the samples in the company's databases are too small to produce results for those groups.
So someone might have already mentioned this, but keep in mind there are basically three types of DNA tests:
Y DNA
If you are male you inherit your Y DNA as a near exact copy (it mutates every few generations or so) from your father, and he from his father, etc... So it represents hundreds and thousands of years of ancestry. People who are very close on the Y DNA line can with a pretty high degree of confidence be declared as relatives on that ancestral line, though it depends on the data.
Mitochondrial DNA
You get this from your mother (whether your male or female) and like the Y DNA it's a near exact copy, in fact it changes less often than the Y. This means it too can find matches and give data thousands of years back.
With both Y and Mitochondrial DNA you can also get something called the "haplogroup"... this can be thought of as a signature that the DNA most resembles that maps to a point in time in history and a location. This can usually identify broadly where those paternal and maternal lines distantly came from (thousands of years ago)... For example from Europe (through Asia from Africa)... or from America (meaning Native American) through East Asia from Africa, etc...
Both of those tests only give you a glimpse of a single line in each direction, your maternal and paternal line, everything else in between isn't represented.
Autosomal DNA
This is the pretty much the rest of your DNA. You get half of this from each parent. They got half of each of their DNA from their parents, etc. What this means is each generation a more or less random half of the data is passed down and half isn't. Due to the random nature of this you don't inherit the data evenly. If you did it would look like this:
Since we have no current way to predict how the DNA inherits we use the concept represented by that image as an example of what you are made of if DNA inherited evenly based on your distant ancestors... the truth is you may have 10% of your DNA from one 3rd great grandparent and 0% from another. Again since it's random your DNA is made up of certain pieces of DNA from ancestors.
Because of this it is usually considered that Autosomal DNA gives you a pretty robust image of your ancestry, though only roughly within the last 300 years or so.
With the Autosomal DNA they compare it against other DNA samples of people around the world. People who have a long enough ancestry in an area to represent (or hopefully represent) the native population (meaning native in the last 200-300 years, possibly beyond that.
They then can guess what ethnic groups you most like match... such as 35% british isles etc.
This is not unlike hearing someones spoken accent and trying to predict what combination of regions it's from. Of course this is done with data, though it's made using guesses and assumptions on the data. It is far from conclusive, though certain point of data are more likely to be accurate than others.
For example if you come up a with a significant amount North African DNA that doesn't mean you have an ancestor from North Africa in the last 300 years, just someone who would have contained North African DNA. Since there were heavy migrations between North Africa and the rest of the Mediterranean area and the Middle East/West Asia it may simply mean you have a Greek ancestor, or one from Turkey. Maybe even one from Continental Europe like Germany or Hungary.
If you come up with a significant amount of Sub-Saharan African then that might suggest something different, depending on your ancestry makeup.
Some small bits of data may just be noise however... basically something that *looks* like something else.
Hopefully this helps you, but I highly recommend to continue digging into the data. Go to gedmatch.com and upload your results there, they have other data sets and tools. You can also paint your chromosomes with ethnicity and see if some of the small bits are bit continuous segments or just little bits of noise.
There's a steep learning curve to interpret the data and a lot of it is very subjective. Science and data analysis is about likelihood's and also margins of error. The more information you use and understanding you have allows you to interpret the data with a higher degree of likelihood.
As someone else said, DNA tests only really cover your Y (father's father's father+) and X (mother's mother's mother+).
Nope. Genetic testing can now give information from all the chromosomes, not just X and Y. It is called autosomal DNA.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
