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Old 11-17-2015, 04:44 AM
 
Location: Oklahoma USA
1,194 posts, read 1,096,598 times
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My cousins and I are new to the concept of DNA research, and have our results back from ancestry.com

We set about this to clear up once and for all the "Indian great-grandmother", which turned out to be balderdash. We are largely the results of some very average European diaspora stock.

What each of us did find are trace percentages of 'India', 'Micronesia', and 'Polynesia' (each one of us, respectively, from 1%-4%).

Is there any sort of consensus on this sort of anomaly?

Is it just sort of "non-SSA common humanity" from central Asia going way back, when some went east and some went west?

Or even older Denisovan? (I speculated about that because some of the highest concentration of Denisovan shows up in farflung Pacific islands).

Our cumulative family oral traditions do include some vague references to men in the sea trade as whalers.

But that is a far cry indeed from concluding that some guy introduced a Tahitian belle into Puritan stock.

Several generations back we did find some unusual female names ('Sara Kara', and 'Sene') but those could be anything, even poor handwriting, or cross-linguistic transliteration)

Of course it would be 'cool' to envision some 'Bounty'-type exotic admixtures in our ancestry, but I am wondering if this is just some sort of genetic 'chatter' or 'static' that is common.

Any insight?
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Old 11-17-2015, 10:41 AM
 
Location: North Carolina
10,203 posts, read 17,801,643 times
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I wouldn't put any stock in trace amounts unless you have documented evidence in your tree that supports it. The ethnicity percentages are very much an estimate, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Trace amounts are well within a margin of error. If you tested with Ancestry.com, note how when you expand the details, they actually give you a percentage range? It could fall anywhere in that range - for trace amounts the min range is usually 0%, which means you could actually have 0% from that region.

Sara and Kara aren't really that unusual of names. Sara is just a different spelling of Sarah, though it can be pronounced differently and it is found in several languages, they are just considered different forms of the same name, like Marie and Mary. In English, it is pronounced the same as Sarah. I have several Saras in my tree on my German branches. Behind the Name: Meaning, origin and history of the name Sara

Kara, as well, is just another spelling of Cara, and is primarily an English name: Behind the Name: Meaning, origin and history of the name Kara

Sene does seem like a rarer name but I found one website which says it's Hebrew: Sene Name Meaning, Sene Name Origin, Meaning of Sene Name, Girl Sene Meaning
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Old 11-17-2015, 11:02 AM
 
Location: Oklahoma USA
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Thank you for the excellent and helpful research! I'll pass that information on.
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Old 11-17-2015, 10:08 PM
 
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Just to clarify a bit further, here are some excerpt from Ancestry DNA's description page of the ethnicity estimates (click the ? to see this info with images)

Quote:
When we calculate your estimate for each ethnicity region, we run forty separate analyses. Each of the forty analyses gives another estimate of your ethnicity, and each one is done with randomly selected portions of your DNA. Why forty? Ethnicity estimation can be variable from comparison to comparison — different combinations of DNA can give us different information, so doing multiple analyses can give us a more accurate estimate, as well as the likely range.
In the example below, we measure an estimate for one person for one ethnicity region. This first chart illustrates that for each of the 40 analyses, a slightly different portion of DNA is analyzed.

...

We look at each of the 40 estimates and find the average amount predicted for each region. This average becomes the percent that is displayed in the estimates. Our confidence that your actual genetic ethnicity is EXACTLY the average is not high.

...

There is often a wide range among these 40 estimates. The range shown in the product experience encompasses most of the variability found in the estimates. Our confidence that your actual genetic ethnicity falls within this range is relatively high
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Old 11-21-2015, 05:32 PM
 
Location: Oklahoma USA
1,194 posts, read 1,096,598 times
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The mystery may be solved: I got my 23andme info, and it links me with cousins in India, Guam, Hawaii, and several in New Zealand. They all have very Anglo-diaspora type surnames in their history. The person in India has a couple of Scots surnames amid the Hindi.

I guess the DNA matches showed that yes, people with ancestry like mine and my cousins' shows up in Pacific islands and South Asia. This is easily explainable through British and American colonization.

Kind of sad I didn't get some exotic Mutiny on the Bounty type admixture, but it all makes for fascinating research
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