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So my 23andme just came back. Amongst many other things, the ancestry results were as follows:
71.3% Sub-Sahara African (64.9% West African); 26.2% European (19.9% Northwestern European); 1.3% East Asian (1.1% Native American)
This is all of ultra exciting to me, I can go on and on, but my biggest task now is figuring out how to get more specific results. I'm 26, and because I've lived my life as a black man in a country that destroyed it's black history and lineage, it is important to me to attempt to pin down my black lineage. So I'm 64.9% West African, but within that vast region, what websites or where else can I go to find out what country my African roots come from?
Likewise, I expected a good chunk of European roots, but the highness of it (26.2%!) is a bit surprising. It's does say I'm 4.7% British/Irish. Can someone help me do some math; if I'm of 26.2% white ancestry, at what grandparent is it likely I had a visibly-acceptable/seeming (mostly) white grandparent? 26% is rater high, which makes me believe one of my grandparents was mixed-race, so am I off in guessing I'm about 3-4 generations removed from a "fully" white grandparent?
If that is so, I'm even more amazed. I was raised by my brother's dad and his wife; I have minimal contact with my biological parents (didn't speak to my bio dad til I was 21; spoke to my bio mom at 21 for first time since I was 10; haven't seen either since I was about 2 or 3), and I've never met either one of my biological grandparents. So I have no knowledge whatsoever of my biological family tree...
So my 23andme just came back. Amongst many other things, the ancestry results were as follows:
71.3% Sub-Sahara African (64.9% West African); 26.2% European (19.9% Northwestern European); 1.3% East Asian (1.1% Native American)
This is all of ultra exciting to me, I can go on and on, but my biggest task now is figuring out how to get more specific results. I'm 26, and because I've lived my life as a black man in a country that destroyed it's black history and lineage, it is important to me to attempt to pin down my black lineage. So I'm 64.9% West African, but within that vast region, what websites or where else can I go to find out what country my African roots come from?
Likewise, I expected a good chunk of European roots, but the highness of it (26.2%!) is a bit surprising. It's does say I'm 4.7% British/Irish. Can someone help me do some math; if I'm of 26.2% white ancestry, at what grandparent is it likely I had a visibly-acceptable/seeming (mostly) white grandparent? 26% is rater high, which makes me believe one of my grandparents was mixed-race, so am I off in guessing I'm about 3-4 generations removed from a "fully" white grandparent?
If that is so, I'm even more amazed. I was raised by my brother's dad and his wife; I have minimal contact with my biological parents (didn't speak to my bio dad til I was 21; spoke to my bio mom at 21 for first time since I was 10; haven't seen either since I was about 2 or 3), and I've never met either one of my biological grandparents. So I have no knowledge whatsoever of my biological family tree...
Any and all opinions are welcome!
Congrats on getting your results, welcome to the vast world of genetic genealogy, where like standard genealogy every answer results in a million more questions
African Americans on average have about 24% European DNA, so sounds like your pretty close to the average. Definitely reveals the long complex history that everyone knew about within slavery but often didn't want to talk about.
I'd recommend going to gedmatch.com and running through DNA calculators... I'm a big fan of Eurogenes. Keep in mind the learning curve on that site is pretty big, but a great way to dissect your data.
Unfortunately matching to specific regions of Africa isn't usually done with our current level of data and tools with autosomal DNA. Ancestry DNA's test does break their results down to specific West African regions (though you'd have to buy their test to get those) since they spent time getting an extended set of West African DNA references... though even that is still pretty early in this sort of analysis (though that's not to say it may not be accurate).
Your best bet is to map Y DNA or mtDNA results back to specific regions of Africa, I would highly recommend taking all your known African genealogy and take your furthest ancestors back and search the FTDNA surname projects to see if any distant cousins happened to already been tested as paternal or maternal descendants of them (this works less effectively for maternal ancestry)...
If you share your 23andme haplogroup(s) here we could possibly help you identify it, though I doubt 23andme's results will narrow it down to specific regions, that usually takes deeper testing on something like FTDNA.
The Y-DNA test only gives data on one line, the direct paternal line. It leaves out all the autosomal DNA and mitochondrial DNA information. many African Americans find that their Y-DNA is European in origin, and that can sometimes help track down who a slave-holding ancestor was. If the Y chromosome is African in origin, then it can sometimes be used to trace a direct line paternal ancestor. Mitochondrial DNA can do the same for the direct maternal line.
The OP asked, "So I'm 64.9% West African, but within that vast region, what websites or where else can I go to find out what country my African roots come from?"
Depending on your budget, getting more people in your family to test can help, too.
You can also upload your 23Andme results to GEDmatch (for free), which has some interesting tools for looking at deep ancestry. Someone with more experience with those may be along to suggest which of those tools to look at. I am more interested in traditional genealogy so I have not done much with those.
Once the haplogroup is identified, the OP can test SNPs to find tribal affiliations/origins.
You do not do genealogy, do you?
The Y-DNA would tell only about one line: direct paternal. OP could have multiple African ancestors that are not in the direct paternal line, and about a third of those in the US who identify as African American will have a Y chromosome that came from a European ancestor.
Just doing Y-DNA may or may not help OP find out about his African connections, and precise tribal affiliations are not always identifiable. It depends on which tribes the testing company has in its comparison DNA data bank.
If you google "tracing black or African American ancestry" there is at least one place that does dna testing that claims to be able to pinpoint the specific tribe/place of your ancestors. I have no idea how reliable it is.
I wouldn't discount old fashioned genealogy, tracing your white ancestor and looking at the larger context of history at least in gaining and understanding of your family's life. I just came across letters between a white husband/wife for the entire duration of the Civil War. The slaves they owned are discussed in almost every letter. Some or all of them took the white families last name after they were freed, thus how the descendants of slaves tracked back to them. The white family is extensively documented through wills, land records, etc and some of the descendants of their slaves are able to pinpoint when they came to this country using these records as well as the fact that they were originally brought to Maryland and several generations later ended up in Texas.
For example, if you trace the white ancestors and find out when they became slave owners, in conjunction with understanding the various slave trading going on at that time, you might be able to narrow things down. The slave trading routes are pretty well documented.
Additionally, once you find the white ancestors last name or if you think it is your own last name if you are male, google using "black or African American that last name". You may find a group or message board or even a dna project that's already going on where others who are related to you already have the answers you are looking for. Or just google the last name and ask if their are black or racially mixed people there.
Finally, you cant assume that all of your white ancestry came from a slave situation. I have a 3rd or 4th great uncle from a slave owning line that married a woman classified on the census as mulatto in the 1880's. Her maiden name is that of another prominent slave owning family in the area, so she was probably the child of a white owner/slave; but her children get at least half of their white ancestry from an apparent love match or otherwise voluntary union between two free and consenting adults of different race. I have no idea how that even happened given what I know about that community and time in history and probably would not have even believed it except that my biracial cousin has pictures of the entire family and her research/documentation is impeccable.
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