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.
Read their "White Paper" on calculating ethnicity.
Their white paper on ethnicity is available here: https://permalinks.23andme.com/pdf/2...omposition.pdf - and I am not seeing anywhere in there that says their ethnicity only goes back 1-2 generations. Perhaps you could be more specific?
I was a little disappointed that mine was not more specific. It said I was 95% European Jewish. But that could be anywhere in Europe. I thought it would be narrowed down a little more to individual countries.
I was a little disappointed that mine was not more specific. It said I was 95% European Jewish. But that could be anywhere in Europe. I thought it would be narrowed down a little more to individual countries.
I also had another 3% Scandinavian.
Did you test with AncestryDNA? If you read about the category details, you'll see that European Jewish is actually Ashkenazi and is "Primarily located in: Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Israel"
Did you test with AncestryDNA? If you read about the category details, you'll see that European Jewish is actually Ashkenazi and is "Primarily located in: Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Israel"
Yes, it was AncestryDNA. Primarily isn’t very specific. So I have 95% DNA that is “likelyâ€, but not definitely, from any of 6 countries. And what if my ancestors were not part of the “primarilyâ€? I know I have some ancestors from France who moved here in the 1840s. It would have been nice to know how far back that goes.
Yes, it was AncestryDNA. Primarily isn’t very specific. So I have 95% DNA that is “likelyâ€, but not definitely, from any of 6 countries. And what if my ancestors were not part of the “primarilyâ€? I know I have some ancestors from France who moved here in the 1840s. It would have been nice to know how far back that goes.
Your job now is to find a paper trail for your ancestors, if possible, and find out where they came from.
We get two kinds of results from DNA tests. We get the ancestry and ethnicity report. We also get hundreds or more DNA "cousins" -- and some have useful information on their ancestors' birthplaces. My gr-grandfather was Bavarian on paper and in almost every census or naturalization record. If we just took that at face value we would assume he was Bavarian -- but he occasionally let it slip that he was Ukrainian and his background seems to be untraceable. He changed his surname upon arrival in the US because he was fearful of being found. My DNA results show a portion as Eastern European origin DNA. On top of that, I have a number of Ukrainian and Russian DNA cousins and a few more who show their parents' birthplace as Ukraine or Russia. I see that as confirming evidence of the alternative story of my ancestor's birthplace -- Ukraine, not Bavaria.
Yes, it was AncestryDNA. Primarily isn’t very specific. So I have 95% DNA that is “likelyâ€, but not definitely, from any of 6 countries. And what if my ancestors were not part of the “primarilyâ€? I know I have some ancestors from France who moved here in the 1840s. It would have been nice to know how far back that goes.
That's the way it is for all the categories, from all companies. It's not AncestryDNA's fault, it's just the way DNA is - people in neighboring regions share too much DNA to always be able to accurately tell them apart. People moved around Europe too much, and politic borders are not the same today as they were in history so it's difficult, if not impossible, to define DNA groups by modern national borders. As for how far back it goes, DNA equally doesn't have a timeline in it - the ethnicity reports are from within roughly the last 1,000 years.
The only company I know of which is attempting to break it down more specifically is LivingDNA, but the more specific the populations are, the more speculative they are, and the more I would take them with a grain of salt.
Their white paper on ethnicity is available here: https://permalinks.23andme.com/pdf/2...omposition.pdf - and I am not seeing anywhere in there that says their ethnicity only goes back 1-2 generations. Perhaps you could be more specific?
Maybe this is just 1 to 2 generation thing I'm seeing is only for my results, and others might be different.
That is about a method of trying to determine in which generation a particular ethnicity appeared for an individual. That is very different from the general population based ethnicity estimates, which go back about 500 years.
"Our reference datasets include genomes from 10,418 people who were carefully chosen to reflect populations that existed before transcontinental travel and migration were common (at least 500 years ago)."
Maybe this is just 1 to 2 generation thing I'm seeing is only for my results, and others might be different.
That's the Timeline I referred to before, it's not your ethnicity report - like I said: "They have a tool (Ancestry Timeline) that tries to estimate how far back an ancestor of certain ethnicity might have been, but even that can show 8+ generations, not just 1 or 2. Still, it's not the same as your ethnicity report and is based on having only one ancestor of that ethnicity so it's not necessarily accurate."
Basically, it's just a little speculative feature that says "IF you had one ancestor of this ethnicity, this is likely how many generations back they lived". It does not mean your entire ethnicity report is only representative of the last 2 generations. Ethic DNA goes back several hundreds of years and 23andMe makes that clear in the link I provided previous (which suzy just reposted as well).
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.
