How can you be Native American on Ancestry? (Native Americans, search, world)

[Einhander]

That makes no sense. Because the natives migrated over here. So why wouldn't the test show an ''update''?

That's what I don't understand about Ancestry. It seems kind of hypocritical how they can track the migration for one area and not for another. How can they ever be accurate then? Results are now almost subjective.

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by Einhander

That makes no sense. Because the natives migrated over here. So why wouldn't the test show an ''update''?

Because the ethnicity report doesn't go back that far. Native Americans have been in the Americas and were isolated from the rest of the world for so long that they developed their own distinct DNA.

That's what I don't understand about Ancestry. It seems kind of hypocritical how they can track the migration for one area and not for another. How can they ever be accurate then? Results are now almost subjective.

Because some populations are more genetically distinct than others. It's not their fault, it's the way it is with every DNA company. It also sounds like you're being a little unfair and comparing Native American with sub-European results (since you created another topic about Italian results). It's not fair to compare a continent with sub-continent results. There is pretty good genetic divides between continents - so Native American, European, Asian, African, Oceanic are all fairly distinct and easy to tell apart. But sub-continental populations, like regions with Europe, generally share a lot of DNA and can be more difficult to tell apart. Likewise, it's not possible to tell one's Native American tribe by DNA. They are starting to break the Americas down into some regions, but they are still very broad.

In other words, unless it's a known highly endogamous population like Ashkenazi, the more specific the area/population is, the more speculative the results are going to be, and the more likely they are to have errors. In your other post, you complained about inconsistent Italian results - it's because AncestryDNA are trying to break Europe down into very specific area/countries which arguably may not be possible, at least not in all cases. It would be like trying to identify Native American tribes from DNA, which is too specific to be possible (at least in all cases).

[ansible90]

Originally Posted by Einhander

That makes no sense. Because the natives migrated over here. So why wouldn't the test show an ''update''?

That's what I don't understand about Ancestry. It seems kind of hypocritical how they can track the migration for one area and not for another. How can they ever be accurate then? Results are now almost subjective.

Because when researchers say they migrated (as a people) sometime around 13,000 to 23,000 years ago, most people consider that to be a long enough time to be considered Native to the area. That is a lot different from my personal DNA test (and my family tree) showing that my grandparents came from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s.

[Alandros]

Originally Posted by Einhander

That makes no sense. Because the natives migrated over here. So why wouldn't the test show an ''update''?

That's what I don't understand about Ancestry. It seems kind of hypocritical how they can track the migration for one area and not for another. How can they ever be accurate then? Results are now almost subjective.

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's hypocritical or subjective. There is plenty of reading material out there for you to gain this understanding, I suggest you do so rather than post here.

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by Einhander

That makes no sense. Because the natives migrated over here. So why wouldn't the test show an ''update''?

That's what I don't understand about Ancestry. It seems kind of hypocritical how they can track the migration for one area and not for another. How can they ever be accurate then? Results are now almost subjective.

I don't think you understand DNA.

Migrations are easily tracked when using Y-DNA or mt-DNA, but not so much using autosomal DNA.

Autosomal DNA only covers about 6-8 generations, maybe 10-12 generations if your family group intermarried with 1st and 2nd cousins, as many did.

There is no haplogroup for autosomal DNA. Haplogroups are only identifiable through Y-DNA or mt-DNA testing, and unlike autosomal DNA, Y-DNA and mt-DNA can be traced back 10s of thousands of years, sometimes 100,000 years or more depending on the haplogroup.

Y-DNA is passed from father to son.

About 43,000 years ago, a particular male was born with a genetic mutation. That genetic mutation was sufficiently significant to form a new haplogroup identified as Y-Haplogroup J, to distinguish it from other existing Y-Haplogroups.

Then, about 8,000 years later, a male with Y-Haplogroup J was born with another genetic mutation.

To distinguish between those men with Y-Haplogroup J and the newly mutated Y-Haplogroup J, we refer to them as J1 and J2.

J2 was living in Armenia. Some of his descendants migrated southeast to India. There was another mutation and we refer to them as J M441. Some of his descendants migrated to Anatolia and mutated again. We refer to them as J M172. Some migrated northwest to Dagestan and mutated again.

J M172 migrated around the Black Sea from Anatolia through Russia, Ukraine, into Romania, across the Dunarea (or Donau or Duna or Dunaj or Dunav or Danube-- it has different names in different languages) into Bulgaria and on into Greece, then across the Adriatic Sea to colonies on the coastal areas of eastern Italy, while others migrated south into Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Iraq.

And that's where they pretty much stayed, and we know that, because Y-DNA testing has been done on male populations in those areas to identify the Y-Haplogroups.

J M172 is not prevalent in Europe, or the British Isles or the Americas.

Only about 1.7% of men in the British Isles are J M172, and nearly every one of them came from Normandy with William the Conqueror in 1066 when he defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.

Those men came to Normandy as members of a legion or the cavalry or archer auxiliaries, or as administrators or merchants when the Roman Empire established a colony there.

Before that, they were all living in the Roman Empire in the Balkans, the Levant or eastern Italy.

As you can see, it's very easy to trace migrations using Y-DNA, and the same for mt-DNA.

In the Americas for the indigenous population, there are 12 Y-DNA Haplogroups and 8 mt-DNA Haplogroups.

There's nothing abnormal about that, since the rate of mutation for Y-DNA is faster than that of mt-DNA, which is passed from mother to daughter.

It would be absurd to suggest that a single Y-Haplogroup migrated to the Americas, and then mutated to create 11 additional Y-Haplogroups, because that is genetically impossible.

It is much more likely that several different waves of groups migrated to the Americas over a long span of time. That's borne out by the fact that a settlement in the northern Chilean desert was dated to 30,000 years ago using Carbon-14, but is now dated at 32,000 to 35,000 years ago using more modern dating methods. The cultural artifacts show an affinity with Polynesian or Micronesian cultures, which means they probably sailed there from islands in the South Pacific instead of coming across a land bridge.

It would also seem you totally misunderstand Ancestry's migration data.

Ancestry's migration patterns are based on both your family tree, by showing where your family lived as recorded in census and birth data, and by autosomal DNA data showing the countries of origin.


If you want more in depth migration data, then you should go to Family Tree DNA, and if you're male, have a Y-DNA test, or if female and mt-DNA test, and then you'll have migration data based on better DNA.

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by Mircea

I don't think you understand DNA.

Migrations are easily tracked when using Y-DNA or mt-DNA, but not so much using autosomal DNA.

Autosomal DNA only covers about 6-8 generations, maybe 10-12 generations if your family group intermarried with 1st and 2nd cousins, as many did.

That only really applies to DNA matches, not the ethnicity report. Because they are comparing your DNA with populations, rather than an individual, the methods are different and the ethnicity report is representative of about 1,000 years ago, give or take. AncestryDNA says "hundreds to thousands of years ago" and 23andMe says "at least 500 years ago", etc. It is still much more recent than mtDNA or Y-DNA, but when people say autosomal only goes back about 6-12 generations, they are talking about DNA matches, not the ethnicity report.

[suzy_q2010]

Originally Posted by Mircea

There's nothing abnormal about that, since the rate of mutation for Y-DNA is faster than that of mt-DNA, which is passed from mother to daughter.

If you want more in depth migration data, then you should go to Family Tree DNA, and if you're male, have a Y-DNA test, or if female and mt-DNA test, and then you'll have migration data based on better DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed to both daughters and sons.
https://www.zmescience.com/other/sci...ial-dna-42423/

Y-DNA and MT-DNA only tell about two lines: direct paternal and direct maternal, so migration data will be limited to only those two. Getting more data really means testing more people. For example, a male first cousin did Y-DNA testing for me because we have a brick wall on my mother's father's line and we are looking for Y chromosome matches to him. His Y haplogroup is in essence a proxy for me. He got his mitochondrial DNA from his mother, but if I were to test mine he could infer the migration history of our shared grandmother, who is my mother's mother and his father's mother.

As you test more people, you can collect more migration data.

[ozarknation]

Originally Posted by Einhander

That makes no sense. Because the natives migrated over here. So why wouldn't the test show an ''update''?

That's what I don't understand about Ancestry. It seems kind of hypocritical how they can track the migration for one area and not for another. How can they ever be accurate then? Results are now almost subjective.

You need to understand the term: Haplogroup.
Native Americans are: C1b, C1c and C1d
In my particular case my MtDNA is C1b, I am related to the Clovis, the first Native Americans
People from Iceland are C1e and there is a "theory" around that the Vikings never traveled to America, but Native Americans (Clovis?) traveled to Iceland.

[Einhander]

Originally Posted by Alandros

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's hypocritical or subjective. There is plenty of reading material out there for you to gain this understanding, I suggest you do so rather than post here.

All I know is one thing. That Ancestry goofed up whether it was the first test or the update. Because my results were so different, then if my 2nd one was more accurate, it only shows how inaccurate it was the first time. So that means Ancestry goofed up one way or another.

[suzy_q2010]

Originally Posted by Einhander

All I know is one thing. That Ancestry goofed up whether it was the first test or the update. Because my results were so different, then if my 2nd one was more accurate, it only shows how inaccurate it was the first time. So that means Ancestry goofed up one way or another.

The results change because the reference data change. As they get more people in the databank they are able to refine the individual results.