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Well My Heritage gave me my results, and I am shocked LOL. Here's both breakdowns from them:
Asia
55.4%
West Asia
55.4%
West Asian
55.4%
Mizrahi Jewish - Iranian/Iraqi
0.0%
Europe
32.0%
South Europe
31.0%
Greek and South Italian
23.9%
Italian
7.1%
Iberian
0.0%
Sardinian
0.0%
Ashkenazi Jewish
1.0%
Ashkenazi Jewish
1.0%
Middle East
12.6%
Middle Eastern
12.6%
Yemenite Jewish
0.0%
Needless to say I am confused and have even more questions now!
Ask away.
Keep in mind a few things:
1. Mizrahi Jewish - Iranian/Iraqi is for Jewish people in Iran/Iraq, not for Jewish people OR people from Iran/Iraq. It does NOT include non-Jewish Iranians, so unless you have Jewish ancestry, I would not expect you to get results in this category
2. MyHeritage groups some regions differently than AncestryDNA. West Asian is basically Turkey and Iran, so these are grouped together, whereas at AncestryDNA, they are separated. I think you said you're half Italian and half Iranian? So 55.4% in West Asia sounds about right for that.
3. Again, Southern Italians and Iranians often share DNA with the Middle East so it's not unusual to find 12.6% in the Middle East.
I have results now from four different testing platforms (+Gedmatch) and Myheritage is from a different planet compared to the others. Other folks have not had that crazy issue but I generally discount their ethnic origin information. They do find DNA cousins so that is what I use them for.
1. Mizrahi Jewish - Iranian/Iraqi is for Jewish people in Iran/Iraq, not for Jewish people OR people from Iran/Iraq. It does NOT include non-Jewish Iranians, so unless you have Jewish ancestry, I would not expect you to get results in this category
2. MyHeritage groups some regions differently than AncestryDNA. West Asian is basically Turkey and Iran, so these are grouped together, whereas at AncestryDNA, they are separated. I think you said you're half Italian and half Iranian? So 55.4% in West Asia sounds about right for that.
3. Again, Southern Italians and Iranians often share DNA with the Middle East so it's not unusual to find 12.6% in the Middle East.
4. 1% could just be noise, like a false positive.
Ah OK, thank you for clearing that up! Yes, Ancestry has an Iran/Persia category (although they didn't before and lumped it into "Turkey and the Caucasus" region.) I remember you had mentioned about Italians sharing DNA with the Middle East. So I guess it's not too far off from Ancestry. Ancestry originally had the same 1%, but then removed it when they updated their records. So I guess my question is, am I more Middle Eastern than everything else? Could I possibly be more than just Iranian and Italian?
Well My Heritage gave me my results, and I am shocked LOL. Here's both breakdowns from them:
Asia
55.4%
West Asia
55.4%
West Asian
55.4%
Mizrahi Jewish - Iranian/Iraqi
0.0%
Europe
32.0%
South Europe
31.0%
Greek and South Italian
23.9%
Italian
7.1%
Iberian
0.0%
Sardinian
0.0%
Ashkenazi Jewish
1.0%
Ashkenazi Jewish
1.0%
Middle East
12.6%
Middle Eastern
12.6%
Yemenite Jewish
0.0%
Needless to say I am confused and have even more questions now!
Another very solid ethnicity report. West Asia includes Iran on MyHeritage and Southern Italians normally score Greek/Southern Italian, and plain "Italian." Italians can also score significant results in West Asia and the Middle East, which is why you aren't coming back 50/50 European/West Asian.
Another very solid ethnicity report. West Asia includes Iran on MyHeritage and Southern Italians normally score Greek/Southern Italian, and plain "Italian." Italians can also score significant results in West Asia and the Middle East, which is why you aren't coming back 50/50 European/West Asian.
The 1% Jewish is likely noise.
That's pretty cool! This is starting to make a lot more sense now. And I agree about the 1% Jewish portion. As mentioned in one of my previous comments, Ancestry had me marked down for the same thing until they updated their database. It was removed after that.
Ah OK, thank you for clearing that up! Yes, Ancestry has an Iran/Persia category (although they didn't before and lumped it into "Turkey and the Caucasus" region.) I remember you had mentioned about Italians sharing DNA with the Middle East. So I guess it's not too far off from Ancestry. Ancestry originally had the same 1%, but then removed it when they updated their records. So I guess my question is, am I more Middle Eastern than everything else? Could I possibly be more than just Iranian and Italian?
That's not really something anyone can answer because it really depends how you're defining what it means to "be" Italian or Iranian or Middle Eastern. I personally would say no to both those questions, because to me, where your most recent ancestors came from is what defines people. So what if maybe back in the Middle Ages some of your Italian ancestors came from the Middle East? It's interesting, but does that define who you are today? Who your grandparents were? Not to me it doesn't, no. Plus, there's no way to confirm that's even true since the ethnicity report is only an estimate and records generally don't go back that far. Getting results in the Middle East doesn't necessarily mean that portion of your DNA came from there - it just means in general, South Italians and Middle Easterners can share a lot of DNA and therefore can be difficult to tell apart.
Frankly, you seem a little preoccupied with this idea that you're more than just Italian and Iranian, or more Middle Eastern than anything else so it seems like you really want to believe at least one of those things. I can't stop you from believing what you want to believe about the ethnicity report, all I can do is caution you again to not take it literally. Personally, I wouldn't change or define my identity based on an ethnicity report like this. If you really want to know more about your ancestry in ways which I think actually matter, I would again urge you to research and build your family tree.
That's not really something anyone can answer because it really depends how you're defining what it means to "be" Italian or Iranian or Middle Eastern. I personally would say no to both those questions, because to me, where your most recent ancestors came from is what defines people. So what if maybe back in the Middle Ages some of your Italian ancestors came from the Middle East? It's interesting, but does that define who you are today? Who your grandparents were? Not to me it doesn't, no. Plus, there's no way to confirm that's even true since the ethnicity report is only an estimate and records generally don't go back that far. Getting results in the Middle East doesn't necessarily mean that portion of your DNA came from there - it just means in general, South Italians and Middle Easterners can share a lot of DNA and therefore can be difficult to tell apart.
Frankly, you seem a little preoccupied with this idea that you're more than just Italian and Iranian, or more Middle Eastern than anything else so it seems like you really want to believe at least one of those things. I can't stop you from believing what you want to believe about the ethnicity report, all I can do is caution you again to not take it literally. Personally, I wouldn't change or define my identity based on an ethnicity report like this. If you really want to know more about your ancestry in ways which I think actually matter, I would again urge you to research and build your family tree.
I understand, and your information has been very helpful. I guess I have too many family members in my ear which is why I am thinking I could be more than Italian and Iranian. But you're right and I understand what you're saying. I identify as Italian and Iranian, and I have no desire to change my identity. I guess I got so wrapped up in this that I confused myself even more.
I think if you haven't already you should build a tree to see how the percentages map up to your documented ancestral lines.
IMO DNA is not very useful without some sort of tree that they are attached to.
With ancestry's newest update they put a bunch of my DNA in the Benin/Togo spot as well and the other African chunk in Congo. Seems like all African descended people are in these chunks primarily.
I use the search feature to pinpoint African ancestry on specific lines. I'll look up all matches who have a birthplace of "Nigeria" for example and go through them to try to determine if they are actually African from Nigeria. Many of them were/are so I now know where some of my paternal ancestors hailed from in the Nigerian area or groups they are associated with.
Both my dad and I have a small amount of South Asian DNA that is interesting to me. I'm planning on buying some new tests from 23andMe in order to test with them to review it more in depth. I'm also going to have my brother do the test (and an AncestryDNA test) to see if he has this S. Asian DNA to try to figure it out more. I have a paternal first cousin who also has a 2% S. Asian DNA on his mom's side of the family (his mom is my dad's sister) so I want to try to figure out where it came from. That's how I use DNA, I basically compare it to known relatives, figure out what line of our ancestry certain ethnicities are coming from, then try to pin point further.
Some of my genealogy friends suggested I do 23andMe as they say that that company has better ethnicity tools and you can map what chromosomes that ethnicity is represented on. I use DNA Painter and I'd like to compare my DNA on that site that I've plotted (it is 70% complete) with 23andMe and see if I can make sense of certain ethnicities and how they are related to certain ancestors/couples.
My 36% Benin/Togo is 35.5% Nigerian at 23andme, or it may have also been absorbed into the 19.3% Ghanaian, Liberian, & Sierra Leonean as well. For US blacks, only 2-3% of slaves imported to the United States specifically came from the port "Bight of Benin". AAs are much more likely to have higher ancestry coming from other West African countries. I think 23andme is the more accurate one in this regard. https://tracingafricanroots.com/tabl...al-background/
What I do like about 23andme is they test you for recent ancestry at 0.1% or more, and it is reflected in your ancestry composition chromosome painting that is color-coded with every ethnicity that was detected. For me at least, those super low percentages becomes less "noise" and raises the possibility of a real ancestor from some of those resurfacing regions such as Spain/Portugal and even the Middle East on third-party sites while seemingly not present in my reports at AncestryDNA(since the update apparently doesn't count any ancestry lower than 1% ), even though it's the same raw data.
The other feature that is cool and is potentially helpful when doing more paper trail genealogy is the timeline bar they provide for your ancestry within the last 8 generations or 300 years. The downside to it is it appears to not include any ancestry that falls under the "broadly" category, which accounts for almost 20% of my ancestry. Also, those minuscule amounts that probably go back further than 8 generations are not accounted for in the timeline either, such as the Chinese & Southeast Asian, North African/Middle East, and South Asian they detected in my chromosomes.
Edit:
It looks like Ancestry are currently in the process of updating all members ancestry estimates.
Last edited by Chicagoland60426; 10-19-2019 at 09:30 PM..
What I do like about 23andme is they test you for recent ancestry at 0.1% or more, and it is reflected in your ancestry composition chromosome painting that is color-coded with every ethnicity that was detected. For me at least, those super low percentages becomes less "noise" and raises the possibility of a real ancestor from some of those resurfacing regions such as Spain/Portugal and even the Middle East on third-party sites while seemingly not present in my reports at AncestryDNA(since the update apparently doesn't count any ancestry lower than 1% ), even though it's the same raw data.
Why do you think the inclusion of such low results raises the probably that they are accurate and not noise? Just because 23andMe includes them doesn't mean they are not noise. The very reason AncestryDNA doesn't include results under 1% is because they are so likely to be noise.
Quote:
The other feature that is cool and is potentially helpful when doing more paper trail genealogy is the timeline bar they provide for your ancestry within the last 8 generations or 300 years. The downside to it is it appears to not include any ancestry that falls under the "broadly" category, which accounts for almost 20% of my ancestry. Also, those minuscule amounts that probably go back further than 8 generations are not accounted for in the timeline either, such as the Chinese & Southeast Asian, North African/Middle East, and South Asian they detected in my chromosomes.
My Timeline does include those small percentages which makes the Timeline tool, at best, not very useful and at worst, very misleading. It assumes you only had one most recent full blooded ancestor from that region, which is often not the case, and of course it's based on the ethnicity report, which is only an estimate and shouldn't be taken literally, therefore the Timeline should not be taken literally either.
For example, 23andMe includes my following low percentage results in the Timeline (ranging from 1.5% to 0.1%):
Greek & Balkan
Iranian, Caucasian & Mesopotamian
Anatolian
Eastern European
Gujarati Patidar
It estimates an ancestor from 1710-1830 or 5-8+ generations ago. This is nonsense. I do not have ancestry from any of these places, at least not within a genealogical time frame like the Timeline is claiming. Not only does my researched tree prove this but it's also inconsistent results from other DNA companies. This latest update from 23andMe really decreased the accuracy and reliability of the report for me personally.
But if I didn't know any better, I might not understand that this is just noise and not to take the Timeline very seriously. It's very misleading.
Quote:
Edit:
It looks like Ancestry are currently in the process of updating all members ancestry estimates.
So far, I've only seen indication that they are adding some new Genetic Communities. There's been no reports of changes to percentages.
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