My Ancestry: An Adventure of Discovery!

[wyfbane]

Hey hey. So has anyone else done the Ancestry.com thing? I was in the military so the government has my DNA. I wasn't too concerned about that aspect, and curiosity got the better of me.
Is is super easy to do. Just sign up and they send a kit to your house. You spit in a container and return it. They send you constant updates and give you prompts and lots of free trial time to put your family tree together. It was a really great experience.
Here were my results:
Europe West 36%

Ireland 27%

Scandinavia 16%

Great Britain 9%

Italy/Greece 7%

Trace Regions :

Iberian Peninsula 4%

Europe East 1%

 

[deathmetal]

It is also fun and informative to look up those various tribes and see which facial traits you express:
http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/troephotos.htm

 

[jackswilling]

My brother just had his done and got a couple emails already from "relatives" including one from my dad's mom's, aka my grandmother's "family." Amazing that this can happen.

 

[pagan]

You spit in a container and return it.

Thanks for clearing that up, this thread could have gone south real quick

 

[cossackjack]

The DNA tests for ancestral composition are a curiosity & for me are only of entertainment value.
For example, my brother-in-law had the same Ancestry.com DNA analysis which curiously showed no American Indian/Native American despite of his maternal grandmother being Cheyenne, & no Irish despite his father's family being 100% Irish. To our knowledge his is neither adopted nor switched at birth.
My wife tried through another reputable company which twice was unable to analyze her DNA; I witnessed the second sample collection to help her reduce any sampling error.

I told her that they probably could not analyze her triple helix DNA (extra-terrestrial, I don't know, though she is out-of-this-world hot).

 

[jackswilling]

No way it could be mere entertainment. My grandmother died in the 1930s and my brother was contacted by one of her/our direct descendants, based on the DNA match. I am going to take a different test just to compare to my brother's test. We should be real close based on physical charastics. A lot of people want have have "Indian" blood, but they may or may not. Regardless, the test is accurate enough to put us in touch with unknown relatives and the data base is only growing. For Ancestry, that means:
7. How accurate is the test?

AncestryDNA uses advanced scientific techniques to produce your results. We measure and analyze a person’s entire genome at over 700,000 locations. During the testing process, each DNA sample is held to a quality standard of at least a 98% call rate. Any results that don’t meet that standard may require a new DNA sample to be collected.

Then we compare your DNA to one of the most comprehensive and unique collections of DNA samples from people around the world, to identify overlap. As our database of DNA samples continues to grow, you could receive updates with new information.

8. What does the ‘confidence percentage’ mean for DNA matches?

Our DNA matching confidence percentage is a number from 0-100% and is meant to help you identify which matches to focus on—the higher the confidence the more likely that they are more closely related to you. Our confidence levels are determined by the amount of common DNA two people share with one another. To do this, we measure over 700,000 markers in the DNA to analyze the number and length of continuous strands that align. Over time, as we continue to understand more about different populations, these confidence levels will improve.

 

[deathmetal]

no American Indian/Native American despite of his maternal grandmother being Cheyenne, & no Irish despite his father's family being 100% Irish

3/4 of Americans with "Indian" ancestry (Siberian) find out they have none. It is just what happens.
Regarding the Irish, I would look into the possibility of Scots-Irish, who are not ethnically Irish (neolithic + Iberian/Middle Eastern + later Eastern wave).

 

[conlejm]

My wife and I both took the Ancestry DNA test. We are both New Englanders, and nearly every New Englander claims to have the "Native American" ancestor in their family tree. Well, neither of us do. Furthermore, I was long told I was mainly of English descent ... turns out I am mainly of Irish descent.
On a side note, you can download the raw data, and upload it to other sites to get more information about your ancestry, and your genetic predispositions to health-related issues.

 

[aldecaker]

Good Lord, that's the last thing I'd want hanging over my head!

 

[Sjmiller CPG]

You have to take into account that stories you have been told about your family's history are mostly just stories. I have been interested in my own family history for over thirty years and the only stories that I heard that actually turned out to be true were related to military service and on a rare occasion country of origin. Some examples would be l was told that I was a direct descendant of Davy Crockett. Truth is that he was a distant cousin. Was told one of my great grandmothers was full blooded Cherokee. In truth she was of German and English descent.
A more interesting example would be former football player Emmet Smith who was 100% certain that he was 100% African. He was actually 15% white European. Even more interesting was that Smith's 85% African was the highest percentage any African American That had been tested achieved.

 

[ashdigger]

Myself and OJ Simpson were cleared thanks to our "family" tests.

 

[warren]

DNA can put the lie to many family myths and stories. I prefer the family lore I grew up with. My father always said his side of the family, Scots-Irish, came to the country with a price on his head. The maternal side of the family is primarily "black" Irish according to lore. All of which means absolutely nothing today and is very entertaining.

 

[jackswilling]

I am supposedly a distant relation to Davy Crockett from the afore mentioned grandmother's side of the family tree. Who knows?

 

[ashdigger]

I'm with Warren. I'll take the lore to the facts.
I think the commercials are weird.

 

[tbradsim1]

Years ago I went to a Gathering of Simons that said we came across on the Slave Ship Amistiad. Some were Pompus Asses, so When question time came around I raised my hand. Yes Sir Mr Simon what is your question. Well when we came on the ship was we on the top deck or below the deck. That was not recieved well. :laughat:

 

[fmgee]

I do enjoy overturning some of the family law I grew up with. My grandfather died when I was 5 but lived large in our house growing up. One of the family stories was that he was too young to fight in the second world war and made his mother sign the papers to allow him to enlist at the age of 15. He then met my grandmother at the end of the war when he worked as a gate keeper at a hospital. Well, I dug out his war records and found out he was of legal age when he enlisted and was sent home from active service overseas because he had contracted tropical chlamydia! He also had a checkered past before enlisting according to the records but they are a little vague only listing "carnal knowledge" as a prior offence. I have to say I like the true version of him much better. He is real and not a saint as he was presented.
As for my heritage, I like the Australian term for a mixed breed dog which is a "bitza". It simply means bits of this and bits of that. I am pretty sure I am one of those and don't need to spit in a tube to find out.

 

[cossackjack]

+1 Warren.
My ancestry is easy:
Gap-toothed, slack-jawed, mouth-breathing, drooling, knuckle-dragging, slope-headed, inbred Carpathian Hillbilly...with tattoo to tooth ratios greater than one.
I don't need no stikin' DNA test. :nana:

 

[tuold]

I did submit my DNA to Ancestry.com and it lead to a couple of interesting discoveries.
I already knew my mother's family was from Sweden and my father's from England. I was surprised when the test returned results showing 14% Eastern European origin. That's a pretty big chunk I had not accounted for. It took several months of digging to realize my paternal grandmother had been adopted from Russian Jewish immigrants who had escaped the pogroms in Lithuania around the start of the 20th century. That's just one of the family secrets I exposed.
And I've also been contacted by 3rd and 4th cousins and exchanged pictures of relatives we had in common. One guy was in his 80s and remembered playing with my 6 year old mother when they visited the farm she lived on in Minnesota.
All that was well worth the cost of the test and the subscription the Ancestry.com.
An added benefit is that you can download your DNA file and run it through medical analytical programs to identify mutations that may have some effect on your health.
I also found out my great grandfather spent five years in San Quentin. When you go poking around like that you have to be ready to find shocking things.

 

[bigpond]

An added benefit is that you can download your DNA file and run it through medical analytical programs to identify mutations that may have some effect on your health.

This is a bad thing to do for one's peace of mind unless you are adopted. Now that we understand more about epigenetics, we know that the transmission of hereditary conditions of medical consequence is a pretty short chain. For the average person I don't think it makes much sense to look any further than your grandparent's.

 

[jpmcwjr]

I also found out my great grandfather spent five years in San Quentin. When you go poking around like that you have to be ready to find shocking things.

I think it was Sam Clemens who wrote something like: "When you go searching the family tree, be prepared to find some ancestors hanging from the branches"!