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Crossposting from PYF, a helpful goon redirected me. I got my results back yesterday. Nothing too surprising, ancestry associations are mainly French & German/British & Irish/Broadly Northwestern European. The relative finder is only suggesting xth cousins (hundreds and hundreds of them in the US) that participated, nothing close. I am more Neanderthal than 70% of participants, still less than 2%, don't know if it's enough to claim minority status. Overall, not earth-shattering for me personally, but still interesting. They give you a ton of reports. Recommended.
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Sep 12, 2020 17:41
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 12:24 |
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Have any of you guys done an ancestry test? What did you discover? I went with 23andme and, as I said earlier, I got my results a few days ago. I wound up finding 1,400 'relatives', but the closest match is only 0.75% DNA shared, so it's all quite distant. Here's the map for the ones that gave their location: The world:  Europe:  North America:  It makes sense for NA to be that overrepresented, there aren't many people in Europe who take these tests, partly due to restrictions. Ancestry:  Bog-standard NW European with a few other things thrown in. It says I'm 32.6% 'British & Irish', but I have no one from there in my family tree that I know of, and I'm pretty sure it's just genetic overlap. The western part of Flanders (the historical County, basically) had a lot of Saxon influence, while the more inland regions were settled mainly by Franks. Bilirubin posted:Whoa, vikings weren't this homogenous mass of Aryan purity? Who'duv thunk? Now that you mention it, I got this tidbit about my maternal haplogroup:  yas queen Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Sep 16, 2020 |
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Sep 16, 2020 23:49
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Bilirubin posted:My parents both did Ancestry's DNA testing (they offered me to do it but I'm like "no, I'm some combination of your results UNLESS YOU AREN'T TELLING ME SOMETHING") and despite the vast majority of our ancestry being from the Gotland region of Sweden (and some eastern Norway) we somehow picked up Persian and Berber haplotypes. Vikings liked to get it on I thought it was interesting myself that I had these small Southern & Eastern European percentages. You would think it makes sense since Europe, Flanders especially, has been a melting pot since the very beginning, but no, quite a few people from my region actually have 0% in both categories. I take it that means I had one or more individual ancestors from these areas within the past few centuries. It doesn't mean much, but it's cool to think about. In your case, too, I would assume it's somewhat more recent than the Viking era, or it would be typical for Gotlanders in general to have trace amounts of MENA ancestry. e: I actually read the OP now, and yeah, a lot of genealogy is full of bullshit and errors. That's why it's interesting for as many people as possible to do these DNA tests, to get some cold hard facts. Oracle posted:Sup distant as hell T2b cousin (1 in 34 23&Me users match this haplogroup lol.). Honestly, 'Western European' is about as accurate as they can really get given the various invasions, wars, goin' a vikings, trade etc etc. that went on in (and beyond, as Bilirubin discovered) the general area. Also, I believe 23&Me only shows you the first 2000 matches. 1 in 34? Wow. I figured H-something would have been most popular among Europeans, I see a lot of people with that. T2b5 is somewhat more exclusive, just 1 in 490 of 23andme customers. Thanks for the tips. I'm actually not particularly interested in my family tree specifically, as far as I know I have an extremely sedentary Old World background without any major surprises to be expected. I got a kit for my dad as a birthday gift, since he's a genetics buff always going on about ancient human migration patterns etc., and decided why not buy one for myself. Used myself as a test case, so we're actually still waiting for his results. I'm expecting to share 50% of my DNA (exclusively) with him, or mom is going to be #canceled. It's been an interesting experience, I'm learning a lot about genetics, and I realized that a lot of people who use the site really are just desperately trying to find out more about their family. A lot of users were adopted or otherwise don't know one or both of their biological parents. If I can help with that by spitting into a tube, why not. And you don't even have to be closely matched for them to link your result to other results, exclude certain things, etc. If you've been on the fence about getting one of these tests, I'd recommend it. How many 'Relatives' did you end up with? Did you hit the 2,000 cap that apparently exists? I assume so, if I ended up with hundreds of American relatives somehow, an actual American probably has thousands and thousands of people meeting the threshold. Randaconda posted:EDIT: Just checked, 98.8 percent white I've seen people with 100% European, and I wonder how that's even possible since the Mediterranean has never been all that significant as a barrier, and Europe itself is completely mixed. I guess it makes sense if you consider that most of those non-European people have long been assimilated and spread out among the wider population, so what it means to be '100% European' or 'x% Northwestern European' already includes the older admixture. Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Sep 20, 2020 |
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Sep 20, 2020 13:26
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Bilirubin posted:I take the DNA results about as seriously as my mother's research honestly. We know so little about haplotype prevalence, spontaneous new mutations, etc. still that to do otherwise would be foolish IMO. Um, I guess. It all depends on what you want. Obviously if it tells you you're 69% Southern Irish you need to put that into context, but it's pretty much completely reliable when it comes to finding relatives, although it might get the predicted exact relationship wrong since every generation it's a bit of a crapshoot which bits of DNA happen to get passed on. That's why it's disproportionately popular among people who were adopted, estranged from their relatives, etc. It's also basically 100% correct when it comes to the broader ethnic/racial strokes. I've seen some videos of racially mixed New World people getting genuinely emotional when they get their results back. That might seem strange to us who have never struggled with the same issues, but I get it. Also they're monetizing my blood right now and I genuinely don't care, even think it's a good thing as long as they don't go all Shkreli
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Sep 22, 2020 19:44
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Yeah, I think it's actually pretty much the same principle for me right now as far as both (traditional) genealogy and DNA testing go. With genealogy I don't really see the point in going beyond, say, the mid-18th century. Those people are barely going to be more related to you than random strangers (of your ethnicity) walking down the street. It's the same principle with all the 'relatives' I have on 23andme right now. None of them are over 0.75% shared, it doesn't really mean anything even if we probably did have a specific common ancestor at some point in the past few centuries. I do like helping out the people to whom it does mean something, though. So far I've noticed quite a bit of interest from old American ladies, I'm a true playa. If I actually were really interested in finding new relatives, I would definitely combine the two to fill in as much of the picture as possible.
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Sep 25, 2020 20:14
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Trillian posted:This is all interesting to me because I was thinking about doing a DNA test. I don't care about ethnicity or health information, though, I am only interested in connecting to relatives. I'm guessing that's pretty unlikely. I started looking into my family tree partly to find relatives who are still alive, but I realize now it doesn't really work that way. I should maybe just try finding local history nerds. You will find tons of 'relatives'. If they're close ones would depend on if any of those also took the test, though. However, if you have enough distant ones, you can still piece things together, especially if you contact them. I only have experience with 23AndMe, but I'd recommend it.
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Oct 5, 2020 20:37
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1937 is before Germany declared war on even Poland, and you said it was just a three-month visit, so I'm a little confused.
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Oct 8, 2020 02:22
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I wouldn't pay too much attention to the more detailed ethnic breakdown on these sites (unless you get a huge percentage of something unexpected), Europe has always been too mixed for that. Since last month, my British & Irish ancestry on 23andMe has gone from 34% to 25% and now finally 2.9% after this latest update. The current estimate makes sense and obviously it's also the most recent one, so I assume it's the more correct one, but who knows what I'll be by next year. e: I also had small percentages of Southern European and Eastern European, those are completely gone now Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Oct 24, 2020 |
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Oct 24, 2020 22:29
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Spelling: when in doubt as a New Worlder, ask a native speaker, preferably someone who still lives in the old country. I've been connecting with Americans on 23andMe, and some of the Flemish surnames they've given me are completely nonsensical (as in non-existent, not just a minor variation), because the names were copied from someone else's handwriting and they lack the cultural context to make educated guesses.
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Oct 25, 2020 16:44
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The roaring twenties, four years before Lego stocks crashed and they lost all their savings
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Oct 28, 2020 14:25
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The trace ancestry part seems pretty unreliable, I wouldn't pay it too much mind. I've consistently had about 0.5% non-European ancestry since I got my results, but it's jumped from Western Asian to Central Asian to (now) a split between North African and Sudanese. Basically, all they can tell you is that it's there, but not what it is exactly. Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Jan 8, 2021 |
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Jan 7, 2021 17:36
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That might have been a burning matter just a century earlier, both Catholics and (mainstream) Protestants did not look kindly upon Baptists at the time. Although I assume that proper 'adult' baptisms are conducted at an age higher than nine years old
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Jan 26, 2021 15:08
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Oracle posted:See, this is why almost no one in Europe cares about their drat family tree or genealogy in general. I got my dad into genealogy after I bought him a 23andMe kit for his birthday. It turns out that all of my ancestors, going back centuries and centuries, were from the same small area of West Flanders.
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Mar 6, 2021 13:20
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Carthag Tuek posted:On the plus side, that precludes the Habsburgs That's actually an interesting point to mention. By the late Middle Ages, the nobility and a few fringe areas were the only hold-outs against the Western world's extreme incest taboos, which had mostly been imposed by the Church for its own reasons. Even though all of my ancestors came from the same small area around the same minor city (albeit located in one of the most urbanized regions of Europe at the time), they are all unique entries, that is to say not a single person has been found to simultaneously be in multiple positions in the family tree so far, which is something you might expect even simply through statistical chance. A really interesting book about this that I read recently is The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich. It documents how tribal and kin-based institutions in Western Europe were gradually dismantled throughout the Middle Ages, through a package of customs such as enforced monogamy and far-reaching incest taboos, leading to the rise of voluntary associations such as guilds and religious orders, and also highly peculiar demographic patterns such as a relatively high marriage age (and a correspondingly low fertility), a certain percentage of women never getting married at all, and marriage increasingly being seen as a union of two individuals (who have to give their consent) rather than of two families. Highly recommended, as well as his earlier book The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating our Species, and Making us Smarter, which is about the cumulative effects of culture.
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Mar 7, 2021 10:34
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Congratulations. Makes me happier about my decision to be (visible) on 23andMe, despite my extremely boring results. You never know who you might end up helping out.
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Jul 22, 2021 17:10
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Danish/Dutch confusion strikes again Have you had any luck with DNA sites, Oracle? Sometimes I contemplate the map of my 'relatives' (the vast majority <0.20% in common) and it looks so cool    I even have one in Denmark!
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Sep 24, 2021 11:34
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Of course seeing the same ancestors pop up multiple times is inevitable if you go back far enough, but that's just a mathematical certainty for any human being. You cannot possibly have billions of separate ancestors by the xth generation, if there weren't even that many humans alive at that point in time. There is actually remarkably little inbreeding as such within the Western tradition. I feel like I've made this post before, but both my mother and father are from the same small area near a provincial town in West Flanders. As far as I can tell, my ancestors hadn't budged from there since the Middle Ages. My father has been dabbling in our genealogy, and not only do you have to go back very far before you start seeing the same names pop up multiple times, I don't think they share a single ancestor in common so far. I might have plugged this before as well, but an excellent book in this regard is The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich. There's an entire chapter about medieval incest taboos in Western Europe, and how they were encouraged by the Church at the time. Some of the edicts were downright ridiculous, like you weren't allowed to marry your 5th cousin, which would have excluded a huge percentage of potential marriage partners if they actually had records that good.
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Nov 9, 2021 12:20
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This is a bit of a weird question, but can you guys think of any gift ideas for someone who's into genealogy? My dad's gotten really into researching our family tree ever since I gave him a 23andMe test kit for his birthday two years ago, and I was wondering what else I could give him that's in the same vein. Preferably not too expensive.
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Dec 2, 2022 01:53
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Thanks for the suggestions! We generally don't give each other physical copies of books anymore, but I'll probably make an exception for the one you mentioned there, especially if it has diagrams and such (which are always tricky to display in e-book format). It sounds like something that would be right up his alley.
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Dec 2, 2022 05:01
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Erainor posted:Haven’t decided yet. My moms family already goes back to both the UK and France which is neat. Keep us updated! Fair warning, genealogy can be addictive - on a whim, I got my father a 23andMe kit for his birthday a few years ago, and he's been absolutely obsessed with researching our family tree ever since. I'm not necessarily that interested in hearing about some 'ancestor' from seven generations ago, but when I go over there I patiently listen to his lengthy explanations anyway. It's just heartwarming to see him so enthusiastic over a hobby that I encouraged him to get into. I'd love to see your results if you do decide to test your DNA. New World people with ancestry from different places are always especially interesting to me. I submitted a kit along with my father back when, but since I'm Old World, and native to the area I live in, the results were kind of boring and predictable:  The only surprise when I got my results back the first time was that they said I was 33% 'British & Irish'. I have no British ancestry that I know of, and indeed, when they updated the algorithm a few weeks later that suddenly dropped to 3%. I think 23andMe had some trouble distinguishing between closely related European subgroups at the start, but it seems to be performing a lot better in that regard now. I also found out that I have a lot of (distant) American 'relatives', and a ton of them live in Michigan, which makes sense since so many Flemings/Belgians immigrated there.
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Aug 29, 2023 17:14
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