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How exciting would it be to have your family tree DNA confirmed?Our 10 generation 360 degree fan chart highlighting the patriots of the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and War of 1812 as well as the immigrants from various color-coded countries. The branches shadowed in red have been DNA confirmed.
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How Accurate Is Your Ethnicity Estimate? - Updated 5/18
For years, I have been thinking I was about 60% British, 36% German and only 3% Irish/Scottish thanks to the ethnicity breakdown provided by ancestry.com when they processed my DNA test. When I drilled down further into this Irish/Scottish estimate on ancestry.com, I found a wider range of the possible match to be between 0% - 12%. Maybe I'm not Irish/Scottish at all?? My father's grandmother was a Scottish immigrant. From my traditional genealogical research, I know that the 3 generations before her were all born in Scotland, too. I had no trouble with the prediction of 36% West Europe, since my own grandmother was a German immigrant.
In recent months, I have been doing a deep dive into genetic genealogy, and I can tell you there is a lot of misinformation out there and serious misinterpretation of what DNA analysis can/cannot prove. No matter whose results you use, an estimate is just that, an estimate. Some have argued that the results aren’t telling you where your ancestors originated as much as telling you where people who share your DNA live now. In time, these estimates will continue to improve.
Millions of people who want to connect with their own ancestral heritage are responding to anecdotal advertising generated for mass market appeal by having their DNA tested. That in and of itself is good for all of us involved in genetic genealogy, because the larger the pool of potential matches, the greater the opportunity to find that one manna from Heaven match that breaks through your brick wall. The downside, as I see it, is that many of these people have just entered this world for entertainment purposes to know their ethnicity and have no interest in pursuing matches for the purpose of building and supporting their family trees. This means that when you who are desperately trying to find connections run into match after match who has not submitted a family tree and has no inclination to answer your queries, you’re likely to be frustrated in that effort. We can talk more about how to work with those matches in another post.
Today, I want to show how wildly different my own ethnicity estimate is when the exact same raw data from my DNA sample was processed by five major players in the consumer DNA market. I’ve been seeing a lot of posts in the last week about how My Heritage DNA has made changes to their algorithms to greatly improve their ethnicity estimates, so I decided to see for myself. Right now, you can upload your raw data from a test processed by someone else (like Ancestry DNA or 23 and Me...) to the MyHeritage website for free. After a few days of processing, your results are available.
As you can see from the pie charts I created, the ethnicity estimate created by My Heritage has taken that chunk Ancestry called Europe West and attributed it to Eastern Europe. And that 3% Irish/Scottish that may really have been 0%, according to Ancestry? It’s now a full quarter of my DNA, which correlates with my paper trail.
The same DNA sample processed by familytreedna.com yields yet another wildly different ethnicity estimate. I might have expected the category called "British Isles" to be between 63% and 70.4% combining what the other 2 companies delineated as Great Britain and Irish/Scottish. Yet familytreedna has assigned only 30% to these ethnic groups. What? That's half. They have instead predicted that my largest ethnic breakdown of 55% comes from West and Central Europe, a category completely absent from the MyHeritage estimate.
So, be patient my genealogy friends. Take all of this with a grain of salt for now as the burgeoning field of genetic genealogy attempts to connect you to your roots. And if you feel like pasta for dinner tonight? Go right ahead. You don’t need an Italian result from a DNA test to justify it.
3/18 Update to my original post: In response to questions I'm getting here and on twitter (@mygenealogyguru) and on instagram (thegenealogyguru), here is my followup: It's shocking, isn't it? You can test it for yourself by uploading your raw data file to various sites and see that you will end up with different ethnicity estimates. My creation of the pie chart graphic was meant to draw attention to that. I am a huge fan of DNA testing and what can be done through genetic genealogy to build family trees, but I would caution test takers to take those ethnicity estimates with a grain of salt.
5/18 Update: I have added the ethnicity estimates from 23andMe and Gedmatch.
In recent months, I have been doing a deep dive into genetic genealogy, and I can tell you there is a lot of misinformation out there and serious misinterpretation of what DNA analysis can/cannot prove. No matter whose results you use, an estimate is just that, an estimate. Some have argued that the results aren’t telling you where your ancestors originated as much as telling you where people who share your DNA live now. In time, these estimates will continue to improve.
Millions of people who want to connect with their own ancestral heritage are responding to anecdotal advertising generated for mass market appeal by having their DNA tested. That in and of itself is good for all of us involved in genetic genealogy, because the larger the pool of potential matches, the greater the opportunity to find that one manna from Heaven match that breaks through your brick wall. The downside, as I see it, is that many of these people have just entered this world for entertainment purposes to know their ethnicity and have no interest in pursuing matches for the purpose of building and supporting their family trees. This means that when you who are desperately trying to find connections run into match after match who has not submitted a family tree and has no inclination to answer your queries, you’re likely to be frustrated in that effort. We can talk more about how to work with those matches in another post.
Today, I want to show how wildly different my own ethnicity estimate is when the exact same raw data from my DNA sample was processed by five major players in the consumer DNA market. I’ve been seeing a lot of posts in the last week about how My Heritage DNA has made changes to their algorithms to greatly improve their ethnicity estimates, so I decided to see for myself. Right now, you can upload your raw data from a test processed by someone else (like Ancestry DNA or 23 and Me...) to the MyHeritage website for free. After a few days of processing, your results are available.
As you can see from the pie charts I created, the ethnicity estimate created by My Heritage has taken that chunk Ancestry called Europe West and attributed it to Eastern Europe. And that 3% Irish/Scottish that may really have been 0%, according to Ancestry? It’s now a full quarter of my DNA, which correlates with my paper trail.
The same DNA sample processed by familytreedna.com yields yet another wildly different ethnicity estimate. I might have expected the category called "British Isles" to be between 63% and 70.4% combining what the other 2 companies delineated as Great Britain and Irish/Scottish. Yet familytreedna has assigned only 30% to these ethnic groups. What? That's half. They have instead predicted that my largest ethnic breakdown of 55% comes from West and Central Europe, a category completely absent from the MyHeritage estimate.
So, be patient my genealogy friends. Take all of this with a grain of salt for now as the burgeoning field of genetic genealogy attempts to connect you to your roots. And if you feel like pasta for dinner tonight? Go right ahead. You don’t need an Italian result from a DNA test to justify it.
3/18 Update to my original post: In response to questions I'm getting here and on twitter (@mygenealogyguru) and on instagram (thegenealogyguru), here is my followup: It's shocking, isn't it? You can test it for yourself by uploading your raw data file to various sites and see that you will end up with different ethnicity estimates. My creation of the pie chart graphic was meant to draw attention to that. I am a huge fan of DNA testing and what can be done through genetic genealogy to build family trees, but I would caution test takers to take those ethnicity estimates with a grain of salt.
5/18 Update: I have added the ethnicity estimates from 23andMe and Gedmatch.
Introducing the DNA Family Tree
Bet you haven't seen a DNA family tree like this before!
With the latest breakthroughs in DNA technology, The Genealogy Guru can find your roots and show you what ethnicities you inherited from whom!
With the latest breakthroughs in DNA technology, The Genealogy Guru can find your roots and show you what ethnicities you inherited from whom!
