Community Chat

[Mindy D]

@Puppy Lips @Jewish persons that are from a large European group did not marry outside this group as a part of long standing custom. The group is known as Ashkenazi Jews. These include Jews that can trace back lineage to France, Germany and many parts of Northern and Eastern Europe, (including Russia) other than the Iberian Peninsula. Their chief language was Yiddish (although Hebrew was used in religious texts and practices). The other large groups of Jews, worldwide, had different customs over the past 500 years. Those are the Mizrahi Jews, with ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa and the Sephardic Jews, which includes a combo of ancestry of the Mizrahi and those with ancestry traced back to Spain and Portugal. Sometimes Mizrahi is just lumped together with Sephardic. The Ashkenazi DNA, for many Jews, shows up as just Ashkenazi, on their DNA report. This is because they have had such a restricted breeding population over the past 500 to 600 years. This If a more thorough DNA report, through an academic study, were to be run, those persons would have Jewish DNA arising from many places, and would include much more history and migrations,  but Ancestry does not track much beyond 500 to 600 years. This does not include the tracking they do for archaic DNA, such as the Neanderthal report many users get. The company bypasses all the other DNA and just goes for the tiny trace of Neanderthal to add to each report. They do this because users get a kick out of it. It's popular. When you get your profile, your're only getting a snippet of your true genetic lineage over the past thousands of years. 
Due to the lack of intermarriage among the Ashkenazi, they share many common traits and they are prone to certain genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs Disease. 

[cosmic1]

My ranges have changed too. I did notice that they tweaked their regional boundaries too, which has something to do with it.

[Maltichonmom17]

My ancestry.com ethnicity estimate has updated three times in the past year, most recently just this week. My  updates are mostly just tweaking and fine tuning results. I'm mostly English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh, so most of the tweaking happens there. Those countries in particular are so close in proximity and there has has been so much migration back and forth between them for one reason or another throughout history. Because of that, their dna is so intermingled that it's really hard to sort it out, but I appreciate that they keep working to fine tune it. 

My Scandinavian percentage seems to keep creeping up every time, even though I have no known ancestors from any of those countries going back for centuries. My understanding that it very common to have Scandinavian dna if you're predominantly British and Irish because, well, Vikings. 

So I think the more updates the better. This last update finally pinpointed our small Dutch and Northern Italian ancestry for the first time, in line with our family tree.  At least they're still working for their customer base, unlike 23&me, who hasn't updated their ethnicity estimates in over a year. It's been 🦗🦗🦗 from them for ages, they shut down their message board/forum, which was quite popular and informative. 23&me, who has a fairly new CEO, is rumored to be taking the company in a different direction that doesn't seem dna customer focused from everything I've read. It that is true, the lack of updates and shutting down their forum makes sense. Really dissapointed in them. 

That said, I heartily endorse Ancestry DNA, with their involved customer focus. Their many features, the access to and ability to research, their helpful message boards, the ability to create a family tree, etc. 

[gertrudecloset]

---

@Laura14 wrote:

My DNA is with 23andMe. I initially came back as 70some percent Italian which I thought was low since every great-grandparent who stepped through Ellis Island came from the boot. 

I am now up to 88% Italian after a few years which I think is about right. I have also switched the collection of minor ethinicities to become essentially a three race person with 88%, 9% and 3% of my makeup.

My ancestors apparently went sailing occasionally across the Sicilian sea but for the most part they kept to themselves and stayed home. 

---

The fact that your great grandparents came to the US via Ellis Island has nothing to do with what they or their forefathers did before you @Laura14 .  That lineage (whatever combination it is) happened wherever they were and they brought that with them to the U.S.

More than one race?  You mean like of European descent or Sub Saharan African descent or of Asian descent?  American Indian or Alaskan Native? Or do you mean ethnicities?

[gertrudecloset]

---

@golding76 wrote:

Puppy Lips, I think the "Jewish" designation has much more to do with exact geographic locales than actual traits.  It is just a guess on my part.  When my first cousin on my mother's side did his DNA first and he said he was 10% Jewish, I questioned how a religion could be measured and quantified.  But all of us on my mother's side were informed that we had Jewish DNA.

Because Jewish people were often exiled into certain regions and, of course, ghettos of major cities, I think the tracing was of DNA found primarily in those sorts of regions.  I'm no expert in this, but this must be part of it.

Also, there have been diasporas throughout time, and groups of Jews have fled to other countries and certain regions within those countries.  Once again, the DNA pool shows certain identifiers that can be traced to those specific areas. 

---

I'm not sure how you envision Jewishness as a religion.  It is a nationality and an ethnicity with sub cultures.  There are many people with Jewish (middle eastern/asian) lineage that are not practising Jewish religious beliefs @golding76 .

[gertrudecloset]

---

@chrystaltree wrote:

And those constant changes are why I haven't done it and probably never will.  

---

I have a cousin who began to investigate my dad's side.  I already have a general idea about the patriarchal genetics for myself.  Likely 85-90% Sub Saharan African and 10-15% European.  I know that my father's mother had children with Caucasian men as evidenced clearly by some of my relatives.  This true, despite the fact that my grandmother was born outside of slavery in Virginia.

My matriarchal lineage is very likely to be much more Sub Saharan African with American Indian.

[jubilant]

Yes, most ranges do change. I started out 95% England Northwestern.  That is now 75% England Northwestern after years of having my DNA done. My 2nd biggest number is Scotland which is where I get my maiden name from. I'm 5% German so far... as one of my great great greats (Not sure how many greats back) grandmothers was German. 

[Laura14]

@gertrudecloset You misinterpreted my post and I'm not going to play semantics on the second. I'm sure most readers got the gist of what I chose to share. It's really not a legal document. It's a friendly social media post on a niche forum. 

[golding76]

Burnsite, I have read that siblings, on average, share up to 50% of the same genes.  That means  the percentage could be well under 50%, too.  This is a a surprising notion for many of us.

However, this explains a lot.  My maternal grandmother had 10 children, five of them boys.  The boys ranged in size and stature from a strapping six-footer who weighed well over 200 lb. to a small-boned 5' 5" guy who weighed 145 lb. soaking wet.  

[ALRATIBA]

My ancestors didn't come to the US until late 1800s and we knew exactly where they came from. We had a  paper trail back to Europe. 

As Ancestry has more contributors - their results are getting closer to what we know from our paper trail. 

We did Ancestry hoping to find some of the relatives here in the US who we lost track of as we spread out and settled down in various places.

We found quite a few .....BUT no surprises from Ancestry DNA ..

The first DNA testing we did in 2006 for mitochondrial DNA and Y-DNA was interesting. (Our local genealogy society hosted a DNA seminar and testing that year.)

Our male line is one of the most common European group.

Our female mitochondrial is the rarest group.  

If you are interested in your "ancient origins" .... two books you should read:

Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes

The Journey of Man by Spencer Wells