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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: Petros on Thursday 10 October 24 08:41 BST (UK)
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This latest change looks even more pointless than before
All my (small) Scandinavian percentages (9%) have disappeared and I now have
England & Northwestern Europe 74% to 45%
Germanic Europe 8% to 32%
Scotland 3% to 16%
and the Netherlands 0 to 7%
while the Channel Islands and Northern Isles are shown as subsidiary regions
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Just had a quick look!
It seems that I'm now 2% Icelandic
;D ;D ;D
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When I first got my results 10 years ago I was 66% Irish but now I'm only 18% !
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Mine now reflects more closely to the origins of my distant predecessors.
The same for two other DNA kits that I manage.
My Wife’s though is still a bit off actuals.
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They've always been pretty pointless and the big changes this time around just make it more obvious. I've dropped from 65% Irish to 48% in three updates whilst my sister has gone from 26 to 16 in the two since her results went live. I suppose we could travel the world billing ourselves as removed siblings proven by our stupidly different ethnicity results.
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2% Icelandic is trending Gadget ;D.
I thought I had lost some of the sub-regions but they are still there just not appearing on the main result page.
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Well, my results are still well off.
I have 13% Germanic, 2% Irish, 25% Scottish, 54% English, 3% Swedish, 3% Spanish
Have lost my little bit of Italian (only Italian in the family is the Venetian Contessa who wanted to adopt my father- hardly a blood relationship)
Actually ethnicity is-
paternal grandfather- Ulster/Scots with just a drop of French
paternal grandmother- English, French, Scottish, Dutch with a few drops of Morrocan & Norwegian
maternal grandfather- 1/2 German, 1/2 English
maternal grandmother- German
Oh well, have to wait to see what changes there are next time ::)
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2% Icelandic is trending Gadget ;D.
I thought I had lost some of the sub-regions but they are still there just not appearing on the main result page.
You mean they have moved them to "Journeys"? It seems a bit of an odd name for ethnic sub-regions.
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I seem to have lost my Scottish and gained Germanic instead :-)
I love reading the info on why the name was change from 'Ethnicity estimate' to 'Ancestral Regions', apparently to many people didn't think the science behind them was very good and where focusing to much on the word estimate...lol
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My Italian 2% has disappeared, and I now have France and Spain.
I know the Italian was correct they were my great-great- grandparents.
Sarra
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Just had to have a look at mine to see what had changed & my England & North-western Europe have gone up slightly to 91 with 5 from Netherland the Demark & Scotland 2.
The regional variant gives me Yorkshire & East Midlands which corresponds to most of my research but it does not any Cumbrian markers which is where my mothers fathers family came from.
John
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I am thinking of changing my surname to Karlsdottir. Too soon?
At least my journeys (I stand corrected on that) still incorporate Australia and Northumbrian/ Scottish Borders heritage.
We can’t take it too seriously, but it is still fascinating.
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Half my Scottish has turned into Germanic, not really surprising, I guess we are just seeing further back in time.
Both interesting and confusing. Before long we will all be from the Steppes where most of European ancestry has shown to be from, apart from those few people who have Neolithic - Stonehenge ancestry, perhaps that is what my increased Irish / Breton region is.
From my YDNA I would estimate that this might be correct for somewhere about 1500 BCE!
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My Italian 2% has disappeared, and I now have France and Spain.
I know the Italian was correct they were my great-great- grandparents.
Sarra
Yes, they have badly messed up Italy, France, Spain ::) >:(, it's all back to how it was 4 years ago with Italians being reported as French in the north or Spanish in the south. As I pointed out several years back I suspected they had used erroneous samples from a well published French DNA study that didn't take into account the huge Italian migration to France of at least many hundreds of thousands of people from 1860s-1960s. Last year was great so it's baffling why they seem to have gone back to bad samples.
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Just had a quick look!
It seems that I'm now 2% Icelandic
;D ;D ;D
Isn't everyone ::).
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This latest change looks even more pointless than before
All my (small) Scandinavian percentages (9%) have disappeared and I now have
England & Northwestern Europe 74% to 45%
Germanic Europe 8% to 32%
Scotland 3% to 16%
and the Netherlands 0 to 7%
while the Channel Islands and Northern Isles are shown as subsidiary regions
It's a complete disaster, has the leadership/chief scientists at Ancestry DNA changed? Too much focus on the ProTools development leaving not enough oversight or more junior staff left to oversee changes to the ethnicity component? Regarding the ridiculously high Germanic % I am now seeing for Brits, do they not realise that even if Brits tacitly accepted some Scandinavian component as really pertaining to ancient Viking links, why they might not be OK with Germanic pertaining to ancient Anglo-Saxon-Jute links? Somethings that happened in the last century perhaps :o.
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Yes, France had a very low birth rate in the 1850s and they encouraged many people from neighbouring countries to come to France so many Italian and Belgian people moved there, and then some Polish, Spanish and German. Most Italians settled in SW France or in Paris or NE France. Een the French language as a whole is a Romance language, and is said to be a branch of the Italic language like Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.
I have found many Polish people have German ancestry, I know Polish Jews had Germanic surnames, but many non Jewish ethnic Poles have at least a slithering of German blood.
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I feel hard done by. No Icelandic ancestry!
I now have 49% Irish where my past two results were 49% and 48%, so very consistent. It is also specifically Connacht and my matches from several sites bear that out hugely. So far so good, especially as it is all on my paternal side, which is again logical.
However my maternal side should be strongly English and previously they got that about right. Now it is still the second highest percentage at 37% but somewhat lower than before.
I used to have 11% Scotland which I couldn't fathom but that has now fallen to 2% but instead I now have 9% Germanic which I didn't have before (the remainder are small insignificant areas). I must re-visit my German text book.
Tony
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Have just checked my husband's -
The Irish are still there they have gone up by 9%
Cornwall has been added (8%) wasn't there before.
He has lost Sweden & Denmark.
Wales not there anymore.
Scotland still there.
France is there for the first time.
Sarra
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Well, I now have 5% Spain, 5% Wales, neither which have popped up before.
I prefer the Living DNA results, which match the paper trail - 97% English, and 3%Irish.
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I had one of my DNA regions as Scottish Highlands which is
"Also found in:
Channel Islands, England, Faroe Islands, France, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland"
That is why I wondered about what had happened to my Scottish Borders, which of course was more of a journey ;D
Apparently, my given name was "Iceland: Officially approved as a given name on 22 September 2004". Lucky!
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I think the DNA database for Living DNA is around 300,000 versus Ancestry's 25 million, so fewer people to compare with.
I know with the previous round on Ancestry, it started picking up indigenous heritage which previously showed as Melanesian. Now it shows as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. So that part of the database is growing. It is definitely getting more specific and diversified for cultural groups that are non-European.
It is also reflecting deep ancestry and not always the more immediate paper trail, although we all expect it to show that as well.
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Mine is showing very much the same ethnicities as before the update , except for the shift of some of the percentages , which is mainly on my mum's side. And also with the one exception that I've newly acquired a *little Danish from somewhere on my dad's sides (* although he may not be so "little", he maybe a tall Danish man - who knows lol) I'm feeling left out that I haven't any Icelandic or German in the new update , will 5 % Danish do? Lol
My dad is Welsh , and my mum is N Irish:
My maternal two ethnicities ( which is and was nothing but Irish & Scottish ethnicities in all the updates) have shifted the most dramatically in the %'s , It's now the complete opposite what it used to be.
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My mum and her all her lines are all from the North of Ireland for a good few centuries (as far back as I can possibly trace back - with 100% proof) , but I should be showing majority Scottish as my own Irish families are originally from Scottish immigrants that moved into Ireland sometime ( probably around the 1600s sometime)
I used to be showing Scottish as the majority ethnicity from my mum's 50% side of me through all previous updates, - until now . Off memory, I was something like 37% Scottish and only 13% Irish.
Now with this update, Irish is by far the majority on this side of my 50% ,it is now 30% Irish and only 20% Scottish ( my scottish bit has a sub category of from the highlands ).
I don't know if I am coming or going ( I don't think any of my families knew if they were coming or going either lol)
And it gets worse, my son is 35% Scottish - from me! LOL .How has he got far more Scottish so called ethnicity than I have ? I think I'll buy him a kilt for Christmas.
My Welsh Dad and his sides(, but he does have one set of grandparents who were from England) are pretty much the same as before the latest update. That 50% of me is showing majority Welsh , and a little splattering of English ( which is correct) . Except that I have now gained 5% Danish from somewhere in dad's lot lol. I think before the update, I seem to recall I had a very small percentage of Scottish from my dad on the wheel thingy , but now his Scottish must have changed into Danish - abracadabra lol
Oh well , at least Ancestry's guesses are far better than myheritage guesses , where according to them I am a half Scandinavian and a quarter Iberian lol
Kind regards
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I like the humour, Cell.
I do have this on my bookshelf:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Promise-Iceland-Kari-Gislason/dp/0702239062
I remember someone at work having a destination wedding from Adelaide to the Isle of Skye and then honeymooned in Iceland. Fancy. Sounded great. $$$ though.
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I like the humour, Cell.
I do have this on my bookshelf:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Promise-Iceland-Kari-Gislason/dp/0702239062
I remember someone at work having a destination wedding from Adelaide to the Isle of Skye and then honeymooned in Iceland. Fancy. Sounded great. $$$ though.
;D ,
Sounds fantastic , but far too cold for me . I always get my jumpers and jackets out when it drops below 21 c here in Brissie lol - I feel the cold, and I was brought up in the cold ( in the uk) . I swear I must have a long lost ancestor from the tropics somewhere and not all from the UK and Ireland.
Kind regards
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I've been researching my background for more than 30 years with several lines back to the 1600s so I have a reasonable idea of where my earlier origins lie. DNA profiles have reflected this in a general way. However the previous Ancestry update very much moved in a negative direction as far as my profile was concerned. Rather than refine my profile it seemed to do just the opposite becoming much vaguer and less informative.
This latest profile though has done much better. It has now taken it back to what I considered more likely before the previous update and refined it rather further - in particular the splits between paternal and maternal now look pretty realistic based on what I know and can speculate on.
Clearly their reference sets keep changing and presumably depending on who that includes not always in any balanced and positive direction...after all it's not a comprehensive DNA census of all living humans. I always download a copy of the profile to ensure it doesn't get lost in the next update.
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I like the humour, Cell.
I do have this on my bookshelf:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Promise-Iceland-Kari-Gislason/dp/0702239062
I remember someone at work having a destination wedding from Adelaide to the Isle of Skye and then honeymooned in Iceland. Fancy. Sounded great. $$$ though.
;D ,
Sounds fantastic , but far too cold for me . I always get my jumpers and jackets out when it drops below 21 c here in Brissie lol - I feel the cold, and I was brought up in the cold ( in the uk) . I swear I must have a long lost ancestor from the tropics somewhere and not all from the UK and Ireland.
Kind regards
I always wonder how feeling the heat or the cold has to do with genetics or growing up in certain climates.
I certainly don’t consider the UK “cold”, but I would prefer their summers to ours.
I find anything over 23 or 24 too warm, and do find it affects my functioning.
My Sussex born mother came to Canada’s very cold winters when she was 22 and thoroughly enjoyed them. Genetics must play a part.
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Mine has become utter nonsense
Today
19% English
4% Irish
77% Welsh
was
69 % Welsh
14% Scottish
7% Germanic
6% Irish
4% English
My tree is clear there are German roots on my fathers side. Over 300 years of English too which now seems to be captured. I have always found it funny how the system doesn't recognise my parents tests. so if I look at their 'ancestry' on my account its vastly different to their actual ancestry.
I have come to the conclusion that the database is corrupt now as I also match with cousins my parents don't match with. How is that possible.
Disappointed. I know its a bit of fun but how can you use dna to build trees when there are so many changes and errors.
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I would say Germanic is referring to the original Anglo-Saxon settlers who undoubtedly left DNA ties behind in what is now Germany - so that some Germans and many English share some DNA with each other.
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My Portuguese pal says the UK is quite often a cold and grey country and he is right, especially when he comes originally from sunny Lisbon. We often have grey and dull and depressing days in the summer months and long dark nights in the winter. I think genetics play a part in this to a degree. Portuguese people are a mixture of Celtic, Greco-Roman, indigenous Iberian and likely some Arabic ancestry. There is said to be some Germanic DNA in Portuguese people.
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Well, I now have 5% Spain, 5% Wales, neither which have popped up before.
I prefer the Living DNA results, which match the paper trail - 97% English, and 3%Irish.
Do you have any evidence of Spanish? Given from what I can see with these new results, Spanish could equally mean France or Italy!
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Mine has become utter nonsense
Today
19% English
4% Irish
77% Welsh
was
69 % Welsh
14% Scottish
7% Germanic
6% Irish
4% English
My tree is clear there are German roots on my fathers side. Over 300 years of English too which now seems to be captured. I have always found it funny how the system doesn't recognise my parents tests. so if I look at their 'ancestry' on my account its vastly different to their actual ancestry.
I have come to the conclusion that the database is corrupt now as I also match with cousins my parents don't match with. How is that possible.
Disappointed. I know its a bit of fun but how can you use dna to build trees when there are so many changes and errors.
The algorithm analyses tests independently of any close relatives or trees so quite big variations can be found. Regarding matching people your parents don't, what sort of cM size are we talking about? If it is small matches, it can happen as the Ancestry Timber algorithm has a variable effect - click the cM number and you will see two figures, weighted and unweighted. It is an attempt to reduce matches for heavily homogenous populations like ethno-religious groups or small island populations who would otherwise get vast numbers of cousins, but it does work quite randomly. So an unweighted match of say 25cM could be weighted to 12cM on your account, but on your parents it could be weighted to below 8cM, which would mean Ancestry don't show it as matches only go down to 8cM.
I agree that this update is less than ideal. The have clearly tried to refine the Germanic category to suit people of actual recent German descent, but this seems to be causing false readings for many people of verified British descent and no verified recent German ancestry. The French/Italian/Spanish/Sardinian models have also been messed up and are now as inaccurate as they were several years ago.
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Well, I now have 5% Spain, 5% Wales, neither which have popped up before.
I prefer the Living DNA results, which match the paper trail - 97% English, and 3%Irish.
Do you have any evidence of Spanish? Given from what I can see with these new results, Spanish could equally mean France or Italy!
I have absolutely no evidence of any ancestors except English in the north and in Sussex. I have traced most of my family lines back into the 1700's where I would expect the 5 percent to show up. I do have one almost certainly Irish line that arrived in Manchester around 1790.
The Welsh is more likely than the Spanish but I have no hard evidence of that. One ancestor said she was born in Knutsford, Ches. in one census and Wales in another. But her name was local to Cheshire and Staffordshire and I have some distant DNA matches (more than one person matches the same set of ancestors) with her surname in Staffordshire.
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Well, I now have 5% Spain, 5% Wales, neither which have popped up before.
I prefer the Living DNA results, which match the paper trail - 97% English, and 3%Irish.
Do you have any evidence of Spanish? Given from what I can see with these new results, Spanish could equally mean France or Italy!
I have absolutely no evidence of any ancestors except English in the north and in Sussex. I have traced most of my family lines back into the 1700's where I would expect the 5 percent to show up. I do have one almost certainly Irish line that arrived in Manchester around 1790.
The Welsh is more likely than the Spanish but I have no hard evidence of that. One ancestor said she was born in Knutsford, Ches. in one census and Wales in another. But her name was local to Cheshire and Staffordshire and I have some distant DNA matches (more than one person matches the same set of ancestors) with her surname in Staffordshire.
I think something pretty bad may have happened to the algorithm if it's just handing out random 5% Spanish to Brits! If there is more evidence of this, this will be going back to old MyHeritage level accuracy :o! Some I have seen suggested they might have got lazy and started to use AI and rely too much on it to modify the algorithm with not enough human checking that it is not producing likely false results.
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Well, I now have 5% Spain, 5% Wales, neither which have popped up before.
I prefer the Living DNA results, which match the paper trail - 97% English, and 3%Irish.
Do you have any evidence of Spanish? Given from what I can see with these new results, Spanish could equally mean France or Italy!
I have absolutely no evidence of any ancestors except English in the north and in Sussex. I have traced most of my family lines back into the 1700's where I would expect the 5 percent to show up. I do have one almost certainly Irish line that arrived in Manchester around 1790.
The Welsh is more likely than the Spanish but I have no hard evidence of that. One ancestor said she was born in Knutsford, Ches. in one census and Wales in another. But her name was local to Cheshire and Staffordshire and I have some distant DNA matches (more than one person matches the same set of ancestors) with her surname in Staffordshire.
I think something pretty bad may have happened to the algorithm if it's just handing out random 5% Spanish to Brits! If there is more evidence of this, this will be going back to old MyHeritage level accuracy :o! Some I have seen suggested they might have got lazy and started to use AI and rely too much on it to modify the algorithm with not enough human checking that it is not producing likely false results.
Neither my brother or my daughter show any Spanish or Welsh percentages although, ironically, my daughter did have a low percentage of Welsh via her father, and the paper trail backed that up, as David Lloyd, born in Wales, was her 4x great-grandfather.
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I would say Germanic is referring to the original Anglo-Saxon settlers who undoubtedly left DNA ties behind in what is now Germany - so that some Germans and many English share some DNA with each other.
Yes, but this DNA would be broken down into tiny segments over 1500 years of a split between England and Germany and although similar should be possible to differentiate. I don't think Ancestry really intend for Brits to get so much Germanic. But to be more accurate, it would require more Germans to do DNA tests, and those Germans to also do accurate trees in sufficient numbers. If Ancestry really cared about accuracy they would give out free kits as 23andme and LivingDNA have done in the past for people that can show they meet requirements to qualify as a reference sample for a certain region and then get Ancestry's own genealogy experts to do the trees.
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OH’s father was of English, Irish (Protestant), Scottish, wish a dash Germanic (early US settlers), and his mother was Danish, Swedish, and a bit of Germanic Europe….but surprisingly, and quite coincidentally, both have a smidgeon of North African DNA. That one is pretty unlikely.
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But to be more accurate, it would require more Germans to do DNA tests, and those Germans to also do accurate trees in sufficient numbers.
I think you are hitting the nail on the head here melba_schmelba. We really don't know the quality of the reference population tree data that Ancestry have used, and from which locations they are actually from. If for example they have based Germanic based on American testers who show german ancestors, rather than actual german testers it could make a big difference.
Despite what ancestry say about all the science and trying to focus less on the 'estimate' i will still just consider these as a 'bit of fun' rather than anything serious. Thats not trying to disparage the hard work that i am sure a lot of people at ancestry have done, but i think the marketing people have over emphasised what is still a very imprecise 'science'.
Richard
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My father is getting 91% Germanic Europe. His parentage is German and Sudeten-German. The 2023 update was 75%. It is increasing every year.
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But to be more accurate, it would require more Germans to do DNA tests, and those Germans to also do accurate trees in sufficient numbers.
I think you are hitting the nail on the head here melba_schmelba. We really don't know the quality of the reference population tree data that Ancestry have used, and from which locations they are actually from. If for example they have based Germanic based on American testers who show german ancestors, rather than actual german testers it could make a big difference.
Despite what ancestry say about all the science and trying to focus less on the 'estimate' i will still just consider these as a 'bit of fun' rather than anything serious. Thats not trying to disparage the hard work that i am sure a lot of people at ancestry have done, but i think the marketing people have over emphasised what is still a very imprecise 'science'.
Richard
I have well over 150 DNA matches in my 4C or closer category who seem to have a common country of origin of their families.
The majority are based in the USA with sizeable numbers being in the UK and smaller numbers in Australia and New Zealand.
Of these the vast majority have no family tree of any kind, others have a tree of less than 10.
The common country of the origin of the families of these matches is Italy, the surnames is often the only clue that I have in their families origin.
Just looking through 100 of my own closest DNA matches which range down the 34cM with the hundredth I find that of those I have only linked 28 into my family tree. The 72 “unknowns” generally have no tree or a very limited tree and as such other techniques would need to be used in determining who is actually who.
So whatever sources Ancestry is using then I do not see family trees as being any significant element in their analysis.
As it is the latest Ancestry predictions on my own ethnicity now for the first time ever they reflect my own family tree very accurately.
Conversely one of the DNA tests that I manage has a Mother who was born in Europe and their Maternal ethnicity is all over the place and there is zero documentation that I have found nor have the shared matches yet to help in revealing actual origins.
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OH’s father was of English, Irish (Protestant), Scottish, wish a dash Germanic (early US settlers), and his mother was Danish, Swedish, and a bit of Germanic Europe….but surprisingly, and quite coincidentally, both have a smidgeon of North African DNA. That one is pretty unlikely.
Interesting you mention that, as I noticed a close relative who got this, and also a bit of Spanish, which I think looking at their fairly thoroughly traced family tree is unlikely!! I am not sure if people remember the sort of results people were getting 10 years back, but it was a bit of a joke that so many people got 1% Nigerian!! Also Brits and Irish regularly got Spanish and Basque, which was eventually corrected, unfortunately for whatever reason Ancestry's algorithm with this update seems to have gone backwards in accuracy. You saw that in similar pattern of unlikely results MyHeritage's own results until their update this year (which many people are still to get?!).
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But to be more accurate, it would require more Germans to do DNA tests, and those Germans to also do accurate trees in sufficient numbers.
I think you are hitting the nail on the head here melba_schmelba. We really don't know the quality of the reference population tree data that Ancestry have used, and from which locations they are actually from. If for example they have based Germanic based on American testers who show german ancestors, rather than actual german testers it could make a big difference.
Despite what ancestry say about all the science and trying to focus less on the 'estimate' i will still just consider these as a 'bit of fun' rather than anything serious. Thats not trying to disparage the hard work that i am sure a lot of people at ancestry have done, but i think the marketing people have over emphasised what is still a very imprecise 'science'.
Richard
Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if they are using people of significant Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry as a model, as I think they probably use Quebecois for French. I know for the latter that has big pitfalls as Quebecois came from a fairly limited original population, and they came from specific areas of France in particular, and not from other areas. Ancestry do market their DNA product in Germany, so they may have a reasonable amount of samples that way, but I am not sure if they have ever released figures on that.
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Am not sure where I read this, but apparently the largest single ancestral ethnic group in the US are the Germans. Not only the Pennsylvania Dutch, but other Germans in that (then) colony, and they also settled in the more northern Southern colonies, and New York state had a sizeable number. They kept coming in, too, over the centuries.
Still having ties to Quebec, although I am an Anglo, I somehow doubt the Quebecois French would be testing a lot with Ancestry - their genealogy is well documented, and as you mentioned, they come from a relatively small pool of ancestors (although many do find a non-French ancestor, there was intermarriage with Catholic Irish after the famine, some even married Anglos, my aunt married a French-Canadian but he also had Irish ancestry).
You are right though, many Americans with French Canadian ancestry might have tested - don't forget the Acadians, many ended up in Louisiana, and they might contribute to Americans with French ancestry. Many Quebecois headed to New England to work in the mills at the end of the 1800's and have a large number of descendants in Massachusetts and New Hampshire in particular.
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Am not sure where I read this, but apparently the largest single ancestral ethnic group in the US are the Germans. Not only the Pennsylvania Dutch, but other Germans in that (then) colony, and they also settled in the more northern Southern colonies, and New York state had a sizeable number. They kept coming in, too, over the centuries.
Yes, I think most were Palatine Germans
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-palatine-germans.htm
https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2015/09/the-poor-palatines.html
Still having ties to Quebec, although I am an Anglo, I somehow doubt the Quebecois French would be testing a lot with Ancestry - their genealogy is well documented, and as you mentioned, they come from a relatively small pool of ancestors (although many do find a non-French ancestor, there was intermarriage with Catholic Irish after the famine, some even married Anglos, my aunt married a French-Canadian but he also had Irish ancestry).
You are right though, many Americans with French Canadian ancestry might have tested - don't forget the Acadians, many ended up in Louisiana, and they might contribute to Americans with French ancestry. Many Quebecois headed to New England to work in the mills at the end of the 1800's and have a large number of descendants in Massachusetts and New Hampshire in particular.
Well, I think I can rather definitely say that is not correct, as my own close relative has a rather vast number of Quebecois matches ;)! Lots of people just do the test to find relatives they may have lost contact with or to resolve doubts over their own origins, curiosity, or I suspect very often simply because someone gave it to them as a gift :D.
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Any regular here knows that an altogether too large proportion of Ancestry family trees are simply wrong - especially the trees of the rebel colonists in North America.
Now, Ancestry DNA ethnicity estimates are not based on "science", but on those Ancestry family trees.
Ergo, their ethnicity estimates are just as reliable as those family trees they are derived from....
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My results look strange, previously I had no German ancestry but now showing 8% when I compare DNA with my Dads Cousin and My Mums cousin no German ancestry for either of them ?
Both Cousins have Scottish Ancestry 16-20% but mine has gone down to 2% ??? ???
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Any regular here knows that an altogether too large proportion of Ancestry family trees are simply wrong - especially the trees of the rebel colonists in North America.
Now, Ancestry DNA ethnicity estimates are not based on "science", but on those Ancestry family trees.
Ergo, their ethnicity estimates are just as reliable as those family trees they are derived from....
Ancestry use reference panels to assign DNA segments to a given region. The total number of DNA samples across all those reference panels is 116 830 samples. At the last published count, Ancestry had over 26 million DNA tests. That means that the reference panels are less than 0.5% of all users. Somehow, I think they manage to filter out the authors of those unreliable trees and only use "people with deep family roots in a specific geographic area or cultural group"
In short, ancestral regions are NOT based on a "too large proportion" of unreliable trees.
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My results look strange, previously I had no German ancestry but now showing 8% when I compare DNA with my Dads Cousin and My Mums cousin no German ancestry for either of them ?
Both Cousins have Scottish Ancestry 16-20% but mine has gone down to 2% ??? ???
Look at the ranges given on the page for that ethnic group/country, that may show they are similar. When the analysis is done, it doesn't compare you to any of your close relative's DNA tests so the results can vary quite a bit. Most people of British ancestry seem to have had a large increase in German with this update. Ancestry may claim this simply reflects Anglo-Saxon, however if that was the case, what does the England category represent?! I think the reality is, they can't separate English and very closely related populations on the continent properly as they do not have enough good reference samples (i.e. at least four grandparents from a very defined area in these places) for people from those places i.e. NE France, Belgium, Netherlands, NW Germany.
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The numbers in the Reference panels are available on Ancestry's site
France - 2000
Germanic Europe - 2000
Netherlands - 2000
Ireland - 2000
Scotland - 2000
Wales - 2000
England and North Western Europe - 2000
There is no Belgium reference Panel.
Ancestry also points out, at some length, that regions like the UK and Europe are indeed extremely difficult to tell apart, since there has been so much movement within those areas for centuries.
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The numbers in the Reference panels are available on Ancestry's site
France - 2000
Germanic Europe - 2000
Netherlands - 2000
Ireland - 2000
Scotland - 2000
Wales - 2000
England and North Western Europe - 2000
There is no Belgium reference Panel.
Ancestry also points out, at some length, that regions like the UK and Europe are indeed extremely difficult to tell apart, since there has been so much movement within those areas for centuries.
They also admit that for many references, they do not even have the four grandparents names on the user's trees. They claim that they can ameliorate this by using some of their existing population models and filter out those with what it sees as DNA that is too different. However, if those models are often based on flawed data, which I think they most likely are, having 2000 references isn't really worth much. For example, to fully understand European population, you need to know all about all significant migrations. As just one example, from past results and the present results on Ancestry, it seems likely they did not factor in massive Italian emigration of millions of people from 1860s-1960s to France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and Ireland in particular. It isn't just Ancestry who made this mistake, as a French academic DNA study, found what it speculated was a large settlement of Romans in the Moselle area of France, but it was because Italians had gone to work in the factories by the 100s of thousands in the early 20th century! I think Ancestry thinks it can get around the more careful approach made by the better academic studies, but I am not convinced. It doesn't really compare, for example, to the Irish DNA Atlas which uses eight grandparents born within 50km of each other as requirements for reference samples.
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A DNA map of France says there was a lot of ancient Roman settlement in the Poitou area of France, and I have several ancestors from there. The 1800s and early 1900s great wave of Italians usually settled in the cities of France or the eastern half of the county, not as many as far as I know in the Poitou area. Poitou is an area of France that is a long way from even NW Italy. Yes, Switzerland and Belgium saw a great wave of Italians move there.
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This update has annoyed me. I have four ancestors from Ireland, 3 on dad's side and one on mum's side, all around 1820s and only the one on mum's side shows now in the Ethnicity.
Mum's great-granddad's granddad was Welsh and the 4% Welsh has disappeared.
The 10% Germanic on dad's side (no Germanic relatives that I can see) now has an additional 4% Netherlands.
I fail to see how the Germanic can be from our AngloSaxon heritage in England as it was so high on my dad's side but zero on my mum's side and I think my mum had more ancestors from the areas where Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Vikings settled. But also the Ethnicity shouldn't really go back beyond 1700 unless someone living in the mid-1700s onwards had a solid line of that ancestry, Three Irish ancestors with Irish (not Scottish or English) surnames in the 1820s should override Germanic from Anglo Saxon times imho.
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This update has annoyed me. I have four ancestors from Ireland, 3 on dad's side and one on mum's side, all around 1820s and only the one on mum's side shows now in the Ethnicity.
Mum's great-granddad's granddad was Welsh and the 4% Welsh has disappeared.
The 10% Germanic on dad's side (no Germanic relatives that I can see) now has an additional 4% Netherlands.
I fail to see how the Germanic can be from our AngloSaxon heritage in England as it was so high on my dad's side but zero on my mum's side and I think my mum had more ancestors from the areas where Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Vikings settled. But also the Ethnicity shouldn't really go back beyond 1700 unless someone living in the mid-1700s onwards had a solid line of that ancestry, Three Irish ancestors with Irish (not Scottish or English) surnames in the 1820s should override Germanic from Anglo Saxon times imho.
Some of what used to be people's sub regions as shown in the main list and on the map, are now hidden as 'Ancestral Journeys' on the DNA summary page or 'People with these journeys often share this region' when you click on the country page and scroll down. I am not sure what the logic is, somehow that it was believed that they were only a relatively short period in this place? But I know where this happened for my accounts that is not the case, and this was also Ireland (unless you are talking about Norman settlers who were in Ireland for 500+ years!).
Really the Scandinavian categories that most Brits and Irish got to quite high percentages in some cases for many years, was fairly misleading as it clearly hinted to ancient Viking ancestry which Ancestry probably thought was a good marketing tool, and did not mean recent ancestry from Denmark/Sweden/Norway. But if I am not sure telling Brits they are Germans is going to be very popular!! The problem is I think Ancestry are just being lazy or at least too dependent on more high tech 'innovations' - they have their own professional genealogy service who could easily throughly check a few hundred trees for each country, cross referencing DNA matches to make better reference samples but that would cost money!!! Of course they are probably spending too much on AI and other things too which would be better spent on more traditional approaches.
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This update has annoyed me. I have four ancestors from Ireland, 3 on dad's side and one on mum's side, all around 1820s and only the one on mum's side shows now in the Ethnicity.
Mum's great-granddad's granddad was Welsh and the 4% Welsh has disappeared.
The 10% Germanic on dad's side (no Germanic relatives that I can see) now has an additional 4% Netherlands.
I fail to see how the Germanic can be from our AngloSaxon heritage in England as it was so high on my dad's side but zero on my mum's side and I think my mum had more ancestors from the areas where Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Vikings settled. But also the Ethnicity shouldn't really go back beyond 1700 unless someone living in the mid-1700s onwards had a solid line of that ancestry, Three Irish ancestors with Irish (not Scottish or English) surnames in the 1820s should override Germanic from Anglo Saxon times imho.
Some of what used to be people's sub regions as shown in the main list and on the map, are now hidden as 'Ancestral Journeys' on the DNA summary page or 'People with these journeys often share this region' when you click on the country page and scroll down. I am not sure what the logic is, somehow that it was believed that they were only a relatively short period in this place? But I know where this happened for my accounts that is not the case, and this was also Ireland (unless you are talking about Norman settlers who were in Ireland for 500+ years!).
Really the Scandinavian categories that most Brits and Irish got to quite high percentages in some cases for many years, was fairly misleading as it clearly hinted to ancient Viking ancestry which Ancestry probably thought was a good marketing tool, and did not mean recent ancestry from Denmark/Sweden/Norway. But if I am not sure telling Brits they are Germans is going to be very popular!! The problem is I think Ancestry are just being lazy or at least too dependent on more high tech 'innovations' - they have their own professional genealogy service who could easily throughly check a few hundred trees for each country, cross referencing DNA matches to make better reference samples but that would cost money!!! Of course they are probably spending too much on AI and other things too which would be better spent on more traditional approaches.
Yes, I think you're probably right about reliance on automatation and AI instead of doing traditional genealogy to get the Ethnicities and journeys.
The only thing I could find in the breakdowns was that my mum has a high percentage for the East of England, which my family tree agrees with as she has about 1/4 from a few villages nr Braintree, Essex and many of those lines would have been in the area from the 1600s or earlier.