To think these DNA ancestry tests make no sense

i did 3 with different companies for me, my 2 kids AND my husband, all came back the same within 1% at least with all the companies, was quite surprised

I don’t know about the human ones but I did 2 separate dog ones at least 7 years apart and using two different companies.

My vet told me not to bother as they were no good but both tests came back very similar.

The tests could use the same people to process the results and could be complete BS but I felt they were pretty accurate considering they all said the same dog breeds.

This thread has fascinated me. I don't know enough about genetics to get involved in any of the discussions- but can anyone point me in the direction of the right / most accurate company to use (in their opinion) to get a test done?

Exactly, @DubhLinn24 . It's called pedigree collapse and is much more common in some societies than others. The Jewish community is particularly noted for this as marriages happened within a community and often test-takers have higher percentages of shared DNA because their gg grandparents were cousins and their grandparents second cousins or something.

I think your maths is wrong because you are calculating unique individual ancestors when in fact they are shared multiple times over. And often shared not just among large families but in between the same large families over and over again where people tended to stay in the same place over generations.

Because of the way your DNA recombines, after 4 or 5 generations you have cousins which whom you do not share DNA. And because most people doing a DNA test are not interested in who their relatives were in 1024 AD, they are interested in who their relatives might have been in 1924 or 1824.

As explained upthread, a Y DNA test can get you much further back because the Y chromosome only mutates very slowly. But it's expensive, and men only.

It seems a very arbitrary thing to look at 200 years. Why stop then?

People say "I'm 54% Norwegian, etc" - it doesn't really tell them anything useful except for tracing people who have a common ancestor from the mid 1800s.

Well it's not pointless in that many people don't know where their ancestors came from 200 years ago. I think you are underestimating the massive amount of work it could take to document 4 grandparents, 8 g grandparents, 16 gg grandparents, 32, 64, 128 direct ancestors which is the limits of autosomal testing.

Not everyone doing their genealogy has the aim of simply getting as far back as they can, as quickly as possible. For many, i'd say the majority, it's about understanding the lives of these people. Where did they live, what sort of work did they do, what world events did they live through, were they educated, how many children did they have etc etc etc.

Many people underestimate the huge interest in things like ancestral tourism, people coming from North America, Australia or New Zealand to explore the areas in the UK which their ancestors left 150 years ago.

It only tells you where your ancestors were 200 years ago.
I get that.

But it doesn't tell you where you "come from" as those ancestors came from elsewhere.

So it's a bit pointless really - unless you just want to know where your ancestors from 200 years ago were.

I bet a lot of people in the UK could trace one of their ancestors back to an ancestor of King Charles. Or even Prince George - as we can then include the Middleton's ancestors.

Especially if you go back far enough

So we are all related to the Royal Family. And they are related to non Royals.

Traits is not health info - it's things like you're more likely to have blue eyes, lighter skin tone. And weird stuff about whether you are likely to play and intstrument or be a morning person.

It will not say whether you have genes which make you more likely to develop certain medical conditions. You'd have to test through 23 and Me for that, and that company has never been as popular in the UK.

No, you are misunderstanding. Autosomal DNA testing like the one offered by Ancestry tells you where your ancestors were 200ish years ago. Obviously your ancestors might have come somewhere else originally but the autosomal DNA test doesn't ever claim to tell you that.

Before the early 19th century people didn't move around much because it was super expensive to do so and when they did, it was often a documented phenomenon such as Hugenots or Normans invading England or the Ulster plantations. Genealogists accept that once you get to a period before compulsory civil regustration of BMD, and definitely before 1800ish, things get much more tricky as the records don't exist unless by that point you've got documentation pointing you to a notable figure like a member of the aristocracy who has a written genealogy. My family were not notable, they were all agricultural labourers and although one a few lines i'm back to 1650, on others there is just no information Such is life.

A DNA test is a genealogical tool along with all the other tools we use. It cannot give your entire family tree, or tell you exactly how you are related to distant relatives who have taken the test.

Ancestry have started doing traits now including some health related traits.

"The tests weren't really ever designed for those of us whose ancestors are from the same small area of the UK and lived there for generations, never moving around. "

But ultimately, if you go back even further, then those ancestors have to come from somewhere....

How far back do you have to go?

@cakeorwine just one disclaimer - Ancestry DNA testing which is by far the most popular in the UK, does not give any information whatsoever about health. They are purely in the genealogy market.

What does that mean?

Where did those people come from?
Did they have ancestors who then went elsewhere?

Did any of their ancestors come from another country?

What the "expert" doesn't appreciate is that lots of people around the world don't know where their roots are 4 or 5 generations back. If you are a white or black person living in the United States, you know that originally your ancestors came from elsewhere. You might suspect they were from Europe, but Europe is a big place to begin your research. You do an Ancestry test and come up with an ethnicity result pointing to Sweden, or Scotland or Italy (or a combination of all 3) and it helps you start untangling your ancestors' journey to the US. Ancestry also splits your ethnicity by maternal/paternal, if you have worked through your matches and sorted them according to what you know of your tree, which can help work out if you're looking for an elusive Jewish/Irish/Greek g grandfather on your mother's side or father's.

The tests weren't really ever designed for those of us whose ancestors are from the same small area of the UK and lived there for generations, never moving around. However, my ancestry ethnicity result is very accurate given what I know about my ancestors. I also know they weren't in a place "for five minutes" as that is why we use things like census returns and BMD records to track families through time.

An interesting article on autosomal testing here

Autosomal DNA Tests: Learn About Your Ancestry and Health (webmd.com)

I don't care about the ethnicity suggestions.
I do AncDNA to find cousins & family history.

It intrigues me that other people are so fascinated by ethnic origins.
And because there is a precise number ("0.3%") people think it's true.

My genetic half brother did a test that came back saying he was ~3% Jewish: cue cat among the pigeons gossip in the family. Much commentary about how it can't be from my aunt's side, even though she has Spanish heritage & Jewish people had quite interesting history in Spain...

Think about it.

Vikings were here over 1000 years ago.

You have 1000s of ancestors. How many ancestors do you think you have who were alive during Viking times?

How many of those ancestors have relatives who came from Viking countries?

Do you know all your ancestors from Viking times?

@fuckssaaaaake My dh is adopted. He was able to verify, after using Ancestry, that a name mentioned was indeed his father.
It certainly was beneficial for him.
He found though that there are many more matches on his maternal side than on his paternal side.
He believes it's because his maternal side were poorer and many emigrated and their descendants want to "find their roots".
I hope you find your answers.

Professor Turi King, of the BBC 2 genealogy programme DNA Family Secrets, and involved ( the lead ) in the verification of Richard 111's remains, specialises in genetic genealogy and has been on the Mumsnet genealogy threads before and I believe guided posters in the right direction to gather information.
She may even be posting on this thread. She might read your post.

I agree that the number of ancestors people have is incredible.

Obviously we had a lot of "inbreeding" - or closed communities so cousins, and people with a degree of relatedness married. People didn't mix too much.

But yes - if you look at common ancestors, we have a lot in common.

And what does it mean by "where you come from?" - just going back a few generations, I have Irish relatives and relatives from Northern England. But go back further and I may have French relatives. And go back further -those 1000 great * relatives, where did they come from? There are 1000s....

And ultimately, we all come from Africa anyway

Are we all descended from a common female ancestor? | HowStuffWorks

You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great etc - so think how many people have contributed to your 23 pairs of chromosomes over time?

And where did they all come from?

If you looked at both your chromosomes 1 - which of those relatives did it come from?

And if you looked at your chromosome 2 - which of those relatives did it come from?

What does it all mean about "where you come from?" - and that's just your chromosomes.

Your relatives are different - you have so so so many ancestors.

Mine was also accurate based on what I know about my family in the past 200 or so years.

And that's because autosomal DNA testing only looks back that far really. Mine is very accurate in that time period too, I have done a Y DNA test on a male family member in the hope of getting further on my paternal line but there have not been enough other people testing (because it's very expensive) to reach any conclusion.

An off the shelf DNA test cannot and will not ever tell you that you are descended from the Vikings and doesn't say that it will.

Also agree that there is no point in doing an Ancestry or MyHeritage test without drawing up a family tree, but thousands of people do. I have matches with some of them!

The OP is very much giving off the vibes that silly genealogists have no business messing with DNA testing, leave that to the proper scientists and stick to mooching around graveyards and looking at the census returns. Because you have to be a proper scientist with a degree and everything to get any benefit out of commercial DNA testing.

Dunno OP.

Mine was worryingly accurate. It got geographical locations of my family (that we know so far) exactly right. Even the allergies and traits were spot on.

There will always be variations, and nobody will come back as 100% anything. But it's an interesting exercise.

Mine came back as 100% Welsh/Irish/Scottish. I.E Celtic.

which is what we are. White celtic, nothing else.