To think these DNA ancestry tests make no sense

[CarolineFields]

So you get back a score of 40% Nigerian. Meaning out of the tiny scrap of DNA tested - less than 0.1% -40% of that matches the average population in Nigeria. But if those Nigerians are tested, they won't come back as 100% Nigerian, so 40% of 0.1% matches people who are likely to be told they are 50% not Nigerian?

And if you are in Iceland when you have that test, you are told you are 40% Nigerian, but someone in Australia can be told they are 80% Icelandic due to being compared to you and you cohort?

And the (last) thing on looking at ancestors

Genetic ancestry groups and genetic similarity | gcbias

Genetic similarity and genetic ancestry groups Graham Coop Center for Population Biology and Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis July 2022

For example, ∼450 years ago you may have more than 32,000 living genealogical ancestors, but only ∼1000 of them contributed genetic material that ended up in your genome, and the proportion of ancestors who contribute genetic material drops farther back in time

The subset of your genealogical ancestors from whom you inherited genetic material are your “genetic ancestors”, a small fraction of your total ancestry.

Several thousand years back, all modern humans share all of their genealogical ancestors.

Farther back than that, anyone who left any descendants in the present day (and many did) is an ancestor to all humans living today (Manrubia et al., 2003; Rohde et al., 2004; Coop, 2017b).

What does that mean for our genetic relatedness? Well, that’s complicated. You and I share a genealogical common ancestors at least as recently as the time when all modern humans share all their ancestors.

However, only a limited subset of these people are our genetic ancestors, and we only inherit small fractions of our genome from any one of these common ancestors. Therefore, at a typical locus, your and my most recent genetic common ancestor lived much farther back in the past.

Is. This. A. Joke.

You have blatantly ignored any science you’ve disagreed with during this debate (when @ChaosAndCrumbs pointed out the Africa hypothesis is now believed to be outdated) and NOW you want to say that it’s because you were such a huge proponent of genetic genealogy? You didn’t even know it existed, based on your past comments!

Let us all remember the moment when you not only shit on @Misthios but all genealogists as if they weren’t doing their jobs when you made this comment:
Geneologists should go back to the early humans if they really want to look at ancestors and where we "come from"

How funny that you’ve now discovered that they are! So now you suddenly don’t give a shit about DNA at all and it’s genealogy (specifically, genetic genealogy) that you meant, though the definition you give of it is almost like a dictionary definition of genealogy itself (“following a traceable line down parent to child”). Oh, how silly we all are for misunderstanding! Much like the SEVERAL times you said descendants but meant ancestors.

So this whole thread has been absolutely pointless, starting with the OP who didn’t understand how DNA works and going down to you supporting her, who didn’t understand what genealogy meant, and now wants to claim you were talking about it.

@nonumbersinthisname was absolutely right - you can’t keep arguing with someone being wrong on the internet period, but especially if they keep changing the goalposts like you’ve done, changing this entire thread, rendering every previous argument moot.

I think this was probably enough “arguing on the internet” for me for all of 2024 😂

I’ve said I was leaving before, but then returned again and again because I couldn’t bear if people got the wrong point of view from you, but honestly, how ridiculous is that, because who the fuck cares about an argument on Mumsnet? No one. I’ve been beyond ridiculous to care myself.

"How funny that you’ve now discovered that they are! So now you suddenly don’t give a shit about DNA at all and it’s genealogy (specifically, genetic genealogy) that you meant, though the definition you give of it is almost like a dictionary definition of genealogy itself (“following a traceable line down parent to child”). Oh, how silly we all are for misunderstanding! Much like the SEVERAL times you said descendants but meant ancestors."

FFS - that's exactly what I have been saying. It;'s not about the genes but about the fact that people can trace a line back.

Maybe you didn't understand that and can't read?

What the fuck did you think this was that I talked about?

Identical ancestors point - Wikipedia

Did you even understand what that is?

Thus, even though the Norwegian and Japanese person share the same set of ancestors, these ancestors appear in their family tree in dramatically different proportions.

A Japanese person in 5000 BC with present-day descendants will likely appear trillions of times in a modern-day Japanese person's family tree, but might appear only one time in a Norwegian person's family tree. A 5000 BC Norwegian person will similarly appear far more times in a typical Norwegian person's family tree than they will appear in a Japanese person's family tree.[6]

Note that a person in the population today does not necessarily inherit any genetic material from a given ancestor at the Identical Ancestors Point. For example, a Japanese person may not inherit any genetic material from his Norwegian ancestors. In that case, they are genealogical ancestors but not genetic ancestors. The same goes even for the most recent common ancestor

Clearly you didn't read it or you didn't understand it

And I am done with people who clearly can't be bothered to read

However - this is all useful information for the next time this topic comes up

Oh, good grief. They were right. I know this must be a bot. Because only a bot would do this without noticing the recursiveness.

Sure, I read the Wikipedia page that wasn’t shared by the account @cakeorwine until the final page of this discussion. It first says, “the Identical Ancestors Point for all humans would be surprisingly recent, on the order of 5,000-15,000 years ago. Ralph and Coop (2013), considering the European population and working from genetics, came to similar conclusions for the recent common ancestry of Europeans.”

But then it says MORE recently researchers determined the point is about 1000AD. Who are these mystery researchers?!? Where did that info come from? Well, let’s look! The Wiki source takes us to an article by Hershberger in Scientific American that the @cakeorwine account quoted earlier. Now let’s see what they say, “Researchers using genomic data place the latter date around A.D. 1000.”

Huh, looks like “using genomic data” links us to a study! But what will it be!!?

… it’s the Ralph and Coop study quoted right before that sentence on Wikipedia as disagreeing with the very next sentence.

Lolol. It’s like that part in Scooby Doo where they pull the mask off.

Look, this has been a good bot. It kept me going for quite a while, until I was like “who the fuck cares this much about arguing on Mumsnet.” I mean, I do it because I’m bed bound, but even I’d be better off reading a book. Problems I saw:

• it focused specifically on only about three of us despite arguments from several others in the thread
• it used outdated research
• it repeated itself
• it had trouble with terminology (ancestors, descendants)
• it changed tact (what I’ll call “the final four comments” as if it suddenly discovered genetic genealogy existed despite previously being unable to spell genealogy)
• as a learning model, it’s not bad. If you want an ENDLESS argument though with citations, unleash it on Reddit

Hello Jackie. You look nice.

I've had results from two separate DNA companies and the results were very different. For what it's worth my family is mainly Scottish, with some Welsh and Irish. The rest was a total surprise, but you can see both companies have totally different estimates for the Scandinavian element, and one company even mentions Native America and Coptic Egyptian.
Complete mystery.

My Heritage

Irish/Scottish/Welsh 46.8%
Scandinavian 24.9%
English 16%
East European 7.9%
Iberian 4.4%

23and Me

British & Irish 94.7%
Scandinavian 3.4%
Northwestern European 0.2%
Southern European 1.3%
Italian 1.3%
Indigenous American 0.2%
Coptic Egyptian 0.2%

So I'm unsure which one is more accurate, but it's really just for fun.
I'm not hugely invested in it but thought it was worth mentioning as I literally have two different sets of results!

HootyMcBooby. Crikey those results are so different. At some stage I’m going to use a different company. I still can’t believe I’m 100% of anything!

My results are weird with MyHeritage too.

One thing to note for those thinking of testing - at present Ancestry does not let you upload your DNA data from other sites, but you can download your DNA data from Ancestry and share it on My Heritage or other sites. Your DNA data is just a long list of numbers.

According to Ancestry I am:

81% Scotland
10% England/NW Europe
9% Ireland

Ancestry also identifies the Scottish borders as the area I have strongest links, which is very accurate.

MyHeritage is based in Israel and has a smaller customer database with different demographics. Most people who have tested with Ancestry haven't taken their information and put it into MyHeritage. According to them I am :

87.1% Irish/Scottish/Welsh
6% English
4.6% Scandivanian
2.3% West Asian

This is much less accurate. For a start, they lump all Scotland/Ireland/Wales in together which is not helpful if you are trying to identify where to start to look for your great granny. It also can't give pointers to specific communities within any area. The Scandinavian/West Asian thing is a mystery, their database appears to be picking up very small quantities of shared DNA with people in N America who have Scandinavian ancestry as well as British, but the West Asian (Turkey/Iran/Iraq) is totally wrong, I have no ancestors from there which I have found, and no matches with people from that part of the world. MyHeritage has been useful for matching with relatives, I found a second cousin on there (our grandparents were siblings) but as I've said all along the ethnicity results are not the main point of ever doing one of these tests - or shouldn't be.

@HootyMcBooby I know MyHeritage and 23&Me claim to be running different data.

Apparently, MyHeritage tests autosomal DNA (which you get equally from both parents) and 23&Me also tests mitochondrial DNA (your mother and her mother and her mother, etc.) and y-chromosomal DNA (same thing in your father’s side - his father from his father from his father EXCEPT only males can have this so your father or brother would have to get tested too). MyHeritage says it only breaks ethnicity into 42 areas while 23&Me breaks it into 1,500.

But as @Misthios has pointed out, you can link MyHeritage with existing Ancestry records. MyHeritage is also a dual service; they only have 2 million DNA records but 10 million data records. Whereas 23&Me is strictly DNA records. Their results may be true, but you’d have to go farther back than any existing family tree could to find the Coptic Egyptian, maybe? I don’t know.

I wish you the best of luck with finding whatever info you took the test for!