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?

Yeah, there’s no way to even explain how wrong your math is. You do realize you’re saying, “But there [are] only 50 million people here. And a million of them are Vikings.” Yes, that’s true. There are 50 million people in the UK today. A million of them aren’t Vikings. There haven’t always been 50 million. This may be shocking but the amount of people in the world grows every generation. To do recursive math like that, you’d have to know how many there HAD been each year, and I’ve just told you that the science SHOWS you’re wrong and so very wrong. Vikings were invaders in a Celtic land. Ffs, Irish has been spoken in Ireland since long before the Vikings.

The estimate is that, in the history of the world, only 117 billion people have ever successfully lived on earth and a lot of them lived short, brutal lives and died childless. So, 22 million billion ancestors…?

So if I were you, I’d stop proclaiming the sky is purple. Unless this is just one of those goady ridiculous Saturday night threads; it probably is. Regardless, no point in answering you anymore. You won’t listen to reason or science.

It was very accurate for my dh.

This isn’t correct.

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

There's a podcast called The Gift (I think, a people often gibe them as gifts) which looks at the 'secrets' that DNA tests have brought up. Some pretty obvious, dad isn't dad but some other really strange/unusual links.

I'm trying to understand your original post, OP.
The 0.1% that you refer to: do you mean the sample that you give to Ancestry for testing is 0.1% of the total DNA in your body?
But surely as a genetics expert you know that your whole genome is contained in every cell of your body, so your results are 100% of your genome, not 0.1%.
If that isn't what you were referring to, please explain further.

Mine shows my Finnish/Anglo heritage with a dash of Mongolian.

A friend of mine found out that he had a daughter, who he'd never known about. By luck, his wife had given him a DNA test as a gift, and his "long lost" daughter had also done a DNA test as a bit of fun. They were matched up , got in contact, and discovered that he'd fathered her just before going overseas in the Army. Her biological mother never told him she was pregnant , and never told her daughter who the father was. The father and daughter were both so happy to be reunited - it was like an episode of "Long Lost Family".

There have only been approximately 117 billion people who have ever lived (including people alive now) so it is impossible to have had as many ancestors as you state.

What a rude reply to the poster - it doesn't matter what you believe about heritage, if an adoptee wants to take a DNA test to learn more about their biological heritage then that should be respected, not invalidated.

Of course their physical heritage would be important to them, not just their lived experience.

For someone claiming to be an expert you're coming across as badly informed as well as naive.

Where are you getting that they only test 0.1% of your DNA?

That sounds like mine. Two circles around West Yorkshire and the same in one area of ireland.

Then some tiny bit from Finland.

The most boring profile ever. I agree about it being useful to connect, a cousin of my dad turned up on mine so we could fill in each other's family trees.

My cousin on the other hand, who is adopted was able to get in touch with her birth father and half siblings.

Possibly an overwhelming feeling to put on a horned helmet and get in a boat?

Mine was v accurate too. I know my dad's family migrated in the 1800s from a specific part of Norway. My ancestry test even got the specific part of Norway right. I was amazed.

I had a v diverse ancestry with lots of different continents on there. I told someone at work how great it was and they paid a load of cash and they were 99% British 😂

Sites like Ancestry don't sequence 100% of your genome. They only sequence a small proportion of your DNA, but they target the sites that are likely to be informative of ancestry.

I mean the DNA company is only looking at less than 0.1% of your genome

(and no, your whole genome is not necessarily contained in every cell of your body - if you have been pregnant some cells will contain part of the genome of your child, for example, which is how y chromosomes are found in women, if you have cancer, the genomes in those cells may be different, and you can have cancerous cells and never realise - in fact most will be destroyed by your immune system, and there are many other causes of mutations. and even if you have not, you still might not have the same genome in every cell of your body- there are many reasons some cells might be different)

You don't seem to know much about Vikings, no Viking eve put on a horned helmet for a start - obviously this is a trivial detail, but it does speak to the massive ignorance about the whole topic of migration and genetics

did I say they got everywhere or did I say they got to North America, North Africa, Asia and Europe?

under 0.1%

Yes, you're correct.

I was confusing them with those Indo-Persian warriors. I keep doing that. 🙄

exactly - hence the well known trope that every English person is a direct descendent of Edward 1

ALL europeans have viking ancestory. I was just using Vikings as an example. Any genetic test that doesn't tell you that is wrong. Most of these tests are not telling people they have viking ancestory

hence I say one person in the year 1000 is several million of your ancestors - ie has several million places on your ancestorial tree

Can I de rail abit... I'm considering using this to find my birth father, don't have a name or anything but do I understand it right, if someone in his family has sent DNA then there's a slight chance he can be located? I can't get a name for reasons I won't mention and seemed like there would be no hope but someone mentioned this ancestry site to me yesterday then I see this thread this morning so thought would ask

yes it is, and noone has been able to say where any of my maths is wrong