Update On Ancestry DNA Testing

Hello everyone! First I apologize for long neglecting my blog.  To make up for lost time, I will write two posts today.

In the past I wrote about our experiences using DNA testing.  Then I wrote further about "spitting in a tube".  You can read about the Ancestry DNA testing HERE. Overall I am happy about what we learned.  We joined under the Beta program and were told that in the future as more people used the testing program and a larger database was developed, that our information would be fine tuned.  Last week we received notification that our ethnicity profile had been updated. This turned out to be quite fascinating information.

Initially my husband's data was:

50% Central European
45% Scandinavian
 5% Uncertain

Updated data:

97% Europe, further broken down to:

54% Great Britain
21% Ireland
 8% Europe West
 7% Iberian Peninsula
 4% Europe East
 2% Italy/Greece
 1% Scandinavian

The additional 3% is broken down to:

1% North Africa
1% Caucasus
1% Near East

WOW. That was different!  So, why the big difference? As more and more people are in the study, they can narrow it down and pinpoint more exactly. There is a huge change in the percentage of Scandinavian and I would attribute that to the % of Ireland and Great Britain overlapping with that of Scandinavia (Vikings).  Then there was that 5% Uncertain which would explain the newer additions of North Africa, Caucuses, Near East, Italy/Greece etc. My guess is that his Near East, Caucasus and North African blood, ties into the Iberian Peninsula DNA since there were connections there between the Muslims, Jews, Spaniards and Portuguese. This is just a guess based on what we know of history. We were particularly fascinated with Hubby's DNA because we have little to know information on his father's family.

When I went to look at my DNA, I didn't expect to see as great of a change, but it was interesting too. 

My initial data:

75% British Isles
16% Central European
 8% Eastern European
 1% Uncertain

Other than neglecting my nearly 300 years of documented Swedish ancestry, I felt this was fairly accurate.  Now you can see my update did change a little:

99% Europe, broken down to:

45% Europe West
26% Great Britain
16% Ireland
 5% Scandinavia
 6% Finnish/North Russia
 1% Europe East

The additional 1% was Asia South, which included India, Pakistan and surrounding smaller countries.

Geographically, my genealogy has revealed my ancestry to come from Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and Slovakia. These numbers seem to more or less represent this. The only surprise was the DNA from Asia South since there is nothing in the last 2-300 years that I have uncovered that would make sense of that.  My British were in America long before the empirical reign over India. I am thinking that this could reflect my Slovakian heritage and their could be some Roma (Gypsy) blood there as they came from India originally. I will likely never know for certain. The Finnish/North Russia, which includes most of western Russia, could be part of my Swedish ancestry, but just as possibly, it could come from my Polish or Slovakian ancestry. The DNA results do explain the regions and note how they intermixed with others and what percentage the average native of these regions have in their DNA. In Scandinavia there is a mix of European, Great Britain, Finnish, Russian, Irish and other DNA types, so it is possible that my Swedes were not "pure".

All in all this has been a fun adventure and we are thankful to Ancestry for making this possible.  We are now hoping to do further DNA studies through 23 and Me for genetic testing of health conditions and for hubby in particular, we would like to join a surname study at Family Tree DNA. The testing from Family Tree DNA gives the haplotypes and you can join surname studies to determine which line you fit into, which would be beneficial in my Husband's case.  So we are saving pennies now for this. My hope was that we would make some connections on Ancestry.  I have made a few connections with distant cousins, but no brick walls have come down yet. New matches are added all the time.