Revisit your DNA profile

[ceciltguitar]

Wade, thanks for the prompt to check the latest update on my ancestry on 23 and me. It looks like my report has changed also.

The most noteworthy change to my DNA ancestry is it no longer says that I have more Neanderthal DNA than any of my other 23 and me relatives. Shucks.

[MCDEMO1]

My brother talked me into doing 23 & me.
There were a few accurate descriptions in my reports, but nothing earthshaking.
The DNA background info has not changed over the year and mirrors the information we already had - 51% Irish/Scots/English, 48.5% Polish.
Interesting overall, but neither of us will be renewing membership with 23 & Me.

[jpd]

I sure was. My surplus of Italian DNA has been over run by "Northern European" DNA. Now I don't know who I am

[Wade Hampton]

Well, even though the numbers in the reports have shifted a bit, they still adhere to what my parents always said: our ancestry is mostly British Isles with a significant chunk of Huguenot French.

None of it really matters, of course, but it’s nice to get a sense of where our people came from.


whm

[ghostnote]

I’ve never done it. The family I know about is crazy enough - I don’t need to add more lunatics to the mix.

[RP]

I joined Ancestry.com several years ago after my adult son asked me what our real last name was. I had figured that it was a Russianized variation of "Porter" but didn't know for sure. Evidently, my older brother had posed the same question to other family members when they were still alive. It turns out that either nobody knew or they just didn't care. Using Ancestry I was able to find our real name - it was Portiansky - and a whole lot more. Unfortunately the trail died for me in the early 1900s when my ancestors arrived from the Old Country. I've also done several ancestry searches for my ladyfriend's family members, some of which tracked back to Virginia's founding. Interesting stuff...

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Dirk Hofman

I do have more Neanderthal DNA than 43% of people on the site, however!

In my sister and my initial 23andme reports it said that we had a high percentage of Neanderthal ancestry. I told my boss not to give me a hard time, or I’d go all yabba dabba do on him and whack him with a brontosaurus bone!


whm

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

In my sister and my initial 23andme reports it said that we had a high percentage of Neanderthal ancestry. I told my boss not to give me a hard time, or I’d go all yabba dabba do on him and whack him with a brontosaurus bone!


whm

I'll just say that when I reported this fact to my wife, she conveyed a sense of being deeply unsurprised...

[Steve DeRosa]

Without going into details, based on several family traditions and anecdotes I had strong lifelong suspicions about certain elements of my maternal history/heritage...

The initial report from Ancestry.com confirmed what I had long suspected, with a a combined geographic/ethnological total of 20% - significant by any reckoning...

A subsequent "updated" report a couple years later - claimed by the company to be better and more accurate - was in fact not only less specific but eliminated all references to the maternal origins cited previously...

It did tell me, however, that former WWE Champion John Cena is a fourth or fifth cousin...

In retrospect, I would have done better saving my money and reading my daily horoscope instead - just about as useful IME...

[Cypress Knee]

Originally Posted by frankmcr

Could be they've changed their definitions. Quite a few people in Northern Ireland are of mostly Scottish ancestry, although they mostly would say they're Irish. (Talking about that would take us deep into political/religious territory though.)

In the early 1600's more than s quarter million of the "Ulster Scots" were brought into Northern Ireland to colonize the area, and the Catholic Irish were driven out.

The Ulster Scots were primarily Presybetarian, while the ruling English were Anglican.

The "Troubles" between the Catholics and Protestants were not a religious warfare, but rather a struggle for the Irish Catholics to regain their ancestral territories from the British (i.e. Scots) who happened to be Protestant. The Troubles are not about religion, they are about real estate.

If your Irish ancestors are Protestant, then the odds are that your ancestors actually immigrated to Northern Ireland from Scotland and then continued west across the Atlantic. If your Irish ancestors are Catholic, then they left Ireland for other reasons to come to America.

[Silurian]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

Well, even though the numbers in the reports have shifted a bit, they still adhere to what my parents always said: our ancestry is mostly British Isles with a significant chunk of Huguenot French.

None of it really matters, of course, but it’s nice to get a sense of where our people came from.


whm

It just provides a snapshot in time. If we go back in time far enough we can all be 100% sure that our ancestors came from Africa.

[RP]

Ok, if you're not interested in doing it for yourself, do it for your dog....

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[TBman]

Mine seems to have stayed the same from 23andme. I have my son, sister and my niece as my closest relatives. A bunch of 3% 2nd cousins and then it trails off to the rest of the known world,

92.4% Italian (mostly Sicily)
Then Greek and Balkan for another 0.07%

Then the rest is a mishmash of Arab, Egyptian, Levantine, Anatolian, and Northwest Asian and Africa.

So, whether the trace stuff is accurate or just where some of my Italian family migrated to is unknown.

[ozzman]

Originally Posted by Silurian

It just provides a snapshot in time. If we go back in time far enough we can all be 100% sure that our ancestors came from Africa.

well,consider that all humans have 99 percent the same DNA as Chimpanzees so....what's any of it mean?

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by ozzman

....consider that all humans have 99 percent the same DNA as chimpanzees so....what's any of it mean?

Speaking as a retired fifth-grade teacher, I had the opportunity to observe this phenomenon first-hand, up-close, and personal...