So Proud of Great Diversity in My Ancestry

[chesya]

Thanks for everone's thoughts. I signed up here to get people's thoughts and I am grateful to everyone who has replied. I understand what you mean by Donkeys as we share 80% of the DNA of tapeworms and 60% of a banana (this may be apocryphal but it tells a tale). Also 18% of African Americans are related to Edward III and (this is the most common reply face-to-face) we are all related to Ghengis Khan. I get it, but these things also apply to reply to non-helical DNA and to the vast inside part that lies between my father's Y chromosone and my mothers mtDNA. What Genetic Ancestor claims, for instance, is that over 5% of my mtDNA matches that of the mtDNA of 2 people whose DNA was collected in Denmark and that there is a 1% match with one person the Iranian tribes I mention. This only proves that we share a mother within the last 10,000, but the strength of the match imply that this could be much more recent. Regarding the Ashkenazi connection a huge amount of work, as you might has expect, as been done on the  mtDNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jewish_origins (huge health warning). Genetic Ancestor would, in theory, be able to draw a more definite link to fewer and more positively identified maternal ancestors, hence being able to say Belarus Ashkenazi, instead of simply Belarus.

I don't honestly care if I am British, Danish, Jewish, Roma, Iranian, or whatever, only that I may have a long range link with different peoples and whatever this may turn out to be. At nine years old, ignorant of the controversial aspects of my extended family, I stood up in class and gave an account of the broad movements and partition of humanity in Eurasia since the fall of the Roman Empire. I find the specifics of History quite interesting but not nearly as the undercurrents of humanity that lay below.

I do know that my maternal grandmother and her sister, went under an assumed name, probably because they had escaped from a nomadic community that would harm them if found.

[chesya]

Dr Forster of Genetic Ancestry responds to the criticisms on this thread.

First he addresses the accuracy issue: -

"The reason is that  I am puzzled why he/she considers the presented accuracy
"not remotely possible". Your results are good, but not as accurate as many
other clients we have analysed, who have closer matches in our databases, often
surname matches."

On the objections brought by davidft and Guy Etchells, he said: -

"The first comment is simply ignorant (that researchers have not sampled a
sufficient proportion of the human population to cover the main existing DNA
types). But there is perhaps a grain of truth in that a large survey of Africans
a couple of years ago did yield a previously unknown deep Y chromosome lineage
at low percentage. Similarly, some years ago my colleague Turi King found a West
African A-type in a Yorkshire family (surname Revis, I think), and according to
family records going back to the 1700s, there was no recorded African
connection. Roman slave trade perhaps?

It is difficult to find such surprises, underlining that we do have a fairly
detailed understanding of the basic structure of human genetics based on
existing samples.

The second point is a misunderstanding: when we say "tracing African ancestry",
we are simply saying it is possible (even trivial) to distinguish Africans from
non-Africans using DNA. It is NOT the same as claiming that Africans (or Jews or
the British) are genetically uniform. For example, it is easy to recognise that
Rodriquez and Morales are Spanish names, whereas Smith and Attenborough are
English names. It is NOT the same as saying that Rodriquez and Morales are the
same name. I think this is where your correspondent has got the wrong end of the
stick."

I don't intend to be the go-between for opposing arguments here, only that I found Dr Forster's arguments to be more coherent - even if I do NOT accept his findings or methods without question.

[Ruskie]

Dr Forster got back to you very promptly with his response to the comments on this thread.

[Ruskie]

Why don't you give the details of one or two of your grandparents on Rootschat and see if anyone on here can find out more about them?  People may have acces to information or particular experience that your family member didn't have, when he/she tried to find out more. 

This is an excellent idea. You should give rootschat a try chesya.

[Guy Etchells]

The world population (the total number of living humans on Earth) was 7.244 billion as of July 2014 according to the medium fertility estimate by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division

As of July 12, 2015, the Family Tree DNA database (currently the largest genealogical DNA database in the world) has 739,150 records.
The FBI database (The National DNA Index (NDIS)) contains over 11,782,211 offender1 profiles, 2,001,929 arrestee profiles and 632,444 forensic profiles as of May 2015.

As you can see both of these databases contain a tiny proportion of information compared with the number of people in the world.

What Genetic Ancestor Ltd is claiming is that there is no possibility of there being unconnected DNA in the billions of people who have not yet been tested as the tiny proportion of people who have been tested cover all the different combinations possible.

That shows not only how ignorant they are but what poor scientists they are.

But that is not surprising as his/her reply did not even address what I had written.
Comparing nationalities of people to names is totally beyond comprehension does Dr Forster really believe one can claim that a person named Smith must be English or Scottish or Irish or even American based on their name, what piffle.

Cheers
Guy

[Ruskie]

It does seem to be quite an unusual first thread (a statement rather than a question). 

[Ruskie]

Chesya,

Using your first couple of examples:
1 Denmark St Olai, Hyorring, N-Jylland
2 Denmark - Thisted

Can you please explain how the results gave you such precise locations? As far as I am aware most DNA test results will just give you a rough outline or a blur on a map and a rough percentage of ethnicity and not much else.

If the test is so accurate I would be interested in taking it as my FTDNA test just gave me a few colours on a map.

£195 each
I can easily afford it and it was important to me.

Yeah, I can easily afford that too.

[DavidG02]

Comparing nationalities of people to names is totally beyond comprehension does Dr Forster really believe one can claim that a person named Smith must be English or Scottish or Irish or even American based on their name, what piffle.

Cheers
Guy

Guess I am taking this thread in another direction.

 This is where the concern for me comes in when handing in my sample to Family Tree DNA companies. ( not specifically one but all) . I send in my envelope with the tube in it and of course I provide a name to identify who to send the results back to.

So D.Gibbins is on the envelope , how easy would it be to do a quick name locater search and send back results based on this and not the sample? ( not suggesting unethical practices on behalf of a professional outfit)

In a growing industry there will be those people who will take advantage of peoples ignorance and ''woo oo take the money and run''

[Ruskie]

 This is where the concern for me comes in when handing in my sample to Family Tree DNA companies. ( not specifically one but all) . I send in my envelope with the tube in it and of course I provide a name to identify who to send the results back to.

So D.Gibbins is on the envelope , how easy would it be to do a quick name locater search and send back results based on this and not the sample? ( not suggesting unethical practices on behalf of a professional outfit)

This is exactly the concern I had regarding my and my father's tests. Any fool could look at it and have a reasonable stab at the origins.

In fact I did look into the possibility of using a false name.