Ancestry.com dna results

[phil56]

Fizz, I had a similarish result.

My research so far, sometimes back to 1500s shows nearly all my ancestors are English about 98%. However my DNA result was 38% Western Europe, 30% Britain 21% Ireland 11% Trace (mostly North Europe).

First reaction, giving I consider myself almost 100% English supported by much research, why does Ancestry DNA only find me as 30% British ?

The answer is partly due to the time period, ie DNA goes back much further. When we think family history we focus mainly on last 200 years, for DNA we need to think last 2000 years and historical events. In my case one of my great grandfather's was believed to be descended from Huguenots and they turned up in the Fenland area in 1500's.. that line of the family has been traced back that far, but just short of the Huguenots arriving in England. Also this great grandfather married his second cousin who descended from the same line, which effectively doubles my density of Huguenot Ancestry.

We must also remember the Normans. Another of my family lines can be traced via a 6 x great-grandfather back to King Edward I and therefore William I. I expect just about every "English man or woman" carried a degree of Norman DNA.

I can therefore understand my percentage of Western Europe as a result of previous migrations into Britain. I am more surprised at my Irish 21% as I am yet to find an Irish ancestor and over history Ireland has not really been invaded. There has of course been quite a bit of people movement between Ireland and Britain for many centuries, so that is probably the explanation.   Phil.

 

[youngtug]

Ancestry's use of Irish includes Scottish, Welsh and Celtic. So a fairly wide area covered.;
 https://www.ancestry.com/dna/ethnicity/irish

[DevonCruwys]

Your results are quite consistent with a genealogy that is 98% English. Most English people get percentages of these three components in varying proportions. The labels shouldn't be taken literally. Ancestry can't distinguish between Northern European countries. I also come out at 20% Irish at AncestryDNA despite only having one Irish ggg grandparent. I've found that most English people come out with a sizeable percentage of this "Irish" cluster.

See these blog posts from AncestryDNA which show the distribution of the various percentages throughout Britain and Ireland:

https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2015/03/16/what-does-our-dna-tell-us-about-being-irish/

https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2015/04/10/exploring-our-dna-europe-west/

[phil56]

Devon Cruwys, thank you, these two blogs are very helpful.

Based on the distribution of my own English Ancestry, if I was " average" I would expect about 21% West Europe DNA and 18% Irish DNA. My result of 38% West Europe helps confirm the previous well researched link back to my Huguenot ancesters. My Irish at 21% versus 18% average is probably not statistically significant and may just be down to the randomness of the percentages we inherit from each generation.

Learning all the time on DNA. At the moment I really just see it as "supporting evidence" to the real paper trail based genealogy which takes all my time! It would be good if the Ancestry DNA regions were smaller to give more granularity, maybe that is for the future.

[DevonCruwys]

Phil, There are wide variations above and below those average percentages. At one extreme I've seen British people come out with 0% British at AncestryDNA. I did come across one very unusual person who came out at 100% British! if you look in detail at your Ancestry results you'll see they give you a comparison with local populations and the range of percentages.

You can't take your above average level of West Europe as evidence of Huguenot ancestry. If you Huguenot ancestry was five or six generations back it's not necessarily going to be represented in your DNA anyway. The best indicator of Huguenot ancestry would be matches with genetic cousins who share your same line of descent. However, AncestryDNA don't currently sell their test in France so you would be hoping for matches with other British people who share your Huguenot ancestors.

You can see some AncestryDNA results here for a French man from Brittany:

http://legall-bzh.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/la-genetique-le-cas-ancestry.html

[RuthieB]

My AncestryDNA results came out 97% Europe and 3% West Asia (Middle East). I don't have any quarrel with that 97% Europe as I'm from the north east of England and I have a Welsh father.
Within that 97% Europe apparently I am 36% Irish which I have to read as Welsh since my Dad and a couple of hundred years and probably more of Welsh forebears would bear this out.
My Mam's family are from the north of England (Cumbria, Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire back to the early 1700s).
The Middle East bit has me thinking, so unless this is really, really ancestral (where I would've suspected a trace rather than 3%) does anyone have any ideas?

RuthieB

[Burto]

Ruthieb if you look on each population e.g. Great Britain and scroll down the page you will see a green bar chart. This shows you other populations that can get picked up in the populations you match. I can't see any affinity to the Middle East for Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavian or Europe West so it could be picking up on something. But if you match say Italy/Greece or Iberian Peninsula  then they can get as much as 41% Middle East so it could be connected to that.
I get 3% Europe Jewish and reading up on it 1% is a score seen in people who match Great Britain. The white paper says that Jewish is very reliably detected and 2 Brits out of 195 got a score of some sort. They seem to group this with the results they got from Londoners so I'm guessing it's due to how diverse London is.
So for me my Jewish is slightly higher than what could be considered typical. My Dad has tested at 23andme and he gets above average scores of Eastern European and gets Middle Eastern and Jewish so that supports what Ancestry says about my results. At Gedmatch me and my Dad both share above average scores for East Med/West Asian/Red Sea regions and this is reflected in the chromosome paintings they show there. I can compare Dad's segments as 23andme shows you where on your chromosomes you match populations. Ancestry doesn't but I would say upload your raw data to Gedmatch and look for clues using the ethnicity estimates there. Compare your results to as many Brits as you can and you will soon see what is typical and what's not.

[RuthieB]

How do I get hold of the raw data? I can't see any link on Ancestry to do that!

[hurworth]

Instructions for downloading from Ancestry are here:

https://www.gedmatch.com/gedwiki/index.php?title=Ancestry.Com_DNA_Upload