Ancestry's latest Ethnicity update to Ancestral Regions

[sarah]

My results look strange, previously I had no German ancestry but now showing 8% when I compare DNA with my Dads Cousin and My Mums cousin no German ancestry for either of them ?

Both Cousins have Scottish Ancestry 16-20% but mine has gone down to 2%

[Albufera32]

Any regular here knows that an altogether too large proportion of Ancestry family trees are simply wrong - especially the trees of the rebel colonists in North America.
Now, Ancestry DNA ethnicity estimates are not based on "science", but on those Ancestry family trees.

Ergo, their ethnicity estimates are just as reliable as those family trees they are derived from....

Ancestry use reference panels to assign DNA segments to a given region. The total number of DNA samples across all those reference panels is 116 830 samples. At the last published count, Ancestry had over 26 million DNA tests. That means that the reference panels are less than 0.5% of all users. Somehow, I think they manage to filter out the authors of those unreliable trees and only use "people with deep family roots in a specific geographic area or cultural group"

In short, ancestral regions are NOT based on a "too large proportion" of unreliable trees.

[melba_schmelba]

My results look strange, previously I had no German ancestry but now showing 8% when I compare DNA with my Dads Cousin and My Mums cousin no German ancestry for either of them ?

Both Cousins have Scottish Ancestry 16-20% but mine has gone down to 2%

Look at the ranges given on the page for that ethnic group/country, that may show they are similar. When the analysis is done, it doesn't compare you to any of your close relative's DNA tests so the results can vary quite a bit. Most people of British ancestry seem to have had a large increase in German with this update. Ancestry may claim this simply reflects Anglo-Saxon, however if that was the case, what does the England category represent?! I think the reality is, they can't separate English and very closely related populations on the continent properly as they do not have enough good reference samples (i.e. at least four grandparents from a very defined area in these places) for people from those places i.e. NE France, Belgium, Netherlands, NW Germany.

[Albufera32]

The numbers in the Reference panels are available on Ancestry's site

France - 2000

Germanic Europe - 2000

Netherlands - 2000

Ireland - 2000

Scotland - 2000

Wales - 2000

England and North Western Europe - 2000

There is no Belgium reference Panel.

Ancestry also points out, at some length, that regions like the UK and Europe are indeed extremely difficult to tell apart, since there has been so much movement within those areas for centuries.

[melba_schmelba]

The numbers in the Reference panels are available on Ancestry's site

France - 2000

Germanic Europe - 2000

Netherlands - 2000

Ireland - 2000

Scotland - 2000

Wales - 2000

England and North Western Europe - 2000

There is no Belgium reference Panel.

Ancestry also points out, at some length, that regions like the UK and Europe are indeed extremely difficult to tell apart, since there has been so much movement within those areas for centuries.

They also admit that for many references, they do not even have the four grandparents names on the user's trees. They claim that they can ameliorate this by using some of their existing population models and filter out those with what it sees as DNA that is too different. However, if those models are often based on flawed data, which I think they most likely are, having 2000 references isn't really worth much. For example, to fully understand European population, you need to know all about all significant migrations. As just one example, from past results and the present results on Ancestry, it seems likely they did not factor in massive Italian emigration of millions of people from 1860s-1960s to France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and Ireland in particular. It isn't just Ancestry who made this mistake, as a French academic DNA study, found what it speculated was a large settlement of Romans in the Moselle area of France, but it was because Italians had gone to work in the factories by the 100s of thousands in the early 20th century! I think Ancestry thinks it can get around the more careful approach made by the better academic studies, but I am not convinced. It doesn't really compare, for example, to the Irish DNA Atlas which uses eight grandparents born within 50km of each other as requirements for reference samples.

[coombs]

A DNA map of France says there was a lot of ancient Roman settlement in the Poitou area of France, and I have several ancestors from there. The 1800s and early 1900s great wave of Italians usually settled in the cities of France or the eastern half of the county, not as many as far as I know in the Poitou area. Poitou is an area of France that is a long way from even NW Italy. Yes, Switzerland and Belgium saw a great wave of Italians move there.

[goldfinch99]

This update has annoyed me.  I have four ancestors from Ireland, 3 on dad's side and one on mum's side, all around 1820s and only the one on mum's side shows now in the Ethnicity.

Mum's great-granddad's granddad was Welsh and the 4% Welsh has disappeared.

The 10% Germanic on dad's side (no Germanic relatives that I can see) now has an additional 4% Netherlands.

I fail to see how the Germanic can be from our AngloSaxon heritage in England as it was so high on my dad's side but zero on my mum's side and I think my mum had more ancestors from the areas where Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Vikings settled.  But also the Ethnicity shouldn't really go back beyond 1700 unless someone living in the mid-1700s onwards had a solid line of that ancestry,  Three Irish ancestors with Irish (not Scottish or English) surnames in the 1820s should override Germanic from Anglo Saxon times imho.

[melba_schmelba]

This update has annoyed me.  I have four ancestors from Ireland, 3 on dad's side and one on mum's side, all around 1820s and only the one on mum's side shows now in the Ethnicity.

Mum's great-granddad's granddad was Welsh and the 4% Welsh has disappeared.

The 10% Germanic on dad's side (no Germanic relatives that I can see) now has an additional 4% Netherlands.

I fail to see how the Germanic can be from our AngloSaxon heritage in England as it was so high on my dad's side but zero on my mum's side and I think my mum had more ancestors from the areas where Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Vikings settled.  But also the Ethnicity shouldn't really go back beyond 1700 unless someone living in the mid-1700s onwards had a solid line of that ancestry,  Three Irish ancestors with Irish (not Scottish or English) surnames in the 1820s should override Germanic from Anglo Saxon times imho.

Some of what used to be people's sub regions as shown in the main list and on the map, are now hidden as 'Ancestral Journeys' on the DNA summary page or 'People with these journeys often share this region' when you click on the country page and scroll down. I am not sure what the logic is, somehow that it was believed that they were only a relatively short period in this place? But I know where this happened for my accounts that is not the case, and this was also Ireland (unless you are talking about Norman settlers who were in Ireland for 500+ years!).
   Really the Scandinavian categories that most Brits and Irish got to quite high percentages in some cases for many years, was fairly misleading as it clearly hinted to ancient Viking ancestry which Ancestry probably thought was a good marketing tool, and did not mean recent ancestry from Denmark/Sweden/Norway. But if I am not sure telling Brits they are Germans is going to be very popular!! The problem is I think Ancestry are just being lazy or at least too dependent on more high tech 'innovations' - they have their own professional genealogy service who could easily throughly check a few hundred trees for each country, cross referencing DNA matches to make better reference samples but that would cost money!!! Of course they are probably spending too much on AI and other things too which would be better spent on more traditional approaches.

[goldfinch99]

This update has annoyed me.  I have four ancestors from Ireland, 3 on dad's side and one on mum's side, all around 1820s and only the one on mum's side shows now in the Ethnicity.

Mum's great-granddad's granddad was Welsh and the 4% Welsh has disappeared.

The 10% Germanic on dad's side (no Germanic relatives that I can see) now has an additional 4% Netherlands.

I fail to see how the Germanic can be from our AngloSaxon heritage in England as it was so high on my dad's side but zero on my mum's side and I think my mum had more ancestors from the areas where Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Vikings settled.  But also the Ethnicity shouldn't really go back beyond 1700 unless someone living in the mid-1700s onwards had a solid line of that ancestry,  Three Irish ancestors with Irish (not Scottish or English) surnames in the 1820s should override Germanic from Anglo Saxon times imho.

Some of what used to be people's sub regions as shown in the main list and on the map, are now hidden as 'Ancestral Journeys' on the DNA summary page or 'People with these journeys often share this region' when you click on the country page and scroll down. I am not sure what the logic is, somehow that it was believed that they were only a relatively short period in this place? But I know where this happened for my accounts that is not the case, and this was also Ireland (unless you are talking about Norman settlers who were in Ireland for 500+ years!).
   Really the Scandinavian categories that most Brits and Irish got to quite high percentages in some cases for many years, was fairly misleading as it clearly hinted to ancient Viking ancestry which Ancestry probably thought was a good marketing tool, and did not mean recent ancestry from Denmark/Sweden/Norway. But if I am not sure telling Brits they are Germans is going to be very popular!! The problem is I think Ancestry are just being lazy or at least too dependent on more high tech 'innovations' - they have their own professional genealogy service who could easily throughly check a few hundred trees for each country, cross referencing DNA matches to make better reference samples but that would cost money!!! Of course they are probably spending too much on AI and other things too which would be better spent on more traditional approaches.

Yes, I think you're probably right about reliance on automatation and AI instead of doing traditional genealogy to get the Ethnicities and journeys.

The only thing I could find in the breakdowns was that my mum has a high percentage for the East of England, which my family tree agrees with as she has about 1/4 from a few villages nr Braintree, Essex and many of those lines would have been in the area from the 1600s or earlier.