DNA ethnicity test: have you? Would you?

[tomandtish]

My grandmother and my mother-in-law are both into genealogy, so we have the family history pretty far back. Interesting tidbit: the Mannings (Peyton and Eli) are apparently 6th cousins. That and $200 gets me a ticket to games... (well, Eli's now).

Actually, if we did DNA testing, it would be to answer the one question we haven't been able to resolve: are my wife and I 5th cousins?

After my mother-in-law got into genealogy, she was doing some research and found a possible connection.

Spoiler: Warning: slave relations and rape

Show

One of my ancestors owned a plantation and was a real pathetic human being. And one of her ancestors was a slave on that plantation who became pregnant. We know some of the children born on that plantation were his, we just don't specifically know if hers was.

But we've discussed it and decided we don't really care.

[JediSoth]

I have had DNA testing done. Despite fervently wishing to find something interesting, I discovered that I am 100% White Bread. The preponderance of my DNA comes from West, Central, and Eastern Europe (74%). 14% is from the British Isles, and 12% from Scandinavia. Anglo-Saxon all the way. My ancient origins go back to about 47% hunter-gatherer, 40% farmer, 12% Metal Age Invader, and 0% non-European. I was raised believing I was mostly Scottish on my father's side and German my mother's side (she's from Eastern Germany), so that pretty much tracks. It is utterly unremarkable except that I now know I am less Celtic and more Viking than I thought (though still mostly Central European).

I haven't pulled together the documentation yet, and may or may not, but tracing my father's lineage back will probably qualify me for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution (just having the family tree showing that isn't proof enough). Before my family emigrated from Europe in the 18th century, records are really spotty. Getting records from my mother's side is even more difficult as most of those records were kept in Dresden when Allied forces firebombed the city during WWII.

Contrast that with my wife who was raised Italian, with family that immigrated from Sicily. Her DNA shows 52% Middle Eastern, specifically the area around Syria.

[pendell]

I'd be interested if it was considered admissible such that I could officially be a part of the Seven Clans . Current rules are that a person must have Cherokee ancestry officially recorded on the Dawes Roll in order to be eligible, and this I do not have.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Rockphed]

My grandmother and my mother-in-law are both into genealogy, so we have the family history pretty far back. Interesting tidbit: the Mannings (Peyton and Eli) are apparently 6th cousins. That and $200 gets me a ticket to games... (well, Eli's now).

Actually, if we did DNA testing, it would be to answer the one question we haven't been able to resolve: are my wife and I 5th cousins?

After my mother-in-law got into genealogy, she was doing some research and found a possible connection.

Spoiler: Warning: slave relations and rape

Show

One of my ancestors owned a plantation and was a real pathetic human being. And one of her ancestors was a slave on that plantation who became pregnant. We know some of the children born on that plantation were his, we just don't specifically know if hers was.

But we've discussed it and decided we don't really care.

Fun tidbit: my mother's grandparents were 3rd cousins. Common ancestor had the (awesome) name "Heman", but my wife has shot that down as a potential name for a son.

[Stan]

If you do go in for the DNA thing... be prepared for the possibility of surprises, which may translate into "upsets". For instance, how would you feel if you learned that your DNA couldn't have come from the people you've always thought of as your mother and father? How would your family react to that revelation?

That's why genetics research has extremely strong privacy concerns. I've played a small role on studies that collect DNA related to health issues. The data has a few cases where the "dad" could not be the biological father. This is marked as such to not blowup the analysis. But that information is never given back to the participants - it's not our job to break up families.

I've no interest in finding out my genetics or genealogy. If I found out 1/8 of my genes came from country X, what would I supposed to do differently?

[BannedInSchool]

I've no interest in finding out my genetics or genealogy. If I found out 1/8 of my genes came from country X, what would I supposed to do differently?

It's vitally important to which Civilization I play. Vikings or Germans? I NEED TO KNOW!

[Lord Torath]

Actually, if we did DNA testing, it would be to answer the one question we haven't been able to resolve: are my wife and I 5th cousins?

Fun tidbit: my mother's grandparents were 3rd cousins. Common ancestor had the (awesome) name "Heman", but my wife has shot that down as a potential name for a son.

Fun fact. My in-laws are 5th cousins. Which makes my wife a 6th cousin to each of her parents. Assuming I'm remembering correctly, and whoever told me correctly understood the connections and "X^th cousin mechanics....

My parents had theirs tested. My mother is 100% European (43% Scandinavian - Go Vikings!), while my father is 99% European and 1% Middle-Eastern.

[Rockphed]

Fun fact. My in-laws are 5th cousins. Which makes my wife a 6th cousin to each of her parents. Assuming I'm remembering correctly, and whoever told me correctly understood the connections and "X^th cousin mechanics....

My parents had theirs tested. My mother is 100% European (43% Scandinavian - Go Vikings!), while my father is 99% European and 1% Middle-Eastern.

If your inlaws are 5th cousins, then your wife is her own 6th cousin. She is 5th-cousin, once removed, to each of her parents. Xth-cousin Yth-removed operates thusly: Take the minimum distance to a common ancestor (so 1 for parent, 2 for grand-parent, and so on), subtract 1. That is X. For Y, subtract the difference between that and the distance to the common ancestor by the other person. So, my cousin's children are my 1st-cousins, once removed. My 2nd cousin's grand-children are my 2nd cousins twice removed. As is my 4th cousins' grandparent.

[BWR]

I haven't done it and don't consider doing it for my own sake. It means absolutely nothing outside of medicine and population genetics. As part of a large data set about human genetics the information may be useful, but on a personal level it is uninteresting and useless.
Having a sister who works with this sort of thing and hearing her diatribes on the stupidity of only confirmed my initial impression.

[Telonius]

However, because of the lack of privacy guarantees, I'm not going to do it.

In my case, that's a feature, not a bug. My hope is that some enterprising company gets ahold of my DNA and gives me a notification that "We see your [relative]'s birthday is today - send them a card!" Probably a higher chance of success than my usual search for birth parents.

[Frozen_Feet]

Modern humans were originally very dark-skinned, adapted to living in regions with strong sunlight. Neanderthal was adapted with fair skin to better produce vitamin D in regions with less sunlight. This makes the notion of whiteness indicating purity a very laughable thing.

It's also why genetic testing is actually quite bad at that "promoting racism" thing. Or rather, it's really bad at supporting the sort of racism that's familiar from recent history.

And in general, skin color has much more to do with latitude you live in than genetics. Which, consequently, is another thing which makes "being white" sort of a stupid concept. Many populations lumped together as "white" are almost as distant from each other genetically as they are from "blacks". Ditto for "black people" and "asian people".

On a very high level, if you try to sort for average differences between continental populations, then you get supersets which somewhat resemble common racist stereotypes. (If you split humans in two groups based on genetic distance, Africa is distinct from the rest of the world. And if you split them into the three, East Asia distint from Western Eurasia and Africa is distinct from both.) But the reasons why may not actually be anything like the racist assumptions. (For example, the mentioned presence or absence of Neanderthal DNA might set the dividing line, rather than anything to do with skin color, or intelligence, or what have you.)

Rather than racism, I'm much more worried about people becoming alarmist of genetically inheritable diseases and even more people being scared or pressured off of having kids because they have "bas genes".

[Murk]

And in general, skin color has much more to do with latitude you live in than genetics. Which, consequently, is another thing which makes "being white" sort of a stupid concept. Many populations lumped together as "white" are almost as distant from each other genetically as they are from "blacks". Ditto for "black people" and "asian people".

On a very high level, if you try to sort for average differences between continental populations, then you get supersets which somewhat resemble common racist stereotypes. (If you split humans in two groups based on genetic distance, Africa is distinct from the rest of the world. And if you split them into the three, East Asia distint from Western Eurasia and Africa is distinct from both.) But the reasons why may not actually be anything like the racist assumptions. (For example, the mentioned presence or absence of Neanderthal DNA might set the dividing line, rather than anything to do with skin color, or intelligence, or what have you.)

I have an old atlas (1939, from just a month before world war 2), which still has a "races world map". It's a fun map. There are dozens of races, each with their own region, but there are two (just two) major headers: "white" and "negro". Under the header "White" are the people in western Europe and North America and a few dots in the Caucasus. Under the header "Negro" are... the rest of the world.
Finnish people? Black. Chinese? Black. Latin American? Black.

They probably tried avoiding the problem you mention, by just being ruthlessly inclusive/exclusive.

[Amidus Drexel]

I'm not opposed to the idea, but I wouldn't pay for it either.

I suppose it'd be a way to verify my mom's mother's (somewhat dubious) claim that she's part Cherokee, but other than that, I doubt there'd be any surprises. Dad's side of the family is very well-documented, genealogically (it traces back to western and central europe, almost exclusively), and while mom's side isn't, the only likely unknown bit would be what mix of western and eastern european made it into my genes.

[Sithrak]

I suppose it'd be a way to verify my mom's mother's (somewhat dubious) claim that she's part Cherokee

I would have similar motivations if I chose to do it. My grandmother never claimed to have Native American heritage, but she did claim to have traced our family tree back through more than 1500 years of ancestry. It would be interesting to see if my DNA came anywhere close to matching her results.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

I would be very interested if not for the racists around here (I don't mean the board).

Thanks to them I think its best we leave this alone.

[wumpus]

I would have similar motivations if I chose to do it. My grandmother never claimed to have Native American heritage, but she did claim to have traced our family tree back through more than 1500 years of ancestry. It would be interesting to see if my DNA came anywhere close to matching her results.

The results I've seen really don't indicate any degree of accuracy needed to show that type of thing. Although I wouldn't be too surprised if that is the final goal (it would have to match you with living relatives who have been tested and claim identical ancestors).

[Rockphed]

The results I've seen really don't indicate any degree of accuracy needed to show that type of thing. Although I wouldn't be too surprised if that is the final goal (it would have to match you with living relatives who have been tested and claim identical ancestors).

Well, for instance, there was that celebrated revelation that Thomas Jefferson fathered a child by a slave woman about 20 years ago. Oddly enough the second best hypothesis for the data, that Jefferson's brother was the male ancestor, has about as much support, if not the salacious shock value. However, aside from that sort of thing you are unlikely to get exact ancestors. So, unless genealogy has been taken back to 500 on all lines (which would be impressive in and of itself*), you can only really verify that you have the right sort of genes for where you think you are from. If something like "mongolian: 20%" shows up when you thought you were Cherokee, then you have some data to look at. My wife's family has a great-grandmother who the family story is that her father was a local native (Chippewa or Huron, I think) who got shipped off to Oklahoma about the turn of the last century. If my mother-in-law did the DNA testing, we might get a clue as to who the father was. However, what would be better would be if anyone concerned had bother to write the thing down.

*Both my parents are very into genealogy (they went to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City on their honeymoon), and both have at least line they cannot seem to get past 1800. Getting all lines back to 1500 would be impressive. Getting all lines back to 500 is nigh unto impossible.

[wumpus]

*Both my parents are very into genealogy (they went to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City on their honeymoon), and both have at least line they cannot seem to get past 1800. Getting all lines back to 1500 would be impressive. Getting all lines back to 500 is nigh unto impossible.

The math is working against you [grumpy technology strikes again]!

Assuming 30 year generations:
1800 - 7.2 generations. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 grandparents, 16 gg-parents, 32 ggg-parents, 64 gggg-parents, 128 ggggg parents (and .2*256 for the remainder)

You really think it's possible to go 255 for 255 in hunting down 19th century people? Places containing records were amazingly flamable in those days.

1500 - 17 generations = 131072 great**15 parents, ~131072 other ancestors to get back that far. Fergetaboutit. Getting one line back is impressive, and likely involves less than perfect data.
500 - 50 generations = 1,125,899,906,842,624 "ancestors" all living at 500CE. Since this is manifestly impossible (total Earth population was likely in the millions), you are almost certain to be descended from *everybody* who left descendants and lived on roughly the right continent as any of your [known] ancestors. This might be an exaggeration, but the claim I'm familiar with is that anybody with British ancestors will have *all* possible British ancestors by around Alfred the Great [died 899CE].

This gets even worse if you assume generations faster than 30 years (I'm not sure people lived long enough to *average* 30 years during much of those eras). With 25 year generations you would have a million ancestors alive at 1500 (and roughly another million descended from them to produce you).

Note: my father is really into geneology and was an editor for a distant relative who wrote (and self published) books on geneology (any hints on how to get ahold of copyright from an estate of someone without issue?). One of his research buddies officially managed to trace his line back to Adam. I forgot which English noble has the claim, but somebody claimed Cerdic (the Saxon king said to have founded Wessex) and "completed" the genelogy back to Adam (presumably using Joseph's descent from David, and so on).

[Murk]

The math is working against you [grumpy technology strikes again]!

I think you actually agree with the one you quoted, right? It is almost impossible.

[snowblizz]

It is almost impossible.

No almost about it. It *is* impossible, in every way, shape and form. Can't be done. Nope, not even that way. Not that way either for that matter.

Not even Icelandic records, to my knowledge the most comprehensive in existence go that far, where you seem to be able to get a couple of hundred years. In Scandinavia in general fairly extensive records have been kept, and survived, from the 1600s. In some cases you can get as far back as medieval times.

And the further you go the more likely they have been "doctored" for various purposes.

[Murk]

No almost about it. It *is* impossible, in every way, shape and form. Can't be done. Nope, not even that way. Not that way either for that matter.

Not even Icelandic records, to my knowledge the most comprehensive in existence go that far, where you seem to be able to get a couple of hundred years. In Scandinavia in general fairly extensive records have been kept, and survived, from the 1600s. In some cases you can get as far back as medieval times.

And the further you go the more likely they have been "doctored" for various purposes.

Ah, if it's a matter being less nuanced, alright - fair enough. Just impossible, then.

[wumpus]

I think you actually agree with the one you quoted, right? It is almost impossible.

While I agree with "impossible", finding your ancestors in 500 is trivial. They simply *all* are (assuming they had kids and an unbroken line). Urban people (even with kids) are highly suspect as cities were basically population sinks until post-Victorian (and cholera) times.

The point is that 1500 isn't just "impressive", it's essentially impossible, even for royalty (with a 100k list, although such "noble" blood will be highly inbred). 1800 is harder than it sounds (for *all* lines), and it gets worse fast.

[BannedInSchool]

The Boston half of my ancestry supposedly can trace back to Miles Standish, but that's a special case of a prominent figure. That also gives me 400 years of either Boston melting-pot or English inbreeding, ha.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

This gets even worse if you assume generations faster than 30 years (I'm not sure people lived long enough to *average* 30 years during much of those eras).

They did. This is due to a fact that people have trouble realising about pre-modern-medicine life expectancy: it was reduced, sharply, by infant death. When a large % of the population dies before the age of 4, it drags down the average substantially. But if you made it to 4, you had a fairly decent chance to make it to 60 (not as good as today, of course, but not much worse).

I saw a graph once, in fact, that showed that life expectancy until 4 actually increased by more than a day for each day you lived. It was a cool graph - wish I could find it again (my google-fu has failed me).

Now, the kink here is that women did have a significant chance of death with each pregnancy (top cause of non-infant death in women was indeed pregnancy, followed by kestrels), but in general, that chance decreased sharply with each successful pregnancy. Therefore, a woman that did birth at least one child, was likely to birth multiple ones - say about 4 surviving children, spaced unevenly from 16 to about 40 years old.

So, if I had to guess at an average generation length, I'd say about 25 years.

Grey Wolf

[Serpentine]

I've been very, very seriously considering it. I got a chunk of money from my grandparents and I'm thinking about using it for that. I expect to be nothing but various flavours of Anglo, but my dad is... odd. He had a 'fro when he married my mum, and is dark enough that he's been mistaken for Aboriginal. I blame him for my inability to tell people's ethnicities. If there is some source for that, rather than just some quirk of genetics, I'd be interested to know what it is.

My wife and I bought the National Geographic Geno 2.0 kits for our parents one year for Christmas. A couple thoughts:

1. If your parents are interested in it, they make good parents.
2. If you get both of your parents then you will get yourself.
3. The results were fun to think about and talk about with our folks, and basically confirmed stuff that we already thought, but had no confirmation of.

I thought that was a good way to do it, and it was fun doing it with family to be able to talk about it.

I found a review a while ago where someone did something like 4 different tests, and it seemed like National Geographic was the best. What was your experience with it?

[ZorroGames]

Have I? Not yet.

Would I? Yes. Given pictures of my assorted ancestors I am interested in what Cherokee, French Canadian, and "Black Irish" really means. 😉 Ditto the Spanish, Scots, Dutch, and "German Jew" maternal side. 😱

Also my wife is adopted from Canada ("You have no need to know about her/your biological parents") - Quebec City - and wants to know more about her genetic background.

[rooster707]

Nah. I'm pretty white, so are my parents. I doubt I'd find anything interesting.

[Aedilred]

I wouldn't bother, I think. All eight of my great-grandparents were born in England, at least twelve of their parents were, and if the remaining four weren't (it's overwhelmingly likely that they were), they were probably born no further afield than elsewhere in the British Isles. I have a vague recollection that I might have one ancestor born in India four or five generations back, but even if I remember that correctly, they were British colonials, not native Indian. To almost any extent that functionally matters, I am completely British and learning that I have 0.03% Bulgarian ancestry or something is not going to make any difference to anything. After all, once you get to that point it's largely a function of how far back to go: ultimately we're all African.

The one group of modern ancestors I have of foreign extraction I know about, but it has been a source of some debate in the family for decades whether they originated in Portugal or Spain. It might be nice to have that cleared up but I don't know whether a DNA test would actually be able to do that conclusively anyway, under the circumstances.

I think this is the sort of thing probably more of interest/relevance to Americans (and other post-colonial populations) than Europeans. Thanks to America's history it's more likely there'll be diverse ancestry from unknown sources relatively recently in the past, but far enough back that proper records aren't easily accessible if they exist at all, so turning up interesting information is likely. Here, thanks to the much lower rate of immigration, if you know where your grandparents were born you can make a reasonable stab at the majority of the rest of it too.

In any case, as has been mentioned by someone else, I think genetic ethnicity is largely irrelevant relative to cultural ethnicity - and when it comes to cultural ethnicity you probably already know about it.

[2D8HP]

Cherokee...

It seems that almost every American who has any great grandparents born in North America, is told of some "Indian" ancestry (usual "Cherokee"), perhaps as a way to claim roots?

I recall one episode of Finding Your Roots on PBS, when Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the host, tells that guest, "Wow, your the first person who's said that they were told that 'They're descended from an Indian princess', who really does have Native American ancestry. "

Almost always does the guest wind up crying, and says thank you, no matter what their ancestry.

I really, really doubt that any testing will show (since they're so close), but when asked about our family name, my father used to say, "If you're offering a drink it's Irish, but if you're asking for a dollar it's Scottish.", which I have since passed on.
Since I know that his mother came from Ireland, that's a pretty sure thing, but his father's father was born in the U.S.A. so who knows?

[Winter_Wolf]

Haven't you used that Irish/Scottish line before? Someone, anyway.

I have a friend who's completely white, but I'd say he's more Native Alaskan than I am in spirit if nothing else. Technically I'm not even sure if you need any kind of appreciable blood quantum to be a member of the tribe back home. Assimilating is more important, because outsiders have exactly two paths: you're either actively participating in the interests and the traditions of the tribe, or you're the arrogant ass who complains about how horrible and backward the savages in the bush are because you're a know it all ass with no business coming in and trying to impose your ways on people who have no use for them.