DNA Ethnicity Results Aren't What You Think

howdy where are you from she don't know and take a DNA test it could tell you but then again maybe not I know I'm always one to bring bad news about DNA I told you that you don't have any DNA from Charlemagne and have disappointed a lot of people I told you you weren't related to that Indian princess and your DNA is not showing it either that probably just wanted some people now I'm going to tell you that probably one of the biggest things that is pushed on DNA testing might not telling you what if in two days and what is that well every testing company gives you some ethnicity results an idea of where your ancestors are from and they vary between something it's a few hundred years ago to some things a few thousand years ago but let's take a look and see where I'm from so you can see here at Family Tree DNA I am from the British Isles 93 percent that's pretty solid it all says there's another six percent from Eastern Europe okay not bad what other people say well at 23andme it says I'm 99% European and when it breaks it down some well there's 42 percent from the British and Irish wait a second they said I was 93 percent from the British Isles and it says only half of that well then there's another 18% German and a little bit of Scandinavian put in there and then this other great big broad North West European so maybe we just add all that into the British and French and German and Scandinavian altogether we get closer to that 93 percent so you might be able to say that these two are pretty comparable let's go over to my heritage now my heritage is saying that I'm 62 percent English and another 34 percent Irish Scottish and Welsh well that does add up like 97 percent which is a little bit more than what Family Tree DNA said but it's still in the ballpark it has some finished though finish yeah I didn't sleep finish unless Scandinavian is finish and maybe if we each to repeat at Scandinavia man well let's go over to ancestral deity and see what they have to say well 46% from Great Britain that's like really close to what ancestry said they said I was 42 percent British and Irish so that must be good oh wait there's another 12% from Ireland Oh so that would be 58% British and Irish which is yeah that's a little bit more than what 23andme said and it's a lot less than 93% Family Tree DNA says and a lot less than 97% but my heritage said well what about the rest of it well they have most Scandinavia 23% oh there was no skin maybe there is six Scandinavian there and there was maybe 2% scan baby in there and now we're at 23% scan media well some of you may be saying this is probably just because they all have different tests and different things that are looking out except that these threes are all the exact same test I tested that 23 B and then up those uploaded my results to Family Tree DNA and then uploaded those exact same results to my heritage so these three companies are all actually looking at the exact same data now they're obviously interpreting and different ancestry DNA I took a separate test but it's still for me my DNA shouldn't be changing so in essence they all should have roughly the exact same information and yet we have a great big disparities here between all these different companies so why is that well let me give you three basic reasons of why you might be getting results that aren't what you thought so the first issue is what is f missing now most DNA companies will break it down like you saw in two some sort of country of at least in Europe and from a genetics and evolutionary standpoint and ethnicity would be defined as a common set of characteristics that predominate any certain population however these by no means are exclusive to that population for instance the Irish are known for their red hair and there's a larger portion of the population that has red hair than anywhere else in Europe but red hair can be down throughout population all over Europe so defining an ethnicity by characteristics or the DNA that colors characteristic it is not exact because there's a lot of overlap and that's one thing you will see in several companies going to actually map out where that ethnicity they say is coming from is there's a lot of overlap between those ethnicities the second issue is I brought this up several times before you only have DNA from 120 of your ancestors in the new generation back to the 6th generation this isn't a problem because there's less than 120 ends up through the 9th generation but by the seventh generation you have 128 ancestors so there's a those ancestors that you've got no DNA from now that's not too bad that's still about 95 percent of your ancestors but when you jump one more generation after your eighth generation jocks at 256 and you still only have 120 ancestors of those that you inherited DNA from and so now you're less than 50% so when these companies are looking at your ethnicity and they're saying that it goes back just a few hundred years that could be 10 generations in which case you're only looking at the DNA from about 2 or 3% of all of your ancestors from one generation now all things being equal it should be a good approximation of where your ancestors are from but probability doesn't always work like that sometimes the longshot wins the race so you may have had one or two or several black ancestors if you had ancestors in America that intermingled enslaves at the time but they may not show up in your ancestry now so while it shows that myself and almost 100 percent European that by no means means that I don't have any other ethnicities that were a part of my ancestors it's just not gonna be able to be found from DNA and the third issue and this one's a little tricky one whenever we're trying to decide what ethnicity is based off of your DNA what we need is we need to compare to a reference population a problem is we don't have a DNA set from say people in Great Britain five hundred years ago doesn't exist what we do have is we do have some of their descendants that have tested for gaming likewise we don't have sub-saharan African DNA from different countries from five hundred years ago or a thousand years ago what we do have is we do have some of their descendants and so we need to make reference population how do we make this reference population to compare others to really we got to look at the paper genealogy that some people have done and determine how long they live in that area how much of their ancestry is from that area so for instance in the United States it is a colonial nation where lots of people from Europe as well as other places around the world have come to live but there is a Native American population and that native mech population is very small compared to all the rest of the population and so we're trying to find Native American DNA we need to find some people who haven't necessarily intermingled with the immigrant population over the last 400 years that is really difficult to find and so when we're looking at our ethnicities through these DNA reports what you shouldn't be focused on and you shouldn't be focused on what country it's telling you might be primary that your ancestor talking from but really look at the much broader area now for most people you probably know whether your ancestors are predominantly from your or from Africa or from Asia for some of you it may be a surprise that hey there's some African that shows up in a significant abortion that you didn't know about that should give you a clue of some places to look later on but when you get down to a level of what country-specific it's not going to be that accurate one because there's so much overlap in particular in Europe between different ethnicities as they're defined in different companies and it's not going to really give you much information you go and do research on I hope I didn't ruin your day by telling you that the ethnicity that all these companies are telling you may not be that accurate but that's just the way that finds work sometime if you like this video please click Subscribe and give it a thumbs up and telling friends about it and if you have any questions please put them in the comments below and we'll be happy to answer those questions on family mr. genetics you [Music]

Channel: Family History Fanatics

Views: 351,710

Rating: 4.6695142 out of 5

Keywords: Genetic Genealogy, AncestryDNA, MyHeritageDNA, dna tests results, dna test results wrong, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, Family History Fanatics, which dna test should I take, ethnicity tests, ethinicity test revealed, genealogy, DNA Test Results, DNA Tests, DNA Etnicity, DNA and genealogy, ethinic groups, DearMyrtle, BlackProGen, Genealogy Gems, Andrew Lee

Id: u8lMfGqSrwg

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2017