So you got Your DNA results. And You open
them up. And You see Your ethnicity results. And a lot of it is probably exactly
what You thought was going to be. Maybe You're mostly European/ maybe You're mostly
African. Maybe You're mostly Asian. But in a lot of cases, You might see that, hey, there's one
or two percentage, or maybe five or ten percent, that is something You weren't expecting- Ashkenazi
Jewish, Native American, who knows? There could be any number of things can You determine how far
back in Your ancestry this ethnicity might be. Howdy, welcome to Family History Fanatics, where
we love helping You to climb Your family tree and have fun along the way. We'll always say that most
of Your ethnicity results probably don't have a lot to do with genetic genealogy. I've said before
that Your ethnicity results, for the most part, don't have a lot to do about genetic genealogy.
But for most people, the reason why they took a DNA test was because of the ethnicity results.
And as they're looking at them, they want to know whether or not some of these small percentages
could actually be identified with an ancestor sometime in the past. So, hypothetically let's
take a look at how far back in time we would need to go for a certain percentage. Well, on
average, we know that we get 50 of our DNA from our parents, and that halves again each generation
going back. So, from this, we can start to build a chart and in this chart here. what it's showing
is. It's showing first off how many generations back- what percentage of DNA. Which is just
having each generation and then that relationship. So, we start with our parents and grandparents go
up to great-grandparents all the way to the sixth great-grandparents at eight generations back. And
then also I added a column here for approximately how many years ago that person was the same age
as You. So, I just used 25 Years in general. So, You can see by eight generations using
that it's about 200 Years ago. Which for most genealogy, You know, that's back to the early
1800s. A lot of records start to die off before that. So, You might be able to find a nice paper
trail back to these sixth great-grandparents. But it's unlikely that You're going
to necessarily find a paper trail for Your, You know, 7th or 8th or 9th or
10th great-grandparents after that. So, looking at Your results, You might have 2 percent
Ashkenazi Jew and looking at this table here. You might be thinking, okay, if I'm two percent
Ashkenazi Jewish. Well, then that probably fits in with about fourth great-grandparents. One
fourth great-grandparent from 150 Years ago. So, we think we got two parents. We've got four
grandparents. We've got eight great-grandparents, 16 second great, 32 third great, 64 fourth
great. So, we're saying that one of those fourth great-grandparents might have been Ashkenazi
Jewish. Now, if this was the exact way the DNA was passed down. And if this was the exact
way that ethnicity was recorded. Then You might be pretty confident in start searching at that
fourth-generation, or sorry that sixth-generation level- Your fourth great-grandparents, to find
who that Ashkenazi Jewish ancestor might be. But there's a problem with this, and that
problem comes up in a couple of different ways. So, let's look at the first problem, and that
problem here is that those percentages are not always exact. Now, we do get 50 of
our DNA from our parents that is true, but we don't get 25 of our DNA
from each one of our grandparents. There's a range that we could get from each
one of them. Now, each set of grandparents, of course, is going to add up to 50 percent, but
for instance, I might have 22 from my grandfather, and I might then have 28 from my grandmother
on one side. Now, that adds up to 50, but neither one of those is 25. So, that range
is about 20 to 30 percent. And then, as we go down even further, we see that that range extends
quite a bit. But on these green highlighted ones, You'll notice that those ranges start to overlap.
So, for instance, hey, between three and seven percent. Well, that's all fourth and fifth, and
in fact between three and five percent. Well, that's going to include the number six-generation
as well. And if I just go down to three to three and a half percent. Well, I'm really looking at
fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh generation. All could be in that little range. So, for my
example here, I had, let's say, two percent Ashkenazi Jewish. Well, that two percent could
be this fifth generation. It could be the sixth generation. It could be the seventh generation.
Or it could be this eighth generation. So, whereas before, I was saying I need to look at fourth
great-grandparents. Well, now, I need to look at third great-grandparents, of which there's
32 of them. I also need to look at my fifth great-grandparents, of which there's 128. And my
sixth great-grandparents, of which there's 256. So, You can see here that just by having these
little ranges, the number of potential people that this one ancestor could be has ballooned into
quite a number. And honestly, that's, You know, several hundred people. You're going to
have to research in order to figure out whether or not one of them was this little bit of
ancestry. So, that's the first problem that we see with this table. Before we continue, if You are
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to grow thanks to viewers like You. Now, the second problem has to do with this approximate
Years. Now, this is the amount of time between generations. Now, before on my previous table, I
had just used 25. And that's a nice average. But Your family is probably not average. Just like
my family is probably not average. It may be that that generation was shorter. Or it may be
that it was quite a bit longer. So, for instance, this approximate Years really could be
for parents, You know, 20 to 40 Years ago depending on when You were born. I happen to
have been born when my parents were about 25, 26, or so. But I look at our Youngest
child in my family, and he was born when I think both of us were into our 30s. So, the
generations can vary quite a bit over time. Now, that is just going to compound itself.
Maybe You had a string of people who had children very young. Or You had a
string of people who had children very old. What this does is, as we get down here. Before we
could get to eight generations in 200 Years. Now, we are at 200 Years by the fifth generation.
So, the sixth generation could be a lot more than 200 Years- 240 Years. That's for the united
states. That's when the united states was founded. You keep going back to the eighth generation.
You're talking 320 Years. So, if You think finding records 200 Years ago is difficult. Add
another 120 Years to that and see how difficult finding records is for that time period. Now, I
know in some places, like my ancestors in the UK, because of the church records. There's church
records back for 400 Years or so. Which is nice. However, one thing that You'll notice is as those
records get older and older, there's less and less information on them. So, for instance, 320 Years
ago would be 1700. So, if we're looking at the 1600s to the early 1700s, a lot of those records
only list a first name of the father. And sometimes not even a first name of the mother. And
the first name of the child. And then a surname. Marriage records, in many cases, wouldn't even
list the surname of the mother all the time. So, when we're looking at genealogy and putting
these records together because there's not as much information, even the records that we do
have makes it really difficult to link up to these different people. So, that is the second
big problem with this table. Basically, our first one is that those percentages are not exact-
they're a range. And the second one is that those approximate Years are not exact either they're a
range. And both of them complicate trying to do research onto a ancestor that is five, six, seven,
eight generations back. Now, the last thing that we have to be worried about is how those ethnicity
percentages are calculated. And for this, I can only just say that we always have to remember
that we have two chromosomes. We have a chromosome from our father, and we have a chromosome from
our mother. for each one of those 22 chromosomes, when we test the testing, companies don't know
which letters go to which chromosome. They don't know which ones are for the paternal they
don't know which ones are for the maternal. So, they're all mixed together. There's sometimes when
we can take a look at pieces of our paternal and our maternal. So, let's just say that, hey, if
we just look at this little piece right here. Because of the sequence of each of them, it might
actually look like a slightly different ethnicity than what we had planned. In some cases, it might
look at like a very different ethnicity than what either one of them is by themselves. So, that's
two problems from our chart. plus a third problem from analyzing this in the first place. Which
is why for the most part, when You have Your ethnicity results, many genetic genealogists will
let You know, hey, certainly as You're starting out. don't worry about ethnicity percentages
below, You know, five percent in some cases, below two percent. Because there's these problems
that You're going to deal. Have to deal with in order to try to figure out whether that is a
representation of Your real heritage or if it is falling into one of these categories of problems
and just not able to be resolved. That doesn't mean that these small percentages are always not
going to be resolved. But it's much more difficult to figure them out. particularly if You don't
already have a well-developed family tree. If You don't already have a family tree that is very
well documented for five or six generations back. I wouldn't worry about these small
percentages for separate ethnicities. But if You have gotten a very good documented tree
and You want to try to tackle this. It might be a fun challenge for You. Now, if You'd like to learn
about something similar to ethnicity results, but in MyHeritage, it's called Genetic Groups, then
check out this video up here. And if You'd like to learn something else about DNA, then check
out this video down below. can You determine?
