For months, AncestryDNA has been quietly reprocessing their entire database of more than 10 million customers behind the scenes, and on Wednesday, September 12th, 2018, they rolled out a major enhancement to their ethnicity estimates. New testers will automatically be given the revamped version starting Wednesday, and existing customers will have the option to see the updated estimates when they check their accounts and click on the green 
button. You will be asked about your expectations, then you’ll get to see the new estimates.
Mine look like this:
The display highlights changes in percentages (e.g., Ireland and England, above), which regions have been refined (France, Sweden), which are new to AncestryDNA’s estimates (Sardinia), and which have been removed from your personal profile (Europe South, Iberian Peninsula). Only the main regions will be affected, not the subregions variously shown as Migrations or Genetic Communities (Acadian in the example). Regions previously labeled “Low Confidence” may disappear entirely.
For a limited time you’ll be able to switch back to the earlier version if you like.
What’s Different About the New Estimates?
Users will see some regions with revised names, entirely new regions, and changed percentages for existing regions. For example, there are now 15 regions within Asia, where previously there were five. In Europe, “Scandinavia” has been separated into Norway and Sweden, and “Europe West” is now differentiated into France and Germany. A table of the previous versus new regions is presented at the bottom of this post.
Those of African descent may see slightly different regional maps and ethnicity percentages, but not as drastic a change as Europeans and Asians will get. Ancestry’s scientists explained it this way: Africa is massive. It also has the highest human genetic diversity in the world because our species originated in Africa and has had hundreds of thousands of years to form distinct populations. Not many Africans have tested yet, so that immense diversity is currently poorly sampled. The good news is that AncestryDNA is launching an African Diversity Project to improve their sampling.
Changes Behind the Scenes
The updated estimates are the product of two major changes in how the percentages are calculated. The first is a five-fold expansion of their “reference panel”, the group of people with known ancestry to which the rest of us are compared. Want to know whether you’re part Melanesian or Senegalese or European Jewish? To determine that, we’d need to compare your DNA to people who are known to be predominantly from those populations.
The more genetic diversity in the source population, the larger the reference panel must be to accurately reflect the region. Coming full circle, that’s why the estimates for African ancestry are still a work on progress.
Prior to this update, the reference panel comprised 3,000 people from 26 main geographic regions divided into 363 subregions. It’s now made up of 16,000 people from 43 main regions and 380 subregions. The additions to the panel come from AncestryDNA’s own customers who consented to participate in research and whose trees documented their regional associations.
With more individuals per region, the reference panel can better capture the genetic diversity in a given population.
Think of a population like a bag of, say, 1,000 colored marbles in 12 different colors. If you reach in and grabbed six marbles, you might by chance pick six different colors, or you might get two blues, three blacks, and a yellow. In neither case would you have a good estimate of what’s really in the bag. Even if you grabbed 20 marbles, you might double up on some colors and miss others. The colors, of course, represent the genetic markers in the population, and the more marbles (individuals) you sample, the better your estimate of the whole population. And the better the estimate, the better the comparison of you to that population.
The other major change behind the scenes involves how the DNA itself is analyzed. Previously, AncestryDNA’s computers looked at each individual point (or SNP) in our DNA separately. Since the SNPs we use for genealogy are usually present in only two versions, there’s only so much “signal” one can carry. The new approach analyzes strings of SNPs as a unit (i.e., a haplotype), meaning there are more unique combinations and more precision to the estimates.
The new algorithm looks at 1,001 windows, or haplotypes, in our DNA. AncestryDNA compares about 3,475 cM and 650,000 SNPs in the genome, so each window should be roughly 3.5 cM and 650 SNPs. These numbers are very general approximations, of course.
A final consideration that increases the accuracy of the ethnicity estimates is that the reference panel data are phased. That means that the maternal and paternal contributions to a child’s DNA are identified as such. Phasing improves the identification of the haplotypes used in the analysis. (Only the reference panel is phased, not the customer’s data.)
AncestryDNA has issued a new White Paper on the updated methodology and eventually will publish a scientific paper as well.
How the Ethnicity Estimates Stack Up for Me
My family tree is complete, documented, and supported by DNA evidence through my 3rd great grandparents. Beyond that, some lines are traced back many more generations while others dead-end in their European countries of origin. Thus, I have a reasonable feel for what my ethnicity estimates should be, at least within the past couple of centuries.
Granted, my DNA won’t reflect the exact proportions as my pedigree because of how DNA is passed on. While I inherited exactly 50% of my autosomal DNA from each parent, I didn’t inherit exactly 25% from each grandparent, 12.5% from each great grandparent, and so on. The biological process of recombination causes those proportions to vary.
From a pedigree perspective, I am 38.3% French, 34.4% German, 17.2% Irish, 5.5% Spanish (mostly Canary Islander), 1.6% English, and 3.1% unknown.
[Aside: The unknown is a woman name Elizabeth Richard (1843–1881), who married Gilbert Cesaire Elmer (1838–1889). If you come across her in your tree, please contact me! Her parents are brick walls. Her surname could be either English (RIH-chard) or Acadian (REE-shard).]
How well did AncestryDNA do? Here’s a side-by-side view of my estimates before and after the update:
And this table shows how they compare to what I expect from my pedigree:
| Ethnicity | Expected | Before Update | After Update |
| French | 38.3% | 6.0% Europe West |
77.0% |
| German | 34.4% | 0% | |
| Ireland | 17.2% | 27.0% | 15.0% |
| Iberian Peninsula | 5.5% | 14.0% | 0.0% |
| England | 1.6% | 23.0% | 4.0% |
| Europe South | 0.0% | 21.0% | 0% |
| Scandinavia | 0.0% | 9.0% | 3.0% |
| Sardinia | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.0% |
Overall, a vast improvement! The biggest discrepancy is that all of my expected German seems to be counted as French. That’s not surprising given that my German ancestors were originally from southern and southwestern Germany (Bavaria, Baden–Württenberg, and Rhineland–Palatinate), areas that have had a long history of interchange with what is now France. The region zoned as “France” in my personalized map doesn’t quite cover those states of Germany, however.
The decreases in Irish, English, and Scandinavian are all much more in line with my known ancestry, as is the loss of Italian/Greek.
I was disappointed to see the Iberian estimate disappear. I grew up near a town called New Iberia, Louisiana, and my tree contains Dominguez, Miguez, Romero, Viator (originally Villatoro), and similar names. I’m proud of my Spanish ancestry. On the other hand, my mother’s estimate for Spain is now 8% (down from 21%; expected 11%), which is reasonable.
The Sardinian is a complete head-scratcher.
Summary
From a scientific perspective, the new estimates are a huge improvement over the previous version. Both the five-fold increase in the reference panel and the use of haplotypes instead of SNPs should give much more accurate estimates. Are they perfect? Of course not! They’re just one step forward in a rapidly advancing field. AncestryDNA’s scientists experimented with several new methods before settling on this one as the best. This is exactly what we hope to see in science: successive attempts that each build upon the lessons of the previous ones.
From my mixed-European perspective, AncestryDNA’s done a pretty good job. The discrepancies are minor and easy to explain, especially when we consider that the percentages from my pedigree date back only 200 years or so while the DNA-based estimates are meant to reflect my ancestry 500–1,000 years ago.
How do your new estimates compare to your documented pedigree? Feel free to leave comments here, both positive and negative, and also to report your thoughts to AncestryDNA. They’ve left a feedback region just for that, and they want to know what we think!
Comparison of Old and New Regions
The table below shows how the new ethnicity regions correspond to the previous ones. Regions in bold are either entirely new or more precisely circumscribed from the previous version.
| Previous Regions | New Regions | No. of Samples |
| Africa North | Northern Africa | 41 |
| Africa South-Central Hunter-Gatherers | Africa South-Central Hunter-Gatherers | 34 |
| Benin & Togo | Benin & Togo | 224 |
| Cameroon & Congo and Africa Southeastern Bantu | Cameroon, Congo, & Southern Bantu Peoples | 579 |
| Ivory Coast & Ghana | Ivory Coast & Ghana | 124 |
| Not covered in the previous version | Eastern Africa | 82 |
| Mali | Mali | 169 |
| Nigeria | Nigeria | 111 |
| Senegal | Senegal | 31 |
| Native American | Native American—North, Central, South | 146 |
| Native American | Native American—Andean | 63 |
| Asia South | Southern Asia | 600 |
| Asia South | Balochistan | 53 |
| Asia South | Burusho | 23 |
| Asia South | Western & Central India | 65 |
| Asia Central | Central & Northern Asia | 186 |
| Asia East | China | 620 |
| Asia East | Southeast Asia–Dai (Thai) | 80 |
| Asia East | Japan | 592 |
| Asia East | Korea & Northern China | 261 |
| Asia East | Philippines | 538 |
| Asia East | Southeast Asia–Vietnam | 159 |
| Middle East | Middle East | 271 |
| Middle East and Caucasus | Iran / Persia | 459 |
| Middle East and Caucasus | Turkey & the Caucasus | 101 |
| Great Britain | England, Wales & Northwestern Europe | 1519 |
| Ireland/Scotland/Wales | Ireland & Scotland | 500 |
| Europe East | Baltic States | 194 |
| Europe East | Eastern Europe & Russia | 1959 |
| Iberian Peninsula | Basque | 22 |
| Iberian Peninsula | Spain | 270 |
| Iberian Peninsula | Portugal | 404 |
| European Jewish | European Jewish | 200 |
| Europe West | France | 1407 |
| Europe West | Germanic Europe | 2072 |
| Europe South | Greece & the Balkans | 242 |
| Europe South | Italy | 1000 |
| Europe South | Sardinia | 30 |
| Scandinavia | Norway | 367 |
| Scandinavia | Sweden | 372 |
| Finland/Northwest Russia | Finland | 361 |
| Melanesia | Melanesia | 49 |
| Polynesia | Polynesia | 58 |
Get ready for a bazillion posts about why someone’s ethnicity changed to something else from what they had been told before. I can hear it now.
Haha! I brewed an extra pot of coffee for just that eventuality. It’s good to get people thinking about how the science evolves.
I was surprised that I show more French(we came to Louisiana on the German Pest ships in 1721). We intermarried with the Acadians in the 1770’s. We also have the Canary Island connection like you!!
I like to say that the Cajuns are like the Borg: Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Thank you for the heads-up on the new ethnicities. I might not have known that for many months, otherwise.
They took my 25% Scandavian and broke it into 6 % Sweden and put the rest with the GB category.
They also gave me 3% German which is reasonable since each of my grandfathers were German. And, yes, I know the ethnicities are considered “deep ancestry.”
There’s still a lot of room for improvement with their “Germanic Europe” category, in my opinion. If both of your grandfathers were German, you should have a lot more than 3%. The country of Germany also falls under their “England, Wales, & Northwestern Europe” and their “Eastern Europe & Russia” categories on their map. I suspect a lot of southwestern Germany will fall into “France”, as well. Does that fit what you’re seeing?
To be exact:
England, Wales, NW Europe 70%
Increased by 41%
Ireland % Scotland 20%
Decreased by 10%
Sweden 7%
Refined from Scandanavia 25%
Germanic Europe 3%
Refined from Europe West 3%
…and there is still a lot of room for improvement with their “England, Wales & NW Europe” category, which overlaps their “Ireland/Scotland” category. They took 20% of my Irish, which exists in my DNA plus some, to increase my “England, Wales & NW Europe” percentage from TWELVE to SEVENTY-FOUR. Obviously, either my original Irish/Scottish estimate was way off, or my current one is. By the way, I have a Celtic haplotype, which did not help me to retain my Irish descent in their analyses.
Do you have any ancestry from northwest continental Europe? That might also explain your bump in that category.
25% of my ancestry is Acadian and Basque.85-90% of my matches are people with Acadian surnames. I’ve gone from 33% Europe West to 7% French and 1% Basque. Makes no sense. And my Irish/Scotland/Wales has increased from 40% to 50%. Should be about 25% based on the paper.
You’re right, that doesn’t make much sense. My French increased a lot (6% Western Europe to 70% French) and I’m hearing similar reports from other Acadians, Cajuns, and French Canadians. Are you pretty mixed with different ethnicities?
I just looked at my updated origins and it matches very closely to my documented pedigree information but then again, the before update map was very close to what I was expecting as well. The update has just clarified and redefined the broad Western Europe category that I had before. This updated map has taken some of that previous somewhat vague Western Europe data and moved it to the England,Wales and Northwestern Europe category. This is in line with what I would expect from the pedigree research. My paternal lineage is almost exclusively from the Great Britain area and so is half of my Mother’s lineage. My Mother’s German ancestry at the 3rd generation point comes from western Germany in areas bordering with France, Belgium and Luxembourg. This would put them into the England, Wales and Northwestern Europe area on updated map and explains why my percentage went up from 51 % Great Britain to 70% England, Wales and Northwestern Europe.
I’d say that the new Ancestry update is a vast improvement. Previously, I had less than 1% british and 1% western european. Now, I have 74% england, wales and northwestern europe. My iberian, southern europe and eastern europe all went away (should have never been there in the first place). And my my scandinavian dropped from 63% to 11%. I’m not thrilled that my dutch and german is now lumped with my british… Still, I’d rate Ancestry just behind 23&me and well ahead of FTDNA and My Heritage.
I agree with that ranking.
I do not have results from 23&me but have to agree on the ranking in regards to FTDNA and My Heritage! The My Heritage information was so limited it basically just says 95% North and West Europe, 5% Scandinavia. The FTDNA report does say British Isles but puts it at only 37% with another 32% going to West and Central Europe and 13% going to Scandinavia.
I do wish they could narrow down the Dutch/German portion a bit more but I think Ancestry’s information is a very close approximation.
How did you get such a specific breakdown country by country? Mine came back 100% European Jewish (same as before) with a further break down to Germany and Poland/Slovakia/Hungary/Romania. Germany was considered a very likely connection, the other a possible connection, but there were no further breakdowns by percentage or country. In fact I know that my paternal relatives were almost all from Germany except one line that I traced to Amsterdam but probably also came from Germany. My maternal relatives came from Poland and Romania, so far as I know. So why so heavily tilted to Germany and why no breakdowns beyond what I’ve described?
The percentages are based on a comparison of your DNA to specific reference populations. The reference populations are determined not by country borders but by genetic similarity. It’s only after the references populations are determined that they go in and label them based on some identifiable feature. That they often label the populations with country names is unfortunate, because the population boundaries rarely correlate perfectly with geopolitical boundaries (which, after all, weren’t the same when the genetic signatures came into being).
The genetic similarity among Ashkenazim results not from country boundaries but from the practice of marrying within the religion. You can see that in the map for European Jewish: https://thednageek.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Screen-Shot-2018-09-13-at-9.41.13-AM.png
What’s more confusing is that these maps are showing two very different types of analysis: ethnicity estimates (which give you percentages and represent genetic signal 500–1000 years ago) and Genetic Communities (which don’t give percentages and reflect connections within the past 200 years or so). The blob with the solid boundary in the European Jewish map is the region for the ethnicity estimate while the ones with dashed boundaries are Genetic Communities. (If you zoom in on a GC, you’ll see that each of those is further divided into three smaller communities.) GCs are defined by both genetic similarity and trees, so it may be that your stronger connection to the German Jews has more to do with the availability of genealogical records than anything else.
Thanks, Leah—that makes sense to me. As I often have explained to people who are totally new to DNA testing, these ethnicity estimates are not based on the idea that there is a Jewish gene or a French gene or an Irish gene, but on statistical analysis of the test takers and their own self-identified backgrounds.
Also, I looked again and realized that I was wrong about the countries listed in the Poland group—it does NOT include Romania. Romania is in a separate group, and Ancestry says it found no connection to that group. That makes me wonder: 25% of my DNA (more or less) should be from my maternal grandfather, who was born in Romania. I’ve never determined, however, where his parents or earlier ancestors came from. Is it crazy to think that the absence of a connection to Romania means his ancestors came from Poland or Germany and thus his DNA (as represented in my DNA) is being correlated to one of those places? Or is this just another example of what you said above—that these are not real borders, just estimates of where ancestors MIGHT have lived.
Great question, and I don’t know the answer. I wouldn’t take it as proof that his parents were from Poland or Germany, more a possibility that’s worth more digging.
Vast improvement and aligns more specifically with my documentary record. Ireland and Scotland, with an emphasis on Central Scotland and Ulster at 38% (check); England, Wales and NW Europe at 34% (having maternal family in the UK and paternal family in northern France and movement between, this makes sense); France 3% (the rest of the French, check); and, in the best new sorting of ethnicity estimates for me…Southeast Asia – Vietnam 14%; Phillipines 7% (my 2x GGM was Indonesian); and China 2%. Scandinavia is now 2% Norway and this still baffles me a teeny bit (my Dad has a bunch of Scandinavian matches on MyHeritage especially that I haven’t started to tackle). Good stuff, and helpful post!
Thanks for the assessment. I’m very excited about the additional regions in Asia, too!
Great post and very informative.
We couldn’t dream of writing up a post to match yours so we have just linked to you from Evidentree and have posted this to our Facebook page and group too.
Now, off to check my new ethnicity results. Lucky we have you to tell us about this!
Thank you for the kind words. I’d love to hear how your new results compare to your tree. Northern Europeans seem to be quite happy with the new estimates; southern Europeans less so.
I have just had a chance to assess my new results. I am happy with the refinement and see that they come more into line with what I know from tree research and also other genetic studies.
Besides having also tested with FTDNA and 23andme, because we have a deaf son (and to see if we could find a genetic cause of his deafness) my wife, son and I – along with our parents – have all had in-depth genetic studies made through medical laboratories where I am based in Switzerland.
Other users who are less happy with the new results should keep in mind that this is an iterative process and those new refinements will continue to be made for many years to come. Only as more people test and more samples become available can we expect to see improved analysis.
In the case of our deafness mystery, all currently known genetic causes have been ruled out. But we now wait – on the advice of the genetic counselors – for more deaf families to test so that the sample can grow and new trends can be found.
The same applies to ethnicity calculations.
Maybe check for a maternally inherited mitochondrial mutation for deafness (3243A>G). Especially if combined with diabetes or a heart condition.
I’m anxious to get my DNA redone after seeing the changes in yours. I hope I don’t lose my Spanish ancestry and get more French from the Western Europe.
Today’s update significantly improved the accuracy of Ancestry’s estimates for me. Also, Ancestry’s region labels now make much more sense to me. Well done.
My Italian estimate is way off… my grandfather’s parents were from Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi, Avellino, Campania Italy. I have documented in the Italian records ALL of my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th great grandparents. I also have almost all of my 5th ggp’s listed and I have 3 couples of my 6th ggp’s. All of those ancestors were from Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi. Additionally, my DNA lists are loaded with DNA cousins whose family lines and names are all from the same commune of Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi.
Despite my documented tree and the multitude of DNA matches from Sant
Angelo, AncestryDNA says I am 1% Italian.
AncestryDNA seems to have missed the mark with Italian (and, to a lesser degree, Iberian).
My father’s family is from northern Italy for many generations. I show up as 48% Italian. But my 2 children have no Italian DNA (0%), and their Italian DNA appears to show up as French and Northwestern European DNA. DNA Geek: Do you have an explanation?
I think the new estimates need work for some groups, particularly Italian and Iberian.
Thanks for your response. My guess (and it is a guess) is that the DNA of Italians may be influenced by the DNA of non-Italian parents. For example, my mother is Lebanese, so the Middle Eastern DNA may skew the Italian result to the south, resulting in Italian DNA. In contrast, my son’s mother is 93% British/Scottish, so that may skew the result to the north, resulting in French DNA.
I am posting again. I am part of the African diaspora with mixed European ancestry. My European South DNA is removed despite having a great great grandfather who is Sicilian and I have found a few Sicilian matches. I also have 3rd and 4th cousin matches whose ancestors are from Spain and Portugal. In fact, all my Portuguese matches, ancestors are from Azores. I have found also discovered a few who are living in Spain. Yet Ancestry eatimates identify 1% France and no Spain and Portugal DNA.
Wow. I am part of the African diaspora. My grandfather’s grandafther was Sicilian. The original estimate was 5% Europe South. I now have no DNA identified from that region. I have found a few Sicilian matches. Other third party companies identify East/West Mediterranean Islander DNA ( i.e., geneplaza and DNA Land). I also lost Iberian Dna despite having third and fourth cousin matches whose ancestors are from Spain and Azores Island Portugal. All my Portuguese matches are Azorean. Ancestry now identifies 1% France, which is bogus.
I agree that this update is not ideal for Iberian and Italian ancestry. I hope they’ll tweak it.
“Not ideal” is an understatement. Two of my sixteen 2nd great grandparents immigrated from the Spanish island of Menorca.
These were my maternal grandmother’s grandfathers, each of whom arrived in Louisiana in the 1830s-40s as a boy with his siblings and parents.
My grandmother’s paternal grandfather married a woman who had immigrated as a girl with her family from Alsace-Lorraine; and her maternal grandfather married a woman with deep roots in southern Mississippi and Louisiana.
(By “deep roots”, I mean colonial French and Irish ancestry, and Native American ancestry. She also had Swiss ancestors who arrived prior to 1800 or shortly thereafter.)
Anyway, I ought to have something around 12.5% “Spanish” ancestry, and Ancestry’s previous estimate was 9%. Their current estimate is … none.
I know at least some of it should be there, since ThruLines confirms that I share DNA with a number of people whose most recent common ancestry with me includes one or the other of the Menorcan 2nd great grandfathers. 23andMe “sees” only 5.1% of this ancestry, but that’s still a lot better than nothing.
Ancestry also now says I’m only 6% “Germanic Europe”, even though I have a German surname; both of my father’s parents had German surnames; all four of his grandparents had German surnames; and six of the eight great grandparents had German surnames. Only one of the other two had a definitively non-German surname, however, since the one surnamed “White” could easily have originated as “Weiß”.
If I add up my German, Swiss, Alsatian, and French ancestry, I get 44.9% — which is within a single percent of my old “Europe West” number.
My old “Great Britain” score was just 25% and my “Ireland” score was 9%. That gives a combined “British and Irish” score of 34%, which is about 6% lower than my paper trail percentage of 34.4%. I don’t even try to these two ancestries because in my paper trail it’s almost impossible to tell who was English, who was Scottish or Scots-Irish, and who was Irish.
The only definitely Irish name in my family is “Ryan”. That name traces back to Daniel Ryan, born in Spanish Florida in 1739. However, I also have Keith and Stewart as likely Scottish ancestors on my father’s side.
Anyway, my updated percentages are 80% “England, Wales and Northwestern Europe”; 11% Ireland and Scotland; 6% Germanic Europe; 2% “Native American — North, Central, South”; and 1% “Finland”. The only one of these that is in perfect agreement — or even really close — with my paper trail is “Native American”.
Ethnicity estimates are still an emerging science, and a difficult one. It’s no surprise that the companies don’t get it “right” for every person. I’m hopeful that AncestryDNA will improve the Iberian and Italian estimates in their next update.
Is this the same update that I got in June? I checked the five kits I manage and all said they were up to date.
If you are outside the US, then you may have gotten the update a few months ago.
My first problem with the results, is that when you re-draw boundaries, then show something like English is up 30%, its kinda silly. English is not up 30%, your comparing apples and oranges. Its a new boundary and completely new result set. I think it is a misleading representation. Second, the updated results for me were such a big change that if I were on the fence with believing the science, this change would actually hurt not help. It basically says Ancestry was way off before, so why believe them now. My takeaway, is use it for matches but not much else.
The boundaries are determined by the genetic populations themselves, not by geopolitical borders, so we expect them to change as the science improves. Science is a process of discovery, so we’ll continue to see changes as the collective knowledge and reference populations improve.
I agree with Jeff. I spent a good amount of time trying to convince a sibling that the DNA results showed migration patterns out of Africa. I thought this was pretty exciting and showed the possible migration of my ancestors was into the Middle East, across the Mediterranean into the Iberian Peninsula and up into Europe. I realize that some of the percentages were very low and, thus, may not have been totally accurate; now these small percentages are gone all together and it is as if my ancestors just popped up in Europe out of nowhere.
It’s OK with me that these estimates are revised periodically as we learn more but this change was so drastic that I am not sure I trust the science anymore. I never did convince my sibling who said it was all BS and that I had wasted my money. While I don’t agree, the “enhancements” have strengthened his argument. This was not an enhancement, it was a complete re-do and I have the same takeaway as Jeff.
The migration pattern you’re describing sounds more like what you’d see with mitochondrial DNA than with autosomal. How much African, Middle Eastern, or Iberian did you have before the update?
The amounts were very small amounts but my point was that I thought the results showed migration patterns from long ago; and, more recently, places where my ancestors actually lived. Perhaps I am wrong on this but I have read quite a bit on migration patterns
In any case, the two results are so different that I really don’t trust either set. And I really did not get any close matches on Ancestry and for those there close, either trees were private or no one responded. Of course, not everyone is on Ancestry!
My sibling was right: waste of money (for me). Others may get better results. When I can afford it, I will go for the Y-chromosome test and the mtDNA.
atDNA does not show ancient migration patterns. You need either yDNA or mtDNA for that. On the other hand, atDNA is the most useful for genealogy, while mtDNA is the least. (yDNA is in the middle.)
Ancestry’s ethnicity estimates do include a feature called Genetic Communities (or Migrations) that will show recent (past 300 years or so) population patterns. Perhaps that’s what you were thinking of? They’re based on a different type of analysis than the ethnicity estimates. I wrote out them when they first appeared:
https://thednageek.com/genetic-communities-are-here/
Since that post, Ancestry has renamed some Genetic Communities as “Migrations” when they involved groups of people dispersing from a homeland. For example, my Migration is Southwestern Louisiana Acadians. Ancestry’s historians have written a summary of the population, from France to Acadia (Nova Scotia) in the 1700s (1600s, really) to Louisiana in the late 1700s. The Migrations I’ve seen are remarkably accurate.
Although I have been critical of Ancestry’s DNA project, I enjoy reading your blog and have learned a great deal from it.
Thanks for the info. Do you think people from England could be in the Germanic Europe group? My dad’s family are all from England and one line from Scotland. My mum’s is from Romania, Hungary and going back to Germany. My mum has tested and she has only 16% Germanic Europe but mine has been refined to 52%.
The population maps do not show the “Germanic Europe” region extending to England. There’s historically been a lot of interchange between those regions, though, so perhaps that accounts for what you’re seeing. Has your father tested for comparison? Or one of his close relatives?
My father hasn’t tested and the closest relative is 3 rd cousin. That person still has the old ethnicities up. Most people seem to have not updated yet. That’s a good clue though, thanks for thinking of it. I will keep checking to see when they have their new ethnicities listed.
my previous 94% ashkenazi + smattering of greco-italian and iberian went up to 100% ashkenazi, losing the latter two (and mapped in more detail to reflect, pretty much exactly, where each set of my great-grandparents are from in eastern and central europe). 100% – is that even possible? who knew? more interestingly, my husband, whose dad is ashkenazi and mom southern italian, lost his (surprise) 15% caucasus in favor of becoming *much* more italian (up from 25% to 42%) and slightly less ashkenazi (down from 60+% to 50something). i had had 1% trace caucasus prior as well. but 15% is a lot to lose…i wonder what they did exactly to parse the source of that caucasus category better? who “got” what was formerly caucasus?
They changed two things that caused your estimates to differ from before: they added more reference samples and they changed the algorithm to analyze short haplotypes rather than individual SNPs. It should be more accurate now. As with any estimate, there will always be room for improvement.
Finally glad to see some actual numbers! A few questions:
1. Where exactly did you acquire the numbers anyway? I’m just curious about the original source of the data.
2. Do you know the specific groups or populations these samples came from? i.e. specific ethnic groups
The description of the reference panel is Section 2.5 of the updated Ethnicity White Paper.
https://www.ancestrycdn.com/dna/static/images/ethnicity/help/WhitePaper_Final_091118dbs.pdf
In the updates, I lost my 6% Iberian Peninsula and picked up 1% Eurpean Jewish. But I question that result because I sent my raw DNA to a geneticist, who specializes in looking for Jewish ancestry in Europeans, and he said if I have any Jewish at all it’s less than 1% and looks very distant, but he was surprised by my high amount of recent Spanish_Andalucian and Italian_Tuscan, which I didn’t know I had.
Interestingly, when I lived in Andalucia, Spain, as an 18 to 20 year old in ’78 thru ’80, the Spaniards always thought I was Spanish and refused to believe I wasn’t.
By reading about the new Ancestry DNA updated results, it seems like most of the updated people have lost their Iberian Peninsula, which makes me wonder if there’s an error skewing the results away from Iberian Peninsula/Southern European.
What is the difference between the northwest Europe and Germanic Europe? I have not found a single ancestor yet that was not tied to Germany, Switzerland, Scotland, or England. I have many German/Swiss (mainly around the Rhine, Frankfort, one or two from Bavaria, etc) ancestors so is this figuring into something different than the Germanic Europe? I have 78% England Europe west and 0% Germanic tribes. The 78% makes since as most ancestors are English or German/Swiss. My other 22% is Scotland/Ireland of which most ancestors are showing up Scotland.
The regions are based on natural clustering found in the DNA of their reference population rather than by country borders. (Recall that most country borders have changed over the past few hundred years.) Thus, while there’s a lot of geographic overlap between the England/Europe West and Germanic Europe groups, they are distinct enough genetically to form different clusters.
I cam to this late, but a brief comment. My recent ancestry is all UK – England and Ireland mostly, maybe Scotland too. But my mtDNA shows a strong connection to Finland, presumably not so recent. My old Ancestry ethnicity hd lots of small percentages from various parts of Europe, with England/Scotland/Wales and Scandinavia the main ones. The later version is only England/Wales/NW Europe and Ireland & Scotland.
The ability to distinguish between Ireland/Scotland and England/Wales seems to me to be good, and the drop in Scandinavia and the smaller European regions seems sensible, but I wonder whether there “should” have been some Scandinavia to pick up the Finland connection. Overall, I think I agree it is an improvement, though my assessment is very subjective.
Your mtDNA haplogroup may be Finnish, but it could trace back dozens of generations, by which point the autosomal DNA would be washed out. Autosomal is what’s used for the ethnicity estimates. In other words, it may be that the only Scandinavian remnant left in you is the mtDNA.
It seems to me that it’s predictable that you would be pleased with Ancestry’s new algorithm since it lined up more like you expected. I’m not great at understanding what has been done, but haplogroups were considered when changing the program? And did you say that there was a select group of Ancestry members used? If I’m reading this correctly, my dna wasn’t included and my results come from the group that was studied. Am I correct on this? I’m wondering, too, about GEDMATCH using my latest heritages.
The admixture, or “ethnicity” estimates are not based on haplogroups. Haplogroups only reflect a very small fraction of your overall genetic makeup (your direct maternal line and, if you’re male, your direct paternal line), whereas autosomal DNA encompasses all branches of your family. Think of it this way: by the time you get back to your 10th great grandparents, a man’s two haplogroups reflect only 2/4096th of his ancestry, or 1/2048ths.
The “reference panel” is composed of people who can document their ancestry as from a specific geographic location. Some of those people are Ancestry customers, and some are from scientific studies on human genetic diversity.