My Ancestry DNA results came back this week and I'm a little bit surprised by the ethnicity breakdown from my father's side of the family. Some how he's 94% from Great Britain which I find hilarious since he was told his ancestors came from Germany, France and England
What's even more strange is the average native Brit only has 60% in GB heritage department, so its weird he'd be more British than the natives. Explains me being such a huge Anglophile, too
So, I was wondering if anyone else ever had a very high percentage like this turn up in their report.
Also, those folks who are 'cousins' who have private trees is it wrong to reach out to them? Will they be offended or think its rude that reached out them since they've marked their tree private? I assume people who have gone through the trouble of doing research and DNA must be interested in finding out new and different information from other descendants.
And one last thing, once you link your family tree and get cousins what's up with all the people who went through the expense and trouble of running the test but never creating a family tree?
Most of the 2nd cousin matches don't have trees and haven't logged on in a few years. Do people only do the test to see their ethnic heritage?
Okay, to understand your ethnicity results, first you need to understand what this test actually does.
An admixture test involves first locating several people who are "representative" of a certain population and testing them to provide comparison samples. So for example, the Great Britain samples would be people whose known ancestry supposedly comes only from Great Britain for several generations, the German one would be people with only German ancestry for several generations. You test as many likely candidates as you can get hold of, and label that "Great British DNA" or "German DNA."
Then you create an algorithm which compares the testee's sample to the various populations.
There are several possible problems with this approach, the most obvious of which is that your results depend entirely on the people you sampled. Let's say you were unable to persuade any Navajo to participate in your sample testing - now you have no Navajo sample population. If you are a Navajo, and you test, it will try to pick the closest thing... which may be very misleading, such as Asian.
Let's say one of your Great Britain samples was a person whose grandpa was secretly the illegitimate baby of a German. Now you have German DNA in your database labeled as Great Britain.
The biggest problem, though, is that the DNA of populations doesn't respect lines on maps. Dublin had a Viking king at one point. Great Britain was invaded by Saxons and Normans. Normans were from France but had Scandinavian blood. Roman soldiers from North Africa went to Great Britain, settled down, and intermarried. Different regions mostly do not have distinctly different autosomal DNA in any time frame which is meaningful to genealogical researchers.
And if by sheer dumb luck you happen to be directly related to someone who was included in the sample population, it will wildly skew your results in favor of that region.
All that your ethnicity results mean is that your personal DNA more closely represents one sample group than another. For some reason, your dad's DNA is closely matching the UK samples - that doesn't mean he doesn't have ancestors from France or Germany, it just means that his personal DNA most closely resembles the samples taken from modern Britain.
Ancestry's admixture calculator will mostly correctly identify an African versus a European, a Jewish person, or an Eastern European. That's about as far as it goes. More specific results are about as accurate as reading tea leaves, and there are not enough Native American or Asian samples to be useful. Throw in the fact that there seems to be actual hoodoo involved - the same person taking the test twice has gotten different admixture results from identical DNA when testing at Ancestry - and it's really not good for much beyond entertainment.
If you're interested, you can download your raw data and upload it to Gedmatch for free. Gedmatch has several different admixture calculators based on different sample populations, and one of them may be more relevant to you.
My brother just did this! Independently of him, I was looking into signing up on Ancestry, so that was funny timing. (Or WAS it
... *cue suspenseful music*).
Not being on Ancestry yet, I can only guess...perhaps they keep their trees private simply to reduce the number of total strangers who might otherwise contact them. If you have a family link, you would not be a total stranger. So I think they would
not think you were rude for contacting them. They can always choose not to respond.
I once tracked down a family ~ complete strangers ~ because my sister found their great grandfather's keys in an old house that she purchased.
They were shocked to hear from me but pretty happy to get those keys back.
Maybe. I have no idea if my brother has created a tree yet or not (I literally just discovered yesterday that he had the DNA test done.). Out of all of us, I would be the most likely to get that going. I could see him just wanting an ethnicity breakdown.
Maybe that's why he sent me his DNA results...giving me a little nudge.
Okay, now I have a question...given the nature of this DNA test, I don't really need to have it done, do I? He and I have the same parents, grandparents, etc. Wouldn't my numbers come up the same?
Siblings only share about 50% of their DNA, so your results can be quite different from your brother's. If you're only interested in your ethnic mix, don't bother - as I said above, for most people it's about as useful as reading tea leaves. If you want to locate cousin matches, though, the more DNA you have, the better. You will have thousands of matches your brother does not. Better than taking the test yourself is getting the older generation done - if your parents or grandparents are living, test them first. They will have DNA in common with an earlier generation which did not get passed down to you.
Regarding private trees and no trees - I have yet to have anyone be offended about being contacted, but people may not answer or may not be helpful. My approach on private trees is to greet them, apologize for contacting them, and ask to trade information. Most people never reply, but some have been helpful.
As for people with no trees - according to Ancestry's report, about 25% of people who take the DNA test were not members when they took it, and took it just for the ethnicity results. Ancestry really markets the ethnicity results, and doesn't really push people to make trees. I have noticed that many of my no-tree matches are African ethnicity, which given that I am white, probably means an even larger percentage overall are Africans - probably testing in hopes of breaking through that pre-1870 barrier and learning something about where in Africa their ancestors came from.
Some no-tree matches are adoptees looking for answers. One of my closest locked matches turned out to be someone whose mom had been a groupie and told her she was the daughter of a famous person. She got the test in hopes of confirming or denying this, and her match list indicates that it's true. I also first learned from her that I was cousins with this famous person, which is kind of cool. Adoptees will mostly be delighted with any help you can give them.
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Okay, okay! I was going to spend that money on yarn, but you've altered my course. Plus I already have eleventy one million yards of yarn. 
Bringing the