Wait, Where Did My DNA Go?
DNA test sites change their algorithms, and your ethnicity percentages can vary wildly
A Cautionary Tale
It is ironic that the first versions of my family’s DNA test results were what pulled me in to researching ancestry. I was intrigued by our heretofore unheard of Native American ancestors, and by proof of what previously was only suspected Jewish heritage.
It is ironic, because this year, version 3.0 of our tests came out, and the first two versions are now wrong!
I wonder if I would have gotten the ancestry research bug, gone down all those rabbit holes, and learned quite so much human history, if 2023’s version of our tests had come out in 2014. (I am still waiting to hear back from FTDNA about getting a copy of those earlier versions. I want proof that I am not making this up!)(They have replied, first version not available.)
In 2023, our Native American heritage is gone entirely, while both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish is greatly reduced. More than a quarter of our genetic cousins are still 50–100% Jewish, though. We also now have zero English ancestry, but we know for a fact that we have ancestors who lived in the same English town going back to at least 1500. Were they Iberian and Italian Jews, escaping The Inquisition and passing as Christians? Who knows.
Before I was disabused of our Versions 1.0 and 2.0, I researched, and believed I had figured out that our Native American heritage most likely came from our Orkney ancestors.
The Orkneys, at the far tip of Scotland, were populated by Picts, Gaelic peoples, and later, the Vikings. Orkney was also a major center of the world in Neolithic times, circa 5000 BC. They built the first stone circles there, had boats, and traded at least as far south as the Mediterranean.
The Orkney Islanders and Vikings were not only sailing back and forth to North America since the year 1021, they also (some say) intermarried with indigenous people there and formed the Mi’q Maq tribe. That is also spelled Mic Mac, and most intriguingly, also Nic Mac. Nic, and Mac are pure Gaelic words. Both the Scots and the Irish use Nic and Mac as the beginning of surnames; Nic means ‘daughter of’, and Mac means ‘son of’.
If you follow that reference above, you will see that the Mi’q Maq call themselves L’nu’k, meaning ‘the people’, and that the term Mi’kmaq comes from their word nikmak, meaning ‘my kin friends.’
You can see, perhaps, why I drew my conclusions about our Native American ancestry. It is still interesting, even if it doesn’t apply to me.
Putting whether we do or do not have Native American ancestors aside, the above story is a good example of how building a tree and researching your ancestors is often done not only to fit the testing site’s bias, but to fit your own bias. Does this story/name/ place fit what you would like it to fit? Yes? — include it then. No? — ignore it then. How many ancestors are added to a tree with the following reasoning? John Smith married a Katy Ryan in 1857? Must be our John and Katy!
I have been tested on three DNA sites, and interpretation of ethnicity varies wildly between the sites. On one site, I am 51% Irish, on another I am 13%, on the third I am 3%.
The stock answer to this confusion is that interpreting DNA results for ancestral origins is an inexact science.
I can think of a few other reasons.
a) The testers that make up the data bases are not a fair representation of the world’s population.
b) testing sites use different algorithms, and algorithms famously reflect the bias of their author.
c) humans are extremely similar, genetically.
d) genes can skip generations, and you are the sum of many many lucks of the draw.
It is hard not to feel a bit betrayed though, when your results chop and change.
I was chuffed that my heritage wasn’t 100% white colonizers. Though many of my ancestors were colonized and robbed by the English, some Scottish ones were dispossessed and then planted to become colonizers of Ireland, and the Catholic Irish ones who survived the Great Famine did so by becoming colonizers of Australia.
White guilt, I admit to it, I wanted a bit of ‘ethnic’. I laugh at myself now, but I know I am not the only white person wishing they had more than only European and colonizing ancestors. Did the DNA testing sites play to this white guilt trend deliberately, back in the early days?
In the end, even if I do have 1% West African, 1% Amerindian, and 9% Sephardic, so what? My own life has been white, Gentile privilege, all the way.
Then there is Mtdna
My father’s mitochondrial DNA is H7b. There are only 100 people in Ft DNA's data base who have this mtdna. None of them are related to my dad. The rare studies that include H7b point to Northern India, Tibet, Mongolia and far eastern Russia.
One mother of a daughter, (repeat) had this mtdna, and passed it on, down the centuries, ending with my dad and his brother, — because fathers do not hand their mtdna down to their offspring. (Except very rarely.)
I can only speculate that one ancestress, one or two thousand years ago, was Mongolian, back when Mongols had colonized most of Eurasia. It has shaped my reading, and I am currently enjoying historical novels about the Mongol empire, Tibet and the Silk Road, and filling in the gaps of my poor grasp on human history.
In the end, for me, filling in the gaps of human history is a bigger take-away than filling in the gaps of my family tree, and if I hadn’t tested at all, I would be way more ignorant than I am now.