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[TheZink]

I’ve always wanted to take a DNA test so for my birthday my in laws bought me one. Come to find out I’m 68% British and about only 16% German DNA. In total I was 100% European.

What’s surprising is you can trace my family back 500 years and more of straight German residents although my great grandfather moved to the US from Germany.

God save the Queen I guess.

Anyone else out there find out any surprising facts?

 

[Izuna]

46 something percent Unknown here.

Wake me up when they have Caribbean data.

 

[TheZink]

46 something percent Unknown here.

Wake me up when they have Caribbean data.

thats a bummer that’s not available.

 

[John Dunbar]

46 something percent Unknown here.

Wake me up when they have Caribbean data.

you're one of the old ones

 

[Moose Biscuits]

Yeah, I took one a couple of years back out of curiosity and it turns out I'm a dog

 

[Aurongel]

46 something percent Unknown here.

Wake me up when they have Caribbean data.

46% Eldritch Diety you mean.

 

[Brock Reiher]

Nah. Most surprising thing about mine is that one of my relatives like 8 generations ago was from one of the super white parts of Africa.

 

[Jackpot]

They're not very accurate.

 

[FUBAR McDangles]

They're not very accurate.

Can you explain this a bit more? My wife's side of the family is into all this stuff and now that i am part of it they are really pressuring me to do it. Constant comments and reminders and all that crap. I dont care for it and i dont want to pay for it so anything i can use for my side would help.

 

[Izuna]

Receipts:

email from 23andme

Thomas, May 30, 2:47 PM PDT:
Hello,

Thank you for contacting 23andMe. At this time we do not have a population for Carib ancestry. Ancestry Composition assigns ancestry percentages based on your genetic similarity to our 31 populations. If you are seeing a higher percentage of West African ancestry than expected, this is because you most closely resembled this reference population. Note, that if we were unable to confidently assigned your DNA to any one of our 31 populations, we would have assigned this DNA to our Unassigned population.

If you are able to have your mother genotyped by our service, you would be able to confirm which ancestry assignments you inherited from her specifically.

We hope you found this information helpful.

Best regards,

Thomas
The 23andMe Team

--

note: if you don't change the setting, it will default to "50 Confidence (Speculative)" which takes all of that unassigned and calls it West African in my case, which isn't very informative. The annoying part is that they hide this setting. Almost everyone from Jamaica, for example, will show up under the umbrella of West African in this case.

The issue isn't West African being there, it makes sense, but it's pretty much pointless in this regard because if there's basically no way to point anything to the Carribean, which is where that side of my faily is from (and mixed af in). The Relatives found on this site (that aren't white Americans) are Jamaicans or Cuban... all of the 3rd-4th cousins that were found. I had a conversation with a woman who looked like she could be my mother's sister and her son looks like me. Cuban af.

 

[Grug]

 

[99Luffy]

99.9% filipino. Kinda boring.

And the amount of health reports was disappointing. I read that 23andMe used to offer hundreds of reports, including cancer reports until the fda neutered them. Now they only offer a few.

 

[Charles Brandon]

I've always wanted to take a DNA test so for my birthday my in laws bought me one. Come to find out I'm 68% British and about only 16% German DNA. In total I was 100% European.

What's surprising is you can trace my family back 500 years and more of straight German residents although my great grandfather moved to the US from Germany.

God save the Queen I guess.

Anyone else out there find out any surprising facts?

This is actually very common. English/British heritage was rejected by many US citizens following the war of independence when it became unfashionable to link yourself to the old country. Many Americans emphasised or even falsified heritage from other nations. The same thing happened to an extent away from Germany more recently but it has had a lessor effect. Most people who see themselves as just 'American' are typically of British descent. British ancestry is still by far the most dominant heritage in the US, despite what people may think and what self-selection of the census may lead you to believe.

DON'T DENY US YOU SNEAKY FUCKS. WE'RE DARTH VADER AND YOU'RE ALL OUR CHILDREN. DEAL WITH IT.

 

[Mista Koo]

Receipts:

email from 23andme



--

note: if you don't change the setting, it will default to "50 Confidence (Speculative)" which takes all of that unassigned and calls it West African in my case, which isn't very informative. The annoying part is that they hide this setting. Almost everyone from Jamaica, for example, will show up under the umbrella of West African in this case.

The issue isn't West African being there, it makes sense, but it's pretty much pointless in this regard because if there's basically no way to point anything to the Carribean, which is where that side of my faily is from (and mixed af in). The Relatives found on this site (that aren't white Americans) are Jamaicans or Cuban... all of the 3rd-4th cousins that were found. I had a conversation with a woman who looked like she could be my mother's sister and her son looks like me. Cuban af.

Yeah I really wanna take a test but I doubt it will give out any meaningful results. My cousin took one and it told him nothing when it comes to percentages (We're both ~87.5% Arab and 0% European).

 

[Aegus]

DON'T DENY US YOU SNEAKY FUCKS. WE'RE DARTH VADER AND YOU'RE ALL OUR CHILDREN. DEAL WITH IT.

Does that mean current USA is Kylo Ren?

I’m imagining a GIF with Han Solo (with his face replaced by the world) walking up to Kylo (with Obama face) only to be stabbed and Kylo to have Trump face.

I haven’t had a dna test, but I’ve been told I have Norwegian ancestry. So Scottish and Norwegian.

 

[CyclopsRock]

Can you explain this a bit more? My wife's side of the family is into all this stuff and now that i am part of it they are really pressuring me to do it. Constant comments and reminders and all that crap. I dont care for it and i dont want to pay for it so anything i can use for my side would help.

I think the data itself is entirely accurate, but the conclusions they draw - 85% this, 5 percent that etc - are where the flaws come in. There's no such thing as "British" DNA, for example. I mean to state the blindingly obvious, people move around all over the place, they always have, and what we know of as countries are so relatively recent compared to the development of our evolution (and thus DNA differences) that the very best they can conclude is that DNA "like" yours is most common in Area X. But even that's dodgy. We've had enough wars and counter-pillages in Europe that the distinction is blurry as anything. In the last 2,000 years we've have Britons, Romans, Saxons and Normans come to stay in Great Britain down south. Up top we've the Celts with regular deluges of mad Scandinavians. As a maritime nation we also have a healthy dosage of frequent immigrants from all around the "known" world.

So if we accept that "groups" of Europeans with only small geographic and time gaps - Normans, Saxons, Gauls, Vikings etc - have detectable, meaningful differences in their DNA, you have to wonder what "85% British" really means.

Edit: Then you have to bear in mind that there are political outcomes that probably don't have much of a place in genetic outcomes. So far example when Bismark unified Germany in the late 19th Century - prior to which you just had smaller states like Bavaria, Prussia etc - it was a matter of political reality that Saxony was part of Germany and, say, Austria wasn't. And yet these tests say that you have "German" DNA, when a relatively untravelled dynasty from Dresden is likely to share more DNA with someone from the North of Austria than from the Rhineland.

 

[Charles Brandon]

You say that but haven't recent studies shown that most indiginous Brits have DNA that shows that their heritage is mostly from the original tribal inhabitants of the island, ie all the Romans, Saxons, Angles, Norseman, Normans and later peaceable arrivals had a surprising small impact on the genetic make up of the the average Brit.

 

[ReplacementPelican]

I’ve always wanted to take a DNA test so for my birthday my in laws bought me one. Come to find out I’m 68% British and about only 16% German DNA. In total I was 100% European.

What’s surprising is you can trace my family back 500 years and more of straight German residents although my great grandfather moved to the US from Germany.

God save the Queen I guess.

Anyone else out there find out any surprising facts?

So your family were British migrants to Germany and then from Germany to the States?

 

[eddie4]

Doesn't the DNA data stay in the system, so that later, once they do figure out how to get the rest of the 'unassigned' DNA, would your data update? I'm thinking about doing this, but it's still not cheap enough for me to probably get the 'unknown' since I'm already at that point.

 

[Charles Brandon]

So your family were British migrants to Germany and then from Germany to the States?

Nah. Most likely they were Brits all along.

 

[LifEndz]

I really want to. Many of my father's ancestors were Native American, and I'd like to know just how much of that is in my blood.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

I’ve always wanted to take a DNA test so for my birthday my in laws bought me one. Come to find out I’m 68% British and about only 16% German DNA. In total I was 100% European.

What’s surprising is you can trace my family back 500 years and more of straight German residents although my great grandfather moved to the US from Germany.

God save the Queen I guess.

Anyone else out there find out any surprising facts?

This Radiolab episode about genetics is really interesting.

It featured a story about a black man who has zero African DNA and about how he makes sense of it. It's really moving in a way because his family respond in a way, I'd not imagine they would.

 

[Charles Brandon]

This Radiolab episode about genetics is really interesting.

It featured a story about a black man who has zero African DNA and about how he makes sense of it. It's really moving in a way because his family respond in a way, I'd not imagine they would.

Will listen later. Can you tell us how that is possible though?

 

[Charles Brandon]

Now I read the OP again it sounds like he's a German resident. I which case I'm chatting absolute bollocks and that seems very strange indeed. I made the assumption he was American.

 

[Media]

Going to someday. My birth father was was a griffer, conartist, bank robber, rapist and murder.

It'd be interesting to see what percentages I am of him and my English as hell mom.

 

[Kwhit10]

My bosses wife found out she most likely has a different father than her siblings. All of them did the test and she had an origin that none of her siblings had, besides what they all shared from their mother.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

now i want to

 

[CyclopsRock]

You say that but haven't recent studies shown that most indiginous Brits have DNA that shows that their heritage is mostly from the original tribal inhabitants of the island, ie all the Romans, Saxons, Angles, Norseman, Normans and later peaceable arrivals had a surprising small impact on the genetic make up of the the average Brit.

I'm not sure - if you can link to something like that I'd be interested, because I was under the impression that most of the Britons got shoved into Wales and the West County.

 

[Big Baybee]

My bosses wife found out she most likely has a different father than her siblings. All of them did the test and she had an origin that none of her siblings had, besides what they all shared from their mother.

Damn

 

[Charles Brandon]

I'm not sure - if you can link to something like that I'd be interested, because I was under the impression that most of the Britons got shoved into Wales and the West County.

Anglo-Saxons, from modern Germany, moved into what is now eastern England from 450-600AD, after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Anglo-Saxon DNA can clearly be seen in modern England (but not in Wales) and is responsible for 20 to 40 per cent of the genetic ancestry there. The remainder comes from the people already present before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. As a result, we can show that Anglo-Saxons intermarried with, rather than slaughtered and replaced, existing populations

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...story-of-Britain-is-written-in-our-genes.html

I think that means that most Brits are between 60-80% (More in Wales) pre-Anglo-Saxon/'Celtic' (although that term is debated) with the remainder being Anglo-Saxon.

The culture was shoved into Wales but the people remained.

 

[Ace Harding]

This Radiolab episode about genetics is really interesting.

It featured a story about a black man who has zero African DNA and about how he makes sense of it. It's really moving in a way because his family respond in a way, I'd not imagine they would.

Can't listen right now but was that just a mistake? How is that possible?

 

[newdayrocks]

Can you explain this a bit more? My wife's side of the family is into all this stuff and now that i am part of it they are really pressuring me to do it. Constant comments and reminders and all that crap. I dont care for it and i dont want to pay for it so anything i can use for my side would help.

There's a great piece about how awful 23AndMe's sample populations are, and how any results from them have some glaring problems for anyone other than white folks.

 

[DrunkShogun]

Don't think I would get much from doing one. It's usually separated within continents and I'm pretty sure my heritage would be a variety of Asian countries like China and India.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...story-of-Britain-is-written-in-our-genes.html

I think that means that most Brits are between 60-80% (More in Wales) pre-Anglo-Saxon/'Celtic' (although that term is debated) with the remainder being Anglo-Saxon.

The culture was shoved into Wales but the people remained.

Yep. Populations are pretty stable. Having the kind of mass migration necessary to change a particular genetic mix is extremely uncommon - an immigration of 20,000 into a country of 2,000,000 and that's only 1%! The Normans left almost no genetic trace, for example, because there just weren't enough Normans. Ditto for the Danes and Norwegians and Romans. Most of the UK's genetic material is still basically Celtic, and IIRC shares most similarity with the Basque people and areas of Northern Spain like Galicia.

The actual biggest contribution of the Anglo-Saxons wasn't their own genetic input (although there is a fair amount since there were enough of them, to be fair, unlike the Normans), but actually the 'mixing' of everyone else. Areas like Cornwall and Devon actually show distinct genetic differences from one another, as do North Wales and South Wales, and parts of North England (especially Cumbria), but all of the Midlands and the South of England is basically one big genetic stew, because a unified kingdom with a shared legal system and economy and traditions and practices meant inhabitants travelled around a lot more and were less local in their fucking. Without it, you'd probably be able to see distinct regional groupings in the British Isles, but in fact that's rather rare and is restricted to the peripheries.

 

[TheZink]

So your family were British migrants to Germany and then from Germany to the States?

As far as I can trace back it’s all German from my fathers side. That’s why the having so much British DNA was such a surprise

 

[TheZink]

This Radiolab episode about genetics is really interesting.

It featured a story about a black man who has zero African DNA and about how he makes sense of it. It's really moving in a way because his family respond in a way, I'd not imagine they would.

Cool. I’ll check it out.

 

[TheZink]

My bosses wife found out she most likely has a different father than her siblings. All of them did the test and she had an origin that none of her siblings had, besides what they all shared from their mother.

I’m pretty sure this is happening on my moms side. Her “Father” well who she assumed was is almost half Native American. I have absolutely 0 Native American blood. She always suspected he wasn’t her real dad. I felt bad telling her. When her mom passed away a few years ago she finally saw her birth certificate. Her real dads name was scratched out and the man who raised her wrote his name in. This kinda confirmed everything.

 

[dragonelite]

I always wanted to do some DNA ancestry test maybe something for next year.

 

[ReplacementPelican]

As far as I can trace back it’s all German from my fathers side. That’s why the having so much British DNA was such a surprise

Ah I see, so your father's side in German but if you're chasing paternally you're missing massive percentages of your history.

 

[TheZink]

Now I read the OP again it sounds like he's a German resident. I which case I'm chatting absolute bollocks and that seems very strange indeed. I made the assumption he was American.

I’m American. My great grandfather immigrated to the US in the late 1800’s.

 

[TheZink]

Ah I see, so your father's side in German but if you're chasing paternally you're missing massive percentages of your history.

True. I just figured I would have more than 16% German dna because of how much of my family history is German.

 

[Summer Haze]

Yup, turns out I'm 99.9% unknown.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

Yeah. Mine said 4% dog and .3% unknown species.

 

[laoni]

Part of me wants to. Part of me is also concerned about what these companies will actually do with my DNA data and who it gets sold to, and that keeps me from dropping the money on it.

 

[Charles Brandon]

I'm American. My great grandfather immigrated to the US in the late 1800's.

In that case, I think the explanation is that some of your ancestors were maybe a lot less German than they may have appeared to be. It's either that, the data is wrong or that your ancestors came to the US via Germany from Britain.

Frustratingly, I read a very interesting article on this subject which I have tried to dig up for you without success. From memory, British-ness is extremely downplayed in the US, either because it is considered just bog-standard 'American' and therefore not worthy of further comment or clarification, or because other nationalities have been more fashionable at different times for different reasons.

 

[Coinspinner]

Only 14% reptilian. Must all be in my forked tongue.

 

[Chocolate & Vanilla]

Thought this was gonna be about the other kind of DNA test.

Disappointing.

 

[Golden_Pigeon]

Only 7% neogaf, which is insane giving all the time I spend here

 

[Greigor The Fellhand]

like 60% eastern european.

I'm a mutt, all of my great grand parents were from different countries.

 

[waveuponwave]

Yep. Populations are pretty stable. Having the kind of mass migration necessary to change a particular genetic mix is extremely uncommon - an immigration of 20,000 into a country of 2,000,000 and that's only 1%! The Normans left almost no genetic trace, for example, because there just weren't enough Normans. Ditto for the Danes and Norwegians and Romans. Most of the UK's genetic material is still basically Celtic, and IIRC shares most similarity with the Basque people and areas of Northern Spain like Galicia.

The actual biggest contribution of the Anglo-Saxons wasn't their own genetic input (although there is a fair amount since there were enough of them, to be fair, unlike the Normans), but actually the 'mixing' of everyone else. Areas like Cornwall and Devon actually show distinct genetic differences from one another, as do North Wales and South Wales, and parts of North England (especially Cumbria), but all of the Midlands and the South of England is basically one big genetic stew, because a unified kingdom with a shared legal system and economy and traditions and practices meant inhabitants travelled around a lot more and were less local in their fucking. Without it, you'd probably be able to see distinct regional groupings in the British Isles, but in fact that's rather rare and is restricted to the peripheries.

This stuff is really interesting for sure. Genetics don't always correspond with our ideas of nations.

For example in Finland there's pretty much a straight line from North to South that divides the population genetically. The people in the West have a lot more Scandinavian genes (no surprise, the country was part of Sweden for centuries and there was a lot of trade over the Baltic) while in the Eastern parts (Carelia) there's a lot more influence of the original Finno-ugrian settlers from the Ural region

According to one study people in Western Finland are related as closely to Swedish and Russian people as to people from Eastern Finland

Apparently cardiovascular diseases are much more common in the East (and people tend to be shorter) and one reason is thought to be genetics, so this stuff still has real-world consequences