Hi all, I have a question to ask about DNA, I'm not an expert but I know a lot of You Are. I just had a DNA test done by ancestry.com and in it I was listed as about 65% Great Britain. My dad is supposed to be 100% Danish according to our family records. That should make me 50% Danish, right? However the Scandinavian was listed as only about 12%. Even with Western Europe included with the Scandinavian it was well below 50%. Do you think this could be a case of false paternity? Please advise. I've always thought it could be the case

If you and your dad have the same Y-chromosome, then it's overwhelmingly likely he's your pappy...

If your father is deceased, any male sibling of his could provide the same information. So could your paternal grandfather, assuming your dad wasn't adopted.

My opinion of ancestry.com is it's pretty much a fad and a sales job, BTW, but there's probably no way to distinguish Scandanavian DNA (i.e. Danish) from British DNA with any degree of certainty. Those Vikings got around, and it wasn't all that long ago, honest. That's why we find red hair in the British Isles, incidentally.

What they're dealing with is "autosomal DNA," i.e. DNA within the cell nucleus, and because of "genetic recombination," what they provide is information on the likely origin of certain nucleotide sequences.

Thanks, Cabbie.

Is there a better service you would recommend?

I'm no expert and wondering, too, why the percentages don't seem to add up. Initially sparked by a TV ad about that testing service with a woman saying, "I was surprised and happy to find out that I'm 24% Native American!"

Wouldn't she know if one of her grandparents was 100% Native American?

Maybe it's a percentage of ALL your ancestors?

Anyway, I don't get how they calculate their numbers either.

It's pricier, and I'm obviously no fan of Rupert Murdoch (who recently acquired Nat Geo), but you will be making a contribution to furthering human knowledge.

As for a Y-Chromosome test, I don't know what's available for that one specifically; the test you took may already identify it was well.

People don't always stay in neat little geographic areas, particularly in places as compact as Europe. For example, Vikings invaded the British Isles. So did the Romans, the Normans (French) and so on. People wandered all over Europe long before modern borders. They're still wandering and interbreeding. So there really are no Danes, English or anything else, genetically. There are genetic tendencies, but nothing hard and fast. What the test is probably saying is that people in certain countries or continents TEND to have a group of genetic markers. But not all of them do.

Your results are pretty typical for Scandinavian from what I've seen. My dad was also of 100% Danish parents and my % s are:
British / Irish 48%

German / French 10.2%

Scandinavian 15.3%

Finn. .4%

Broadly Northwestern European 23.5%

As Cabbie said it's not easy to differentiate.

I agree with all that has been said: Great Britain is a place full of mongrels - my origins, for example, include French Huguenots from whom I get my name, but also Welsh, Scottish, English - and who knwos what, because all my children were all born with a Mongolian Spot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_spot

which is caused by a recessive gene, so it means both my wife (who is of French/Russian/Jewish extraction) and I had it (but neither of us had the spot ourselves).

So what are "Great Britain genes"?

Also, in the context of the last post, it should be remembered that the Normans were actually a bunch Vikings who invaded France in the 10th century...

Genes are no respecters of nationality.

I'd suggest this "result" is pretty meaningless. Certainly not enough to call into question your paternity.

Tom in Paris



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2016 01:20AM by Soft Machine.

French Huguenot here on my dad's side of the family. When I was in France a couple of years ago, I saw a lot of people who looked a lot like me.

Me too, on father's (French name) side.
And interestingly, *one* of my three kids (all of whom have the same father of French-British-Danish ancestry, and the same mother of Filipino/Malay Archipelago ancestry) had a Mongolian spot (which went away by age 5), and the other two didn't.
Genes are funny things :)

Don't forget the English who believe they're direct descendants of the Lost Tribes -- whence JS got the idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Israelism



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2016 11:03AM by Stray Mutt.

This is super common thinking with Mormons. My dad spend A LOT of time talking about how we were all of the house of Israel.

The Jews write the world's "most important book" so we have to find a way to write ourselves into it. Makes sense.

Apparently Ancestry DNA results are somewhat suspect.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/dna-ancestry-tests-are-meaningless-your-historical-genealogy-search-244586

Any reason why I should trust this source?

No need to rely on this source alone. Google "ancestry dna results" and you'll get a lot of similar information.

Incidentally, I regularly fact check any information I have with Simon Southerton (whose blogsite is "blocked" on the SL Tribune comments section; go figure).

Steven Jones is the disgraced BYU professor ("The Twin Towers were brought down by an inside conspiracy") known for smoking too much "Orem Oregano."

I wish this article hadn't cited him (he's a physicist, BTW, and not a biochemist or molecular biologist), but my view of ancestry.com is similar.

What is useful about DNA is that it can show close family relationships, which is what the OP asked about.

SL Cabbie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Incidentally, I regularly fact check any
> information I have with Simon Southerton (whose
> blogsite is "blocked" on the SL Tribune comments
> section; go figure).
>
> Steven Jones is the disgraced BYU professor ("The
> Twin Towers were brought down by an inside
> conspiracy") known for smoking too much "Orem
> Oregano."
>
> I wish this article hadn't cited him (he's a
> physicist, BTW, and not a biochemist or molecular
> biologist), but my view of ancestry.com is
> similar.
>
> What is useful about DNA is that it can show close
> family relationships, which is what the OP asked
> about.

Different Steven Jones. The one quoted in the article is a geneticist that teaches at University College London and has never had any ties to BYU or Mormonism.

Mea culpa as far as always looking for an apologist to drop kick... :-)

Your extensive DNA analysis is going to be different from your genealogy records for a variety of reasons.
They explain all of that on ancestry. com.

The value of the DNA is the matches. Adopted children can find their bio parents, lost children can be found, and on and on.

My husband is German/danish/English. He has a very German name, but looks like he just came across our southern border.

There were German immigrants to Mexico. That's why tejano and banda music use tubas and accordions.

I can understand that with German ancestry. My grandmother was mostly German with a little bit of Dutch and a pinch of French, but looked dark with olive complexion with brown eyes and very dark brown/black hair.

Her brother had the same complexion and one time a bartender in Washington state refused to give him a beer due to the bartender thinking he looked like an Indian.

Celts, romans, anglos, saxons, jutes, picts, welsh, vikings (scandanavian) french, normans all at one time or another over ran "england"

So just what is "british" dna?

Ancestry.com makes no sense whatsoever.

The Angles and Saxons were simply southwestern Danes/Scandinavians. They are the SAME PEOPLE. Angles and Saxons did not become Germans until much later when Charlemagne conquered them, ripped out the Scandinavian culture and made them Christians. Which by the way thoroughly pissed off and freaked out the (remaining) Danes and help launch the Viking era.

But long before Vikings the Romans wiped out the Celts in central Europe and Britain and there was a vacuum left when the Italians went home. That vacuum was filled by Scandinavian groups migrating all over Europe (hence "Age of Migrations"). Tribes like "Goths" and "Vandals" etc (from Sweden, genetically hardly distinct from the Danes who occupied southern Sweden north to the mountains) spawned French, Germans, some Spanish, and English are all descended from Scandinavians.

Of course during the Viking era Danes invaded eastern England - again - and (again) melded into the native population, much of which consisted of their former country/tribesmen. In fact the literature/pop culture of Scandinavian Britain (e.g. Beowulf) was quite the rage back in the homelands. And German Scandinavians kept in touch for centuries with their colder comrades before the two went their separate ways.

Norway did an invasion of Ireland similar to the Viking Dane invasion of England but that is another story. Meanwhile the Swedes got rich trading white slaves to Iraq and ended up creating Russia. Swedes also did gigs protecting the Byzantine Roman emperors from their untrustworthy subject (basically, all of them) but that is also another story.

Finally there was that Norman invasion of England - by Scandinavians who settled in France and started speaking the local Latin derived lingo. The Normans were taking advantage of the dysfunctions of the Danish royal family because they were still part of it.

In the end Northwestern Upper Honky is all a mix-up of all kinds of tribes over time. In Britain several waves of Scandinavian immigrants melded with local varieties of remaining Celts.

Genetically distinguishing northwest European nations does not make much sense.

My sister is one of those who deeply believes she has traced our ancestry in a straight line back to Adam by hooking into royal lineages. She has no idea what a jumbled mess those lineages are and doesn't want to accept that the kings pretty much made up their genealogies in order to justify being on the throne.

This discussion brings me to a realization I had some time ago about so called Mormon geneaology. The chances that one's father is not your mother's husband is well beyond zero. Go back a few generations. Multiply the factors. There was a mailman, iceman, stable hand, milkman, CLERGYMAN, somewhere back there almost certainly. Brother and Sister Mormon: You aren't who you think you are. Sorry. Reality is a bitch.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2016 05:26PM by rationalist01.

Q: Why do Mormons change bishops every five years?

A: So all the kids in the neighborhood won't look alike....

lol. or ha-ha, whichever is in vogue.

"No DNA test on its own can tell you where you're from. The value of a DNA test for ancestry is in the combination of the DNA results with genealogical records - what we call genetic genealogy."

~ Debbie Kennett, Honorary Research Associate, University College London

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-DNA-ancestry-test-one-can-purchase-on-the-internet

If I were you, try comparing your DNA test from Ancestry to one or two of the other ones out there like 23andme or FamilyTree. Then you'll have a better idea if one is skewered, or they all are on the same page.

Regarding Ancestry.com's DNA testing, I find it most useful for matches to relatives, some of which I expected and some were interestingly unexpected, such as the larger than thought numbers of people related to me via the Norway branch in the USA. This tells me that more branches of the same family line emigrated to USA about the same time than I thought.

The Ancestry.com also matched me to my mother and father, sharing so much DNA in common with them that it said my mother was my mother and my father was my father. Ditto for a brother, saying he shares so much DNA with me to be in a position of a sibling or a close relative.

If your father is still living, then have him submit his DNA test, and you will know for sure. Also, a bonus is that you will see relative matches for him that does not show up in yours because he did not give ALL his DNA to you, just half. His DNA will point to other people expanding the family story.

Also, having both parents in the DNA registry also helps to quickly determine whether the match is maternal or paternal for me. My parents do not share any matches with each other or match any DNA in common with each other.

Hope this helps.

Just want to add that how I knew it was different branches of the same family tree was due to looking at their family trees posted to the website which derived to the conclusion arrived at.