I have been intrigued by the "Ancestry" stuff for a long time, but learned here that the "Ancestry" program doesn't count Neanderthal DNA, so I opted for 23 and Me.

Thanks to my daughter, I got the computer stuff done (I never could have figured that out by myself) and have prepared the DNA sample, ready to be mailed tomorrow.

I feel like a little kid waiting for Christmas. I can hardly wait to see what it shows. I don't imagine that "exmo" will show up on the DNA profile, however. Nor feline - but you never know.

I lived my life being told I was Scottish by my parents. Turned out not to be true. I'm over 70% French. Gave me a bit of an identity crisis until I started thinking about France's rich artistic history. I began my career as an art teacher and now paint professionally. Don't know if DNA made the difference there, but found it fascinating that my family's notions and reality didn't match.

Finding out you're 70% + French would be quite the surprise after believing you were Scottish. That's a lot of French!

I learned that I'm 100% European, with nearly one-third of that being from the UK. The rest is a hodge podge of European ancestry. Add a drop of DNA from one Native American ancestor who lived several hundred years ago.

The Ashkenazi in my ancestry is counted as European. So is the trace Neanderthal. The first fossils id'd as Neanderthal came from Neander Valley, in Germany, found in 1856.

The French connection is interesting. My dad was big into genealogy, and the line with our surname just appears in New York State inexplicably. French folks up in what is now Canada with a similar surname were known to anglicize it to ours, and there's a guy with my great, great....great grandfather's first name and birth date who vanishes from Canadian records the same way my ancestor mysteriously appears in colonial American records with the same First and middle names, same birthdate, etc. The French siblings all have life long records, but this guy vanished in the same period of time that my ancestor "appeared" in New York State.

I'm intrigued by the idea that we may have French ancestors, but my dad always insisted that we're English. DNA testing might shine a light onto this and clarify!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2018 10:44AM by nomonomo.

My adoption papers said I was 100% Irish...uh..nope...most of my ancestry is from Devonshire and Cornwall with just a wee touch of Irish from on great grandmother.

Cornwall is stunning! Have you ever been?

One of my brothers-in-law has a particular line that traces to Scottish nobility/royalty and beyond. The rest of his ancestors were peons just as mine were. On his noble/royal line, the records go extremely far back, as records of royalty and nobility were much more extensive and much better preseved than were most of the records, and are much easier to find. It's all only as good as the record-keeping, and all it takes is one person's father not being who he was supposed to have been to render most of the findings invalid as they pertain to my BI, but it's interesting nonetheless. When my BIL clicked on several maternal lines branching off, French names kept showing up. There was a whole lot of invading and exiling in Scotland, some of it involving the French, and the French allied with the Scots to oppose the English. That alone wouldn't explain a percentage as high as 70, but it could account for a little of it.

I'm a bit skeptical of the process and of the science involved. I'm not entirely convinced that the $60-$100 kits are as reliable regarding ancestry as they claim to be. They're likely giving us a ballpark figure at the very best, and possibly much less.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2018 04:23PM by scmd1.

Congratulations Catnip on your journey of self-discovery!

It is both fun and exciting. I did 23 and Me too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2018 04:15AM by Amyjo.

I saw an ad yesterday online for a sale price of $49.00 for this item. I haven't paid much attention to this yet. I know very little about this.

https://is.gd/oaR6cH

I shortened the URL since it was VERY long, so let me know if it doesn't work and I'll post the original.

I never had any interest in DNA testing, but after hearing that the Golden State Killer was tracked down through the DNA results of his relatives, I think I'd like to get my DNA into the database! I have at least one pervy brother who is also narcissistic to the extreme, so if he or anyone else has left his DNA somewhere he shouldn't have, I think it's sort of a civic duty to put down some bread crumbs.

My sister did 23 and Me. 100% Northern European/British Isles with quite a bit of Neanderthal thrown in.

Now that Ancestry is on sale, I'm going to do that one and see what the differences are.

My husband and I did the 23 and Me and were surprised to find my husband has Ashkenazi Jewish as well as a big percentage of Native American. I was surprised to find out most of my heritage is German, Danish, and English. Go Viking!

I had my DNA checked hoping there would be some surprises. Nope. Just the Anglo-Nordic blend my genealogy showed.

As far as my pedigree goes, I am totally fucked up.

This guy says those DNA collecting companies are being scrutinized or something, for the handling of private information. IDK, I wouldn't dare send my DNA to anybody, who knows what they are going to do with it and who they are going to sell it to. Insurance companies?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em6DE288X4s

I did read the fine print. Pages and pages of it.

For the most part, they said that under certain circumstances, they might release my data (without personal identifying info) for scientific research, mostly having to do with hereditary ailments. I have a hum-dinger of a hereditary ailment, and if my data helps research to advance in the fight against it, I'm fine with that.

There is a down side to this to consider.
There is no way they won't sell that data (they should pay you) to companies like insurance companies, law enforcement, etc.


They conveniently only mention "helping research" and such.

This potentiality raises red flags to me realizing how they can use this information to discriminate.

Notice they do NOT allow you to pay for their service and not provide your name and personal details. You are not allowed to purchase anonymously. This is because they are going to sell your most personal information wherever they want.

Once you've given away your DNA, there's no way to know where it ends up of several data bases, for commercial use etc.

I'd like to know more of my biological background but I think loss of that privacy is too high a price.

The results for the first test was "inconclusive" (guess that extraterrestrial DNA through things off). My mother did hers, came back as whiter than library paste, but with matching results for a first cousin nobody knows about. Hmmm.

I have a lot of French DNA as well. I think a lot of hanky panky with Frenchmen happened behind the husband's back. Of course it's not going to show up on any kind of records. He's my son but he looks like the French chef down the street.

Mormons trust mail order DNA kits but still think the science is still too new to believe the Native Americans aren't from Israel.

Also....
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/what-you-re-giving-away-those-home-dna-tests-n824776

No surprises for either myself or my husband, we did both ancestry and 23&Me. He is 100% eastern european Jewish, I am Irish from Galway and Tyrone, Polish from Galicia and general baltic and eastern european. Which I always knew, half Polish and half Irish, where my grandparents came from, and 99% northern european with a trace of Neanderthal. I found it all to be accurate. We did not do the health stuff, too scary and we are already old!

Big bonus, my husband found a living aunt, age 94, from a part of the family his parents had lost touch with. We are visiting her for Thanksgiving. He also found a very nice second cousin nearby that we have visited. I think it is worth doing. I also know several adopted people who have found birth relatives through DNA.

I kind of don't want my dna in some computer somewhere sold to others. I have family that have done the 23 and me and I'll just use their percentages as mine will be close enough.

Law enforcement all over the world thank you for your contribution.

yep. One day or another the 23 and me datadump might rat you out on your secrets.

I'm excited for you as you await your results. Maybe there will be some feline in there! Ha! ;-)

I remember being a bundle of nerves when my results came in. When mailed in my kit I expected to have mostly African, Native American, distant Spaniard (there's quite a few Spanish surnames on my mother's side of the family, and they're Panamanian), and possibly some Irish.

As it turns out, I have African (Nigerian and Congolese) and European (Iberian, Irish and Scandinavian) with distant Native American and Asian ancestry.
It's quite exciting to learn what my ancestry is, and I am looking to learn more about my family's history (some parts will be difficult, unfortunately), but at the end of the day, I'm still me.

I can not even imagine how exciting it is. I myself am just planning to opt for 23 and Me.