Ancestral DNA. Has anyone had theirs done?

II had mine done a few months ago and it was really interesting, I'm 88% southern English with a smattering of European and 8% Iberian. To have such a high percentage in one area is quite unusual, if true, I dont' know where the Iberian link comes in, I can't see anything in the ancestors I've already traced that would suggest Iberian ancestry. 8% would mean that it's a fairly recent addition grand parents or great grandparents and they all came from southern England, more specifically Kent, Sussex  and Berkshire.

My Mum had hers done and she's real mix of British, Scandinavian, Welsh and European but no Iberian, so if it's true that I have some Iberian ancestry then it dosen't come from her, we know her Welsh connection, thats her great grandad, but she's only got 4% Welsh, so you can see my quandary with 8% Iberian?

I might get it done again, with a different company and get my haplotypes done too, I think it would be really fascinating to know my deep ancestry, when my people came to Europe and by what route, are they fairly recent, or have they been here since the end of the Ice Age?

  • I've tested at 23andMe,Ancestry DNA,Family tree DNA, Living DNA, and My heritage. Ethnicity testing is most accurate at continental level  > sub continental level- > regional level. The best guide  is actually where the cousins you match with come from. I've done autosomal, yDNA and mt DNA.

  • How are they defining "Iberian" then? curious.

  • The companies only compare modern  or recent ancestry - within last 500 years  at the most - for national and regional matches. You can pay for the comparison of your DNA to ancient DNA from archaeological burials on some sites.

  • I have pirates and pilgrims.

  • The Iberians lived in Spain before the roman invasion and mixed with some of them once they arrived. They also lived in other Mediterranean areas. Then the Romans came to what is now England (re. Hadrian's Wall). Perhaps on your paternal side there was some blending? Has the paternal DNA donation ( don't want to presume upon your personal relations) been done? 

    I have also thought of getting mine done. It is surprising how varied it can be in one family.

  • I wouldn't want to be giving my DNA to anyone

  • I am 99.8% British and Irish. Of that, 34.3% is Irish. Of the English the highest  percentage areas are North Western England and West Yorkshire, next is the Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire region. This all fits well with my known family tree. What was a surprise, is that I am 0.2% Malayali, from Kerala in South India. I also score quite highly on the Viking Index at 67%, so I am 67% more similar to the ancient DNA derived from Viking burials, than other 'Living DNA' customers. So basically, I'm an Anglo-Irish, Indian Viking!

  • Usually, it is in the last 500 years. I get 0% Scandinavian ancestry, but my Y haplogroup is of Scandinavian origin, but much earlier.

  • I had mine done recently.

    I'm approx 78% British and Irish, 20% French and German and 2% northwest Europe.

    I had my health done too as my mum developed dementia, so I wanted to know if I was genetically predisposed to it - I'm not (Alzheimers).

    I have both the genetic variants they test for regarding Macular Degeneration which I already have.

    I have a variant for celiac disease.

    I have less than 2% Neanderthal.

    To my surprise no Martian.

    Likely to experience motion sickness - I do.

    Less likely to be a deep sleeper - I'm not.

  • I've managed to go back to the mid 19th C and the 18th with some, when I got as far back as the early 1700's it gets hard to find the records as most arn't digitised. It can also be hard to decipher the writing on older documents as they're so faded, some transcriptions arn't that good either. If I could see some of the originals I'd probably do better, I got quite good at reading manuscripts, even with non standard spelling when doing my degree.

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    I already knew about the cop killers, now I've found coin forgers and a rag bag of petty criminals. I'm not sure there's anything that I'd rather not know, I know better than to take it personally, but all my ancestors seem to be workers tied to the land or small busines owners such as pub landlords, Nobody rich, famous or even infamous.

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    I did find out that some of the family names go back to at least early Saxon and probably older, early Saxon is the earliest recordings of the names, I'm able to take those right back as they're quite uncommon, the others are far too common to be tied down so neatly.

  • you can see my quandary with 8% Iberian?

    You have 16 great great grandparents so if one were from Spain then that is over 6% - do you have your family history that far back to see if it could have come from immigrants back in their day?

    That would be in the early 1900s so could be war refugees.

  • My wife is really into Family Tree building and she's done a huge amount on her side of the family.  As part of trying to find my biological grandfather, me and my father took a DNA spit test.  For a long time there wasn't much happening but as the years have progressed the company (I think they were called Cambridge) has allowed access to different databases from all over the globe and it was a really useful tool for finding lots of different family memebers.

    The most useful thing was that we have managed to find a close match to the Grandson of my biological grandfather.  We thought he was a German prisoner of wat - turns out he was POLISH.  Which was really surprising as I also learnt something about history that towards the end of the War, the Nazi forces while loosing large amounts of troops, ended up conscripting lots of Polish nationals to fight for them.

    Have you managed to make contact with anyone on the family tree?

    Or has there been any skeletons coming out the closet Grin - in these types of things it's sometimes a risky business, you might find something you'd rather not of know!!!

  • I'm 88% southern English

    How far back do they estimate the ancestory to be - is that listed?

    Before 1900, before the Viking inflience, before the ice age etc?

    There have been major population changes over time so it would be nice to know where they stick their pin in the timeline to calculate where the ancestors actually were.