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Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Ancestry Updates Your Ethnicity Estimate


Here is my most recent DNA Ethnicity Estimate from Ancestry.com. Here is the announcement of the new results which arrived by email:
In this update, we’ve more than doubled the size of our reference panel, including more people from different parts of the world. This has helped us to refine your ethnicity estimates, adding more specific regions and reclassifying a few others. 
In addition, your communities have been updated. These communities are based on the patented Ancestry Genetic Communities™ technology, an innovation that identifies places and populations where your ancestors may have lived more recently. Historical researchers and writers then put together what life might have been like for your ancestors over time. 
This exciting update is provided at no cost to you. We’re committed to being at the forefront of the rapidly changing field of DNA research, so you can expect even more improvements like this in the future.
Here is the original estimate from May 2017.


The results of my first test had me at 55% Great Britain, 29% Scandinavian, 11% Iberian, and 5% Irish. Well, after a few changes, the current estimate (at the beginning of this post) has me with 74% England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe, with 13% Norway and 13% Ireland and Scotland. Note the last sentence in the quote above: "...you can expect even more improvements like this in the future." The new report also states that my family was likely from North Jutland and Hjorring in Denmark. Now, the fact that my family was from Denmark is no surprise since I have for lines in my family tree on Ancestry.com that show Danish ancestors from North Jutland and Hjorring. It is nice to know that Ancestry can read the entries in my family tree. But in their analysis, they seemed to have missed my direct line ancestors from the Overson, Andersen, Jensen, Nielsen, Pederson, and Christensen families. So far, I have yet to find one relative from Norway. I have my extensive family tree on MyHeritage.com and there is not one person in my family tree from Norway. Perhaps, some of them migrated from Norway to Denmark?

I have to admit that I am not yet convinced that the data that is presently available about ethnicity is sufficiently accurate that a future test would not show that I really had ancestors from Denmark and not from Norway. By the way, my wife has two ancestors from Norway; one in the 17th Century and one in the 18th Century and if we believe some of the entries in our family trees, we are distantly related. I may yet find Norwegian ancestors. Oh,  I almost forgot. What happened to my Iberian ancestors?


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