Ancestry DNA Updates Results Again

I received another email from AncestryDNA with refined results. They claim that the techniques for determining ethnic/region percentages have changed to give better more defined breakdowns.

Now my results show 56% Great Britain (specifically England) and 44% Germanic Region which includes Holland. I don't know what happened to the Norwegian element from previous analysis, but it has been dropped. Since I know from family history that most of my relatives came from England, Holland, and Germany there are no surprises in these results.

Those TV commercials with people being excited about new things they have learned about their families don't really apply to me now. The Norwegian was a surprise, but now I apparently don't have any of that ethnicity. I am glad I did the test because it made me focus more on my maternal grandmother's branch and realize that it was mostly British. I had been focused on Germany and Holland. So I am your run-of-the-mill Anglo-Saxon. 

DNA Update

I received an email that Ancestry is using a new algorithm they consider more precise for DNA results. Mine did change some. The improbable Caucasus and Eastern European have been completely removed.

They lowered the British component by 10% to 63%. The Western European which was only 9% has been refined to 21% Germanic. Yes! The German ancestry in my family has been confirmed thru extensive genealogic research by my mother's cousin. I was disappointed in my initial results that showed a vague 9% Western European.

The Dutch still doesn't show. Instead I have this Scandinavian component which has now been increased and broken down to 13% Norwegian, 3% Swedish (which didn't show up last time). As I explained in my earlier post, the history of migration that came with my results did mention a large Norwegian influx into the Netherlands prior to my ancestors coming to the United States. Apparently, my father's ancestors married into some of these migrant families. 

Ancestry states that they will continue to refine results for individuals as the science changes. At least I feel like I got more for my fee than when I received the initial results since there is more specificity. 

Ancestry DNA

I mentioned to my husband last November that I had some interest in contributing a saliva sample to AncestryDNA. The kits were on sale in December so he bought one for me for Christmas instead.

The first week of January I filled the tube with saliva. The tube has a little funnel insert , and it really isn't that much spit to fill it. The lid has a preservative built in so that when you screw it shut you see a light blue color in the tube. You have to register the bar code of the kit on your Ancestry account (which my husband had to set up to purchase the kit). The box, the tube, the documentation all have matching bar codes.

They said it could take 6-8 weeks to get the results. Mine came in about 3 weeks.

I was expecting Dutch, German, and British ethnicity. The results were 73% Great Britain, 9% Europe West. The Netherlands and Germany are included in the Europe West category, and Ancestry did not break it down into individual countries for me. I would have liked that.

The surprise was 10% Scandinavian. I don't know of any Scandinavian ancestors. However, under each category there is a very brief "history". Of course the Vikings did a lot of marauding including Great Britain. The information also mentioned that in the 17th and 18th century 80,000 Norwegians emigrated to the Netherlands. (My great-great grandparents came to the U.S. in the 1800s after the Civil War.) So perhaps those two factors account for the 10%.

The rest of the percentages were under what Ancestry calls Low Confidence Regions: 4% Caucasus; 3% Europe East; less than 1% European Jewish; less than 1% Europe South.  

You can allow Ancestry to provide possible relatives in their data base, including those you may not know about. You can get in touch with these people. I chose not to do this. I really didn't want people contacting me, and I had no interest in contacting them. I was just curious after all of the commercials if there would be a surprise in the ethnicity of my ancestors. There was the Scandinavian surprise. I wonder how many people with British and Dutch ancestry have this trace of Scandinavian. I am thinking it may be rather common. 

I guess validating my ethnicity was worth $69. One side benefit was that I have been emailing some distant relatives in Northern California, and one of them has an extensive family tree on Ancestry and invited me to have viewing privileges. To do that I would have had to create an account, but since I already have one, I just signed in.

You do get a lot of email from Ancestry  the first month after submitting the kit, trying to get you to join Ancestry with a monthly fee but a free 30-day trial.  Now that I can see a tree which is much bigger than what includes my branch of the family, I think I have the information of common early ancestors that interests me without all of the work and expense.