Myths explained about DNA
see this link
https://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/dna-fact-or-science-fiction.html
I wonder how what this article says - contrasts or correlates with the understanding of those in this group?
wonder what your thoughts are.
Answers
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I think this is a pretty decent article about the information found in a DNA test. The information that you can learn from DNA tests is impressive. Ethnicity in the testing is not always exact. As the size of the databases increase, the companies have changed some of their estimates about ancestral locations. I have had some spot-on indications of the ancestral origins of my ancestors. I have researched my family well enough to know that I have ancestors from the predicted, "Cornwall, England."
When it comes to matching individuals with relatives, DNA tests are accurate to the 2nd Cousin. If you have a Second Cousin or closer relationship, you will match them if they have tested with the same company. If you do not match, you need to figure out why, as this would indicate something was not matching up as expected in your tree.
It is exciting that the capability of extracting DNA from envelopes and other objects is improving. The cost is still quite high. If I had an item that I wanted checked for DNA, I would probably wait until the techniques have improved and the costs have decreased.
DNA has provided me with contacts to unknown cousins that have shared hundreds of photos with me. I have helped many people figure out what to do after they discover that their biological father was not who they expected him to be. DNA research is fascinating and should be a tool used by people that want to learn more about their families.
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Many people often assume with Ethnic results - that somehow your DNA is being matched with deceased people that lived in these regions hundreds of years ago
when rather your dna is only being matched with living people
political boundaries do not determine DNA
and thus DNA testing by itself cannot prove what county one's immigrant ancestors came from
though they an try to project based on some very imperfect statistics what region of the world they may have come from.
but even there - when did they come from that region? 100 years ago? 300 years ago? 1,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago?
people just assume it means thats where their immigrant ancestor to America came from - it could be blatanlty and totally wrong. its just some sort of probability that may or may not apply to your specific ancestor.
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I have connected with one of my immigrant ancestors named Johann Yetter. His records indicate that he emigrated from Wuertemburg, Germany and lived in New York.
Do my Ancestry DNA results show that I have German ancestry?
England, Wales & Northwestern Europe
87%
My personal research agrees with Ancestry DNA claims that my ancestors lived in:
Devon & Cornwall, England
South East England
My Murphey line or research agrees with Ancestry's prediction of:
Ireland & Scotland 11%
Baltic States 2%
Wikipedia information about Baltic Germans gives a brief synopsis of the historical background. These historical tidbits could suggest an interesting research avenue for me to understand why I have Baltic States instead of the German ancestry that I expected:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Germans
"For centuries Baltic Germans and the Baltic nobility constituted a ruling class over native non-German serfs. The emerging Baltic-German middle class was mostly urban and professional.
In the 12th and 13th centuries Catholic Germans, both traders and crusaders (see Ostsiedlung), began settling in the eastern Baltic territories.[4] After the 13th-century Livonian Crusade, they assumed control of government, politics, economics, education and culture of these lands, ruling for more than 700 years until 1918 — usually in alliance with Polish, Swedish or Russian overlords.[citation needed] With the decline of Latin, German became the language of all official documents, commerce, education and government.
At first the majority of German settlers lived in small cities and military castles. Their elite formed the Baltic nobility, acquiring large rural estates and comprising the social, commercial, political and cultural elite of Livonia for several centuries. After 1710 many of these men increasingly took high positions in the military, political and civilian life of the Russian Empire, particularly in Saint Petersburg. Baltic Germans held citizenship in the Russian Empire until Estonia and Latvia achieved independence in 1918."
I am starting to suspect that maybe I have genetic connections to the Baltic States.
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DNA does match you to deceased people through their living descendants. A common myth that I have seen is that you can not match to another person if you do not have their dna from their body. That simply is not true. I can prove my relationship to my deceased father through my own dna and that of my tested brothers. If I did not have brothers who tested I can match to my father through cousins, aunts and uncles etc. Of course the father the distance from the target the more people you may have to test to prove the match. but it is absolutely possible.
Ethnicity is a whole different question. You can get hints and general ideas of where your ancestors lived but that is it at this point. Maybe in the future we will be able to do better with ethnicity predictions.
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yes - it matches you to a person with whom you have common descent - the common ancestor may or may not be known.
my point was it doesn't prove where you common ancestor lived (though that is often - but not always determined through other records).
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Thank you for clarifying. The unfortunate thing, in my opinion, is that people focus too much on the 'fun' part of dna testing, ethnicity. It is the least accurate of dna results although it is rarely completely inaccurate. A friend tested her dna. She came from a tiny vlliage to the north in England. Her family had lived there with few outsider marriages since at least the 1600-1700's. She was quite surprised to get back her dna results and see very little English. Instead mostly Irish. I doubt it was inaccurate, and neither did she, but it was a surprise and will direct her to further research to finding Irish ancestors.
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[click expand post]
actually this is the perfect type of example of how people make mis-assumptions about DNA results - especially those trying to show geography or ethnicity
the same occurred in my case - where we are trying to trace the origin of the Yancey family to some immigrant ancestor of about the 1700 - who many thought came form Wales.
Keep in mind if one goes back that many years - one usually has about 1000 different family lines that they descend from - - the surname (paternal ) family line is just one of a thousand lines. (It is just one thread in a rope of a thousand threads)
when one does an autosomal test - (as all ethnic / geographic DNA tests are) - it is giving you some very general statistics about your ancestors as a WHOLE
(not just one particular line which is 1/1000th of your DNA)
and anything under like 5% is almost neglible (because even among siblings - people can inherit different percentages of their ancestry (varying as much as 5-10%)
the truth is the ethnicity of the people on our pedigree chart (even if 100% accurate) may not match the percentages of our DNA - even if the DNA test is also 100% accurate for the reason that siblings do not all inherit the same amount of DNA from all their ancestors as compared to their other siblings.
so autosomal DNA testing will never prove where my Yancey ancestor came from even if fully accurate - because they are only one thread among 1000.
in Annes case similar logic applies
also there is no "time factor" maybe her friends pedigree was perfectly accurate - but maybe most of her ancestors originally dd come from Ireland - but probably migrated later to England
the time factor and migration is totally left out of many people's assumptions about what the results mean.
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Exactly. Completely agree.
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