Help with examining my gedmatch results!

+5 votes
3.6k views

Hey guys I’m new to all this, and just wanted to ask a few questions! So I got a DNA test via MyHeritiage the results were:

 69% Irish, Scottish, Welsh. 13% Scandinavian, 8.6% Baltic, 6% Italian. And 3.2% Iberian.

 I live in Australia and only know of English & Irish heritage, but it’s not surprising to see a bit more of a mix! However it seems to display 0% English...I know three generations at least of grandparents-great grandparents-etc. living in England, is that strange? Was also a bit disappointed it didn't differentiate Irish-Scottish-welsh.

Anyway, so I ran my RAW Data through Gedmatch, Eurogenes K13

And got: North Atlantic: 48.91. Baltic: 24.73. West_med 14.9, West Asian 5.15, East Med 3.10, Red Sea 1.47, Siberian 1.33, Amerindian 0.23, Northeast_african 0.17.

Are the lower numbers significant at all? For instance American Indian at .23 is surprising, however being so low I thought to discount it. But then I ran admixture by chromosome, and got – Amerindian 4.5% in chromosome 5, 2.5% in 17, and 10.1% in chromosome 21 (it’s also scattered in a few others below 1%). Does this signify any legitimate chance of amerindian heritage?

Any information about any of my results etc., is greatly appreciated!

in Genealogy Help by Tom Fisher G2G Rookie (280 points)
edited by Tom Fisher
The general concensus on MyHeritage ethnicity results seems to be that they have a fair bit of work still do on their algorithms. People are getting significantly different percentages there to what they are getting on FTDNA, AncestryDNA and gedmatch. As an example Ancestry gives me 2% Scandinavian, MyHeritage gives me 41%.
Wow, that's quite a difference..I thought they would use similar algorithms. Hmm, i hope FTDNA allows the uploading of Raw data from Myheritage soon..
If you are planning to test any more people I would suggest you use one of the other companies. You can upload from them to MyHeritage to get the results to the same place as yours, but you will get a lot more matches with the others.
GEDMatch has other heritage tests too, all of which show slightly different results.  Personally, I hate learning that I'm 99% WASP.  How did my ancestors manage that one?
Since I see you have West Asian in your makeup (so do I) I feel compelled to mention that sometimes Turkic shows up as Amerindian in your results. Obviously, it could also be accurate, but it's something to keep in mind as you search.
J, to be a bit satiric of our very adherence to our "genealogical vows," I'd say that your ancestors worked very hard to "achieve" that. They'd never have thought in their time that they'd have a descendant who, like me, loved the intermixture of "bloodlines." (Or am I a bit wrong-headed in saying that?.)
You're looking at the information from what some companies call "deep ancestry."  Long, long ago, humans in Europe hung out in a few places for a really long, Iberia is one of them.  Eventually, some people moved on from Iberia to other places, others hung around.  The descendants of the ones who hung around will carry some degree of genetic memory that pops up in common with Iberians, at least on some analysis tools.

The same is true with the Native American information you're getting, only on a larger scale.  Some of the tools give me a small amount of Australian Aboriginal, Papua/New Guinea, or Oceanic - places it is impossible for me to have had direct ancestors in *genealogical* time.  The reason is that these people groups branch off the same part of the human tree as do the Native Americans.  It's less a matter of me being descended from these groups and more a matter of us having common ancestry an enormously long time ago.

Not all of the calculators link to Oracle, but with the ones that do, I encourage you to use that tool.  It will compare your results from these more anthropological analyses to the modern day populations of various places.  I think that will make a lot more sense for you.
Diane, Thanks for  this substantial reply!  To which of us are you replying?

But why does this long, interesting answer seem simultaneously like hair splitting--maybe it's just more useful in the long run. I don't find those tiny bits of locale helpful. I do want to know who is born in what place (or died there and why.)

And What is Oracle?
Roberta, I was speaking to the comments made by the original poster, Tom Fisher.
Thank you Dianne

Your explanation gives me more faith in dna testing, and gives an appreciation of how much of a 'family' the human species is.

What is Oracle? is it something to add my dna data for further comparisons?

Warm regards, Josephine (for Julianne)

4 Answers

+1 vote
Need his bmd dates,and where lived and born if known.What military served

in.I see 2 different person with same name.One"s ethnicity is Swiss.
by Wayne Morgan G2G Astronaut (1.0m points)
edited by Wayne Morgan
+1 vote
I recall reading that any ethnic/geographic orgin match below 4% on a chromosome could be just noise.
by Peter Roberts G2G6 Pilot (695k points)
Peter and all:  That 4% would hardly show up anyway. I'll have to look at my percentages, if I can remember how to do that, sigh,
Hello Roberta,

To look at percentages Login to GEDmatch

Click on Admixture (heritage)

Select project (e.g. Eurogenes)

Select Admixture Proportions by Chromosome

Click the Continue button

Enter the GEDmatch kit number you want to examine

Select ‘Calculator’ (e.g. Eurogenes K36)

Click the Continue button

Peter, You have my appropriate thanks to a Gedmatch Master.

So many steps, so little initiative (on my part). 

But Why?  (Oh never mind, it's okay.)

I'll need to copy your list above or use it as a memo, along over Time.

Muchas Gracias, mi Amigo !!

+2 votes
Re: Siberian 1.33, Amerindian 0.23,

Siberian is often listed with Amerindian.  They have discovered this is where Native Americans originally came from.  My guy just did his DNA and he is 25% Native American and a big portion of also Siberia.  They go together, also often Iberian will be in the mix as well, which could be where your West Mediterranean is from.  Definitely the Siberian and Amerindian go together.  Can you run the Eurogeno K36 report and see if you get Iberian?  That test shows Iberian where other tests may not and/or may not show much.

 
That test will also tell you if your West Mediterranean is from your Italian or your Iberian -- or both.  West Asian is common to pop up for Italian.  I am Italian and I always get 5-7% West Asian and get 30-35% combined western Mediterranean (Italy) and Eastern Mediterranean (Greece). Although your Red Sea in combination with Eastern Mediterranean may speak otherwise.

23andme seems to be able to differentiate the Irish from British, at least in my case it specifically said IRISH.   But on my guy's 23andme it did not, but that is because his mom's side are mixed with Irish and English, whereas my mom's side is not mixed and are straight up Irish so on my results it specified "Irish."
by
0 votes
At the risk of being a killjoy, what you need to understand about your DNA results is that while it's marketed as a quick route to finding out your ethnicity, that that part of it is so inaccurate that's it's almost fraud. It will put you on the right continent - basically, it can tell you if you're a white guy, a black guy, Asian, a mix, or whatever - but anything beyond that should be considered to be "strictly for entertainment only, not real genealogy".

To be clear, the matches to your relatives are 100% legit (well, some of the more distant ones can be false positives, but that's not a big thing), and through THEM - and through real genealogy - your ethnicity and personal heritage are revealed.

But the percentages they give? Mine were ridiculous, and didn't even match my brothers' with any degree of accuracy. Said I was about 3/4 Great Britain, when mom was half Irish & half German (AncestryDNA).

Some people report getting reasonable answers, and swear by it, but that's basically just luck. As you learn more about DNA, you'll discover that while you get exactly 50% from each of your parents, that's where such precision ends. Specifically, you do NOT get EXACTLY 1/4 from each grandparent. As you go further back, it begins to vary quite a lot vs the nominal fraction. Instead of 1/64 from a given gt-gt-gt-gt grandparent, you might well have virtually ZERO.

If you don't have exactly the same amount of DNA from each gt-gt-gt-gt grandparent, there's no way they could possibly figure out your ethnic mix with any real precision, even if they could identify EXACTLY what region each gt-gt-gt-gt grandparent came from (which I really don't think they even can).

Just stick with your friends here on WikiTree, and we'll help you figure out your REAL roots! (Do I get some kind of commission for this advertisement? How about maybe just a cookie?,,,)

Happy hunting!!
by Living Stanley G2G6 Mach 8 (90.0k points)
By way of amusing example, my brother's result shows 11% "Europe South" - basically, Italy. Now the closest we come to THAT is a gt-gt grandfather from the northern edge of Switzerland! Mine is 0% in that category.

Compare that to my 1st cousin, who has that same Swiss gt-gt grandfather, and a 100% Italian father. I don't have her percentages, but on my data for my match with her it tells her "Regions" and "Trace Regions", and it doesn't even include "Europe South"! If I didn't know that these ethnicity percentages were highly inaccurate, I would have to conclude that my cousin's dad isn't really her biological dad! I suppose that's theoretically possible, but knowing the parties involved I very much highly doubt it.

And then there are things like this tidbit, published today: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/dna-ancestry-test

"When Louis Côté became suspicious of a Toronto-based laboratory that tests people's DNA to determine their ancestry, he decided to try an experiment by submitting a sample from his girlfriend's dog for analysis.

"According to the results, Côté shares more than a friendship with Snoopy the chihuahua; they share the exact same Indigenous ancestry."

Sigh...

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