Native Americans & DNA info

Question

Of possible interest - http://earthsky.org/human-world/newly-discovered-ancient-americans

Comments

I read a article somewhere, where they tested a Cherokee tribe and found I think it was middle eastern bloodline. I dont know if it was a burial ground or a living tribe. They were saying something about that they were trying to prove that the American Indians were somehow descendants of the lost tribe of Judah and that the middle eastern blood somehow made it plausable.

If history is correct and at one time all the land was together as one large continent called Pangea. So who is to say this isn't true.

People get so butt hurt when DNA doesn't go their way. I had a cousin that found out she had African American in her blood. She like to have lost it. Ridiculous!! DNA is a wonky thing. There is so much to be learned from it, but it still has a way to go. I have mine being processed now. I will be interested to see what it shows. I have one Native American link, but who's to say that I received that DNA when I was formed. That is what so many people do not realize. We only get half our DNA from each parent. They only got half from each of their parents. We have no idea what part we will get. So just because you may not show Native American blood doesn't mean you do not have a Native American relative. Especially if that relative is a good bit of generations away from you. Mine is 13 generations. Without going and digging up and testing every relative, we can't be absolutely certain of a connection.

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Pangaea existed long before anything resembling humanity evolved. If that NA tribe did have Middle Eastern DNA, most likely it was from some outsider who married into the tribe or simply had a child with a tribal member -- plenty of Spanish people have some Middle Eastern ancestry, and the Spanish were the first Europeans to explore most of the New World.

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actually wrong on both accounts, people have been on Earth 10.5 million years, and the Norwegians were the first Europeans to come to the Americans as they are called, outside of course of the Native Americans who've been here a very long time. Kennewick man was 12, 000 years old.

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Anything resembling modern-day humans did not appear until about 400,000 years ago in Africa, give or take. 10 million years ago, Hominids had just branched off from the Gorillini (ancestors of gorillas).

Pangaea broke up in the early Mesozoic, WAY WAY before anything like humanity existed.

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Apparently a lot of history and anthropology is overdue for a rewrite, and the Siberianlandbridge hypothesis is outdated.

European and Middle East DNA has been found in the elongated skulls of the natives of Paracas

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/breaking-new-dna-testing-2000-year-old-elongated-paracas-skulls-changes-020914

 

And AmerIndian DNA found in Iceland https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101123-native-american-indian-vikings-iceland-genetic-dna-science-europe/

 

And that is for starters

Answer 1

I've been interested in any new testing for specific markers that would identify Native American ancestry.  I am not interested in percentage type reports - those are junk to me.  And I won't test with any of the big companies currently involved today (FTDNA, Ancestry, 23&me) because none of those meet my privacy standards or trust level.  Point being, if/when there is a suitable test, I'd be up for it (if I have the $).

Do you recall the finding ~20 years ago that there were European type people in America (northern US) 25,000 BC (or 25K ybp)?  We definitely don't know all the true history just from our schoolbooks.

Comments

I have read elsewhere that American Indians are reluctant to DNA test because the results may not match what they have always said they are. My feeling is as that this reluctance and fear of others knowing their results affects far more than just Native Americans. It is possibly behind many of the refusals to DNA test. Perhaps also behind the inactive testers, who did say a bargain basement Y12 with fixed expectations and found it didn’t delliver what they wanted, so they stopped right there.

On the other hand, for those who approach it open-minded, willing to accept whatever the results are,  it opens up a whole world of possibilities and outcomes. While my Y-DNA was no surprise, it has added to what I knew, and was well worthwhile. My atDNA results make sense too, but at least now I have some percentages to go with the Norman and Viking elements in my ancestry. Ashkenazim was a surprise, but having stood where the wall of the Warsaw Ghetto is still marked out, I take pride in that.  My mtDNA was totally left-field and may not go down so well amongst some  of the more narrow-minded in my family, but I love the way fact is more fascinating than fiction. No, my mtDNA wasn’t Native American. I’d be proud if it was. Not far removed, in any case.

 

Actually I think you may find the amount of Native American DNA exaggerated. It looks like many Americans tick that category because they cannot trace their ancestry outside of the US, and that this makes them “Native American”. It’s a bit like Ysearch when transferring across one’s Haplogroup. An amazing number if folks tick “Uninown”. This renders Ysearch nearly unusable for any work on Haplogroups. The European-Americans who tick the Native American box have also contaminated data to an extent that it may be unusable.So I am less concerned about the commercial companies than I am about self-selection by those who want to be a particular thing.For me, letvthe results be what they will. It’s a fascinating journey if you go with the flow.

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It's incredible to go onto genetic genealogy forums and see people MELTING DOWN when they discover they have very little NA ancestry -- or even none at all. It seems like every white family in the South is descended from a "chief's daughter", and probably so is every second white family in the North, West, and points between. I think some of the disappointment is that there's a few people who were hoping to get a cut of that sweet casino money, but more likely, people are upset for a different reason: they want to imagine that they inherited the Americas, instead of conquering it.

My "favorite" stories, by the way, are when people claim to be descended from some far-flung tribe. Even my own aunt tried to tell me that we're part Apache, despite the fact that not a single ancestor of mine was born west of the eastern parishes of Louisiana. Exactly HOW this mythical Apache even met any ancestor of mine to procreate with them has never been explained.

Answer 2

Thanks for posting this - I saw it an loved reading it.

Mikey? Not an answer to your comment but I guess an addition. Yes Native American Communities have different ideas than do most other populations regarding DNA testing.. I rarely base my DNA findings on anything coming close to the Ethnic Origins Estimates by testing companies.

The pool of DNA upon which those estimates are drawn shift and change and I can't image while that is happening we will ever have anything close to realistic estimates.

Mags

Comments

Mags, I'm not an Indian, my connections are too far back for tribal membership.  My objection is more scientific than cultural.  I was a biology major but genetics back then was fruit flies, pink/white flowers, and smooth/wrinkled peas.  Specific mutations could be trackable someday if not now for those like me of mixed gender descent, but a bigger pool of samples would help.  My experience is even England-natives are DNA-shy so I would not expect the American-natives to expect anything more than all the past betrayals have given them.

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...Fruit flies, pink/white flowers, and smooth/wrinkled peas...

Heh. You, me, and old Gregor are dating ourselves, Mikey. :-) I got to meet, shake hands, and have a brief sit-down with James Watson and Francis Crick <mumbles> years ago at a university presentation when both were still hale and hearty; Watson was in his 40s.

An aside on this subject is that I believe you've touched on the primary downside to the marketing tack that AncestryDNA employed, that all others had to follow or see their market shares get eaten alive, and for which serious genealogists are paying the price. The whole ethnicity/admixture thing as the primary reason to take an autosomal DNA test is, frankly, a bit disingenuous at best. The "sold my lederhosen for a kilt" nonsense. Ancestry has made a lot of money targeting Heinz 57 melting-pot America, but I believe the message makes the idea of DNA testing uninteresting--even off-putting--to whole groups of people. The superficial sell-line is that's all DNA testing is good for: ethnicity; lederhosen or a kilt; a Nigerian gele or a Ghananian duku.

The result is that we see so many AncestryDNA matches who never respond to communications (they aren't there for genealogy), and that we still see proportionately such a tiny percentage of test-takers from other continents ("I know my ancestors and where I'm from; I don't need you to tell me with a pie chart"). Sigh.

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Yes, similar thing with the English. Having told the world for centuries how well-bred (and purebred) they are, when English males do a Y-DNA test only about one in three get the answer they want - Anglo-Saxon Y-DNA. Two out of the three get Celtic DNA markers. Clearly the myths of Anglo-Saxons wiping out every Celt to create a racially pure society just didn’t happen, and there was racial intermingling almost from the beginning. It probably started when Celts and Anglo-Saxons life bed in the Continent, before either reached Britain. But the desire to be in the winning side is a powerful aphrodisiac.

That has created a second phenomenon - the search to turn this Celtic ancestor into a Norman. Hence the Normandy Y-DNA project has not only genuine French residents in or with documented origins in the Province of Normandy, but they are in danger of being flooded by British surnames with an alleged Norman ancestor. In many instances that alleged Norman ancestor appears to have spawned quite an array of diverse Y-DNA Haplogroups amongst his offspring.

Any social researcher knows to beware of self-reporting. The best scientific studies are those which eliminate or minimise self-reporting, and certainly don’t base a whole project or study around it. Be that with English, Norman or with Native American ancestry claims.

Answer 3

I have read where Native Americans do not want to DNA test because they would have to share more cuts of the money pie. I can see their reluctance!

Comments

More to the point, depending on the citizenship criteria of the tribe they could lose substantial benefits.

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Money has nothing to do with it.  All Native nations have their own citizenship criteria, none of which have anything to do with DNA any more than American citizenship does.   Native Americans don’t need to do DNA tests because we know who our ancestors were and where they came from.

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“The Truth is not half so important as what people believe to be truth” Napoleon. He wrote well before DNA testing, but it seems so applicable to the type of thinking that Edison Williams described above, “I know my ancestors and where I’m from; I don’t need you to tell me, etc., etc.”

To someone with that thinking, a Y-DNA test would run the risk of showing the male-line ancestor as French, or Scots, or Negro,  or at best from a different tribe to the one claimed. An atDNA test might show the percentage of Native American autosomes to be minimal. And that may well be a picture of the state of the Native American nations post-colonisation. I can understand that might be threatening to someone who has always “talked up” the Native American component of their ancestry.

I’m not sure that such a result makes anyone any more or less Native American. It’s whats in their heart. In Australia one only had to identify as Aboriginal. A New Zealand Maori who lived amongst Aboriginals rather than amongst white society was accepted by a court as aboriginal. I don’t see that his offspring out to be ashamed of anything if a m bet of a later generation DNA-tested and found Maori ancestry was n the make line. Call it life’s rich tapestry, but surely the true situation is more helpful to understanding a nation, be it another or one’s own, if one has the real picture, whatever that may be.

Sad to say, rhe genetic picture of a modern day North American nation is unlikely to be a exactly what it is as ore-colonisation. But for those who allow the DNA results to do the talking, those DNA results are part of the social history of that Native American nation. Dammit, if I was Native American I would still be going to hold me head up, and take pride in the smallest amount of Native American DNA. And if the tribe took in a French trapper, a runaway Negro shave, and the last survivor of another nation wiped out be white settlers, that wouldn’t diminish my pride at all. Au contraire.

Answer 4

they are talking ancient dna though in regards to any Eurasian dna. when you look at admixture for current Native Americans especially in South/Central America that are close to 100% you wont find middle eastern in their DNA. on gedmatch or 23 and me you might find a small amount of Siberian or Yakut but any of the Eurasian dna is much much farther back. 

the amounts of Native American that have shown up in my own DNA as well as some cousins that have tested seem relatively accurate-i'm 5-7% or so which matches a set of 3rd great grandparents. my 2nd great grandfather married white and so on down the line each married white. none of the tribes use dna testing as it does not tell you which tribe you descend from. some tribes require blood quantum which is calculated through genealogy while others use lineal descent-they are all different. I know that many don't test for fear the government will try and use their information for negative purposes, or be deceptive in some other way.

 

I would highly suggest reading TL Dixon's blog on the subject-its long, but really interesting and helpful!! http://www.rootsandrecombinantdna.com/2015/03/native-american-dna-is-just-not-that.html