Why would two brothers have different ethnicity on AncestryDNA test?

Question

Recently two of my brothers did dna testing with Ancestry and came up with different ethnicity charts.One was listed as 50% Western European and the other was listed as 75% British with no Western European.They are full brothers.Is this a mistake by Ancestry?

Comments

Are they showing up as DNA matches to each other? Full brothers should share approximately 50% of their DNA. Testing for ethnicity is more of an art than an exact science, but 23andme, Ancestry, etc., are VERY accurate when it comes to determining if someone is a close blood relative.

Answer 1

Nope. They just inherited different parts of their parents DNA.

There is enough DNA to indentify them as brothers but the ethnicity SNP (or Snips) are different depending on how much each child inherited from each parent.

Remember, everyone gets 50% of their DNA from their mother and 50% from their father and they do not necessarily have to inherit the SAME 50%.

Answer 2

You should google " what DNA testing companies are not telling you about ethnicity tests. "If they say your ancestors are from Italy, that means that perhaps not Italy, but one of two dozen other countries in the area of the Mediterranean Sea.

Answer 3

My DNA test came back in such a British Isles/Ireland mix plus a little Scandinavian, it could be interpreted in so many ways. Better: looking at my surnames just through the number of generations that are complete. That would be six. Gives a better picture of my ethnic heritage. However, stopping at six leaves out my German heritage entirely. Seems nothing is going to be exact.

BTW: James, welcome to the WikiTree Community. We’re glad to have you aboard. (Bet you got a lot of kidding over your name: “Bonds. James Bonds.”)