AncestryDNA Ethnicity Update -- They Did Update It Sorta!

Well if you are one of my readers who took an Ancestry Autosomal DNA test, no doubt you probably marveled at the ethnicity that Ancestry reported to you (I didn't realize I that I so  much Scandinavian in me even though over 60% of my lineage is, wait for it, GERMAN. That German part of my lineage must have manifest itself in that 4% uncertain.  When you add that to my Mom's ethnicity, well, as I told the folks at Ancestry, they blew it.

                     My Autosomal Ethnicity                             Mom's Ethnicity
                     British Isles 57%                                         Eastern European 40%
                     Scandinavian 22%                                       Central European 26%
                     Southern European 17%                              Scandinavian 25%
                     Uncertain 4%                                               British Isles 9%

Well this afternoon I saw a bunch of messages on the DNA-Newbie newsgroup that Ancestry has revised their ethnicity calculations.

You can read about click clicking here


Imagine my surprise when I checked my AncestryDNA account and saw that all three of my kits that I manage had that orange button in the upper right hand corner. Yahoo, oh wait that is a search engine!

Well I have looked at all three kits I manage and I can safely say they have put out a much better and accurate product.

Here is my Mom's new ethnic results:

Asia  < 1% 
    Asia Central < 1% .

Europe  96% 
     Great Britain 41% .
     Europe East 28% .
     Europe West 19% .
Trace Regions 8% ..
    Italy/Greece 4% .
    Scandinavia 2% .
    Finnish/Northern Russia 1% .
    Ireland < 1%

West Asia  3% 
 Trace Regions 3% ..
    Caucasus 3%

Much better considering that more than 60% of her paper trail is a German lineage. And here is the new presentation screen:

And now here is my new results:

Asia  < 1% 
 Trace Regions < 1% ..
    Asia Central < 1% .

Europe  99% 
    Europe West 62% .
    Ireland 12% .
    Great Britain 7% .
    Scandinavia 5% .
 Trace Regions 13% ..
    Iberian Peninsula 6% .
    Europe East 5% .
    Italy/Greece 1% .
    European Jewish < 1%

There is also some useful help material available to explain this material on another screen.

 

 

The "sorta" in my blog post title refers to the fact that only a handful of the AncestryDNA testers have seen this new feature and not the entire AncestryDNA Universe. So I guess I'm one of the lucky 6000 selected to preview and survey this new stuff. Thanks Ancestry. I do love chatting with you folks from time to time on things I see needing improvement.

Oh, by the way, could you please now work on a Chromosome Browser package for your Autosomal AncestryDNA package. It really would be a great thing to have and make my life as a genetic genealogist a hell of a lot easier. Please, please develop and implement a chromosome browser. Maybe begging will work instead of a hard line.

I hope to have more on this as it becomes available so stay tuned to the Family Roots and Branches blog.