Cyber Monday DNA Test

[tecpaocelotl]

Give the gift of knowing.

Since I see a lot of supporters on here, I thought this was a good idea to bring this up.

Only Cyber Monday deal I will support which is Ancestry.com sister site, AncestryDNA.com is offering a deal on DNA testing.

$79 bucks today only, but with taxes and shipping, it totals $89.75 at least here in California.

http://ancestrydna.com

[milehighsalute]

thats for people who dont know who they are

different companies give different results......very inaccurate and inconsistent at this point

[Laurel]

I've heard they aren't terribly reliable either, but I know a few adopted people who have swabbed their cheeks and later declared themselves Native Americans, even of specific nations. There's one man who claims to have found his birth family using some mail-order DNA test. I don't know the story, but I think he must have been fantastically lucky.

milehighsalute, do you know of any internet articles that discuss the inaccuracy of genealogical DNA tests where determining ancestry is concerned? The only ones I can find are aimed at people who use the tests to find out what disease markers might be lurking in their DNA.

[earthw7]

As far as I know there is no test that can tell you what tribe in the Untied States you belong too,
let alone can tell the the difference between South American, Latin American, Canada natives.
I know of NO tribe that will enroll a person because their DNA might have Native Blood marker.
plus i hear that sometime the Native marker can be Asian and not Native. There are some companies that are
making that claims that they can tell what tribal nation you come from  but it is not possible to tell one tribal nation
from another today. No one who has had a DNA done can request membership in any tribal nations.

[Ingeborg]

I've heard they aren't terribly reliable either, but I know a few adopted people who have swabbed their cheeks and later declared themselves Native Americans, even of specific nations. There's one man who claims to have found his birth family using some mail-order DNA test. I don't know the story, but I think he must have been fantastically lucky.

Errm, this is not a question of DNA tests being unreliable, though. For what they *can* provide, the tests are reliable enough.

What isn't reliable or accurate is the companies selling these tests and the claims and promises they use to sell their tests with. At least this is the case in Europe, but I assume marketing and advertising strategies will not differ all that much. Ads promise the test will tell you which ethnic groups or even religious groups your ancestors came from (e.g. the claim the test was in a position to establish whether your ancestors were Jewish...).

One company selling these tests in Europe, and advertising quite aggressively, is situated in Switzerland, but apparently they are owned by a US company. The Swiss lot have a bad reputation for transfering personal data and test results (which will not be anonymised) to their US mother.

As far as I know, the tests use either mt-DNA or paternal DNA and establish the respective haplo group of clients. Therefore, they cannot fully establish ancestors in the first place, which is what clients also do not get told. Testing mt-DNA will only tell you which maternal ancestors can be established. Of course the test cannot tell any person what ethnic group their maternal ancestors belonged to – what they can tell you is where a particular mt-DNA type is found often. The individual DNA-types and subtypes have been recorded sufficiently so it is well-known at which point in time the particular subtype originated and in which region. If a company promises to tell you more – save your money.

Googling the Swiss company, I also found sites saying the Swiss company reduced the number of possible ethnicities in accordance to their US mother, as apparently they previously had too many names of ethnicities the usual Joe Public client in the USA was not familiar with. One site mentioned the company was now only using ,,Vikings, Germanic, Celtic, Basque, and Jewish". For starters I'd like to know whether they mean to imply Vikings weren't a Germanic speaking population... Then I'd like to know what ethnic background they may tell clients who are from migrant families.

The company also promises clients to tell them which country their ancestors lived in 40 generations ago which they say is 10th/11th century. I'd like to know which country they will then allot to persons they label as of ,,Viking", ,,Celtic" or ,,Germanic" ancestry. Do they opt for the simple solution? Something like Viking = Sweden, Germanic = Deutschland über alles? And I'm simply dying to learn which country they will choose for a client with a ,,Jewish" haplogroup.

Promising clients to be able to use test results to find one's family, or even link them with family members etc, is highly dubious, to say the least, and at least comes pretty close to fleecing the customers. There is no shortcut to completing a family tree.

Claiming to be able to tell them which ethnic group clients come from falls into the same category. There are no ,,English" genes, or ,,French" genes, nor are there "Lakota" genes or "Quechua" genes, or whatever. That's all bogus.

I just had a look at the site named above, ancestryDNA. They promise you can find out whether you are part Irish, or part Native American. Nope. Their test will not be able to establish that. They can only tell you that the haplogroup that happened to be handed down in your line of ancestors happens to be frequent in this or that region of the world today. This doesn't tell you anything about the rest of your ancestry which - as far as the test result is concerned, since this rest does not show up in your haplogroup - may have been little green people from Mars.

Save the money for a better purpose.

[Defend the Sacred]

Some of us have tested that site, or others like it, and, like Earth and Ingeborg said, they absolutely cannot tell you what tribe you have ancestors from, or even for sure your various worldwide ethnicities; all they can say is where in the world others with your markers tend to live.

Ancestry.com will give a location like Ireland, with concentric circles going all the way into mainland Europe. Or "West Asian" with circles going all the way west into eastern Europe.  AND some people have had their ethnicity percentages change over time, as ancestry.com gets more results in their database. I've seen people's percentages change, and some markers that were only 1% or 2% disappear completely. One friend tested as 1% Native and 2% African, and found those ancestors in their genealogy. Then the site updated and those percentages disappeared, to be replaced with Europeans. If the specific ancestors you're curious about are back over a couple hundred years, you will have so many other lines diluting them that they will will not register as part of your blood/DNA at all.

What I would say may be worth it is if you're adopted and want to find blood relations. If you do ancestry.com, and others you are related to do it as well, you will get notices saying they've found matches for you, such as, "High probability this person is your second cousin, here are the family names you have in common."

But if you have the cash on hand, and you understand the severe limitations of these tests, and still want to do it... be prepared for some shocks. Whether it's accurate or not, people often get results they really were not expecting. 

[Laurel]

Thank  you, earthw7, Kathryn, and especially Ingeborg for the information (and clarifications)!

I'm adopted, and I've always been curious, but I never felt like I wanted to spend money on a DNA test unless it could tell me what diseases I'm at risk for. I'm pretty sure I'm a generic Southern US Scots Irish type.

Most of the adoptees I know who say they have Native blood really are Native/part-Native people who were taken out of their nations to be raised by whitefolks. But since the DNA tests became easily available, two adoptees I know have gone wannabe, filling their FB pages with graphics of scantily-clad maidens and the story about the two wolves and so forth. I gently corrected them ("That's not really a Cherokee legend"), but never could bring myself to tell them they can't really know which nation they might be related to. A lot of us adoptees work long and hard to find the tiniest scraps of our original identities, so I'm sure they'd react quite defensively.

Happily, they both seem to have "gotten over it" and gone back to regular posting while I was trying to figure out how to confront them.

[tecpaocelotl]

With me, it's me knowing the unknown parts of me.

I know it will not give people exact tribes.

I have done part of my family tree and want to see what there is something I don't know. My grandpa on my mom's is native (Nahua among other natives that mixed with it) which much of the culture and family items like the metate (or metatl in traditional) that has been in the family for hundreds of years. With my dad, he doesn't know much on his side, other than my great grandmother may have been native. Though she has last names that originated in Mexico, not much details that I know of.

If we're just talking about the y or x chromosome that is a direct passing from mother and father, then I know it's going to be white on both sides on those specific parts.

[tecpaocelotl]

I think a good article that goes with this discussion:

http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/12/american_indian_ancestry_establishing_legal_proof.html?wpisrc=see_also_article