Genetic Communities and the Lies we Buy Ourselves

With much aggravation taken as penance I have finally been able to put to rest a cluster of four supposed Ancestor Discoveries (Beta). Turns out the four were Grandparents of second cousin 3x named Jessie May Kelly, a grandchild of the Day family. I am fairly disappointed that they were none relatives to me and indeed come from a branch I was just pondering over regarding the percentage of shared DNA.

I have had a week recently where I have been contacted only by paternal relations to me, and those I think are outside of my x-inheritance. It makes me wonder then about the randomness of dna assignment and how much if any I can really trust Ancestry.com services. I am up to five genetic companies which have my dna sample and have rendered ethnicity lists. There is some major variation between them all, but yet also a seeming obvious underlying cause. Clustering populations together creates a wide variety. My initial thought was that where France goes so do I, but there is also a question of whether France itself is one unit. Northern France is flavored with Britain as much as east and south are peppered with other border countries. Ancestry.com is the only of five companies to declare any Irish, while FTDNA tells me I have recent Amerindian...on 23andMe my West African is disappearing by the minute.

The New Genetic Communities feature looks quite fun and I have wanted an aggregated list of birthplaces for a map for quite sometime. While I made my own by hand once or twice they never are very accurate when new data is arriving each day or even week. A major problem that seems to show up is first degree relatives getting drastically different communities. My Father for example, has at least four or five with many placed overseas or in the American south, think Confederacy. I on the other hand have only a single group for French settlers along the St. Lawrence, excluding regions relevant to my father. It seems quite odd to be sharing no groups with a parent and I have heard this from other users as well.

So what is the basis for communities? It would seem to be a macro version of dna circles, of which parents and children should share. Yet I am only seeing confusion and complaints. Given the differences in my parents ethnic background there should be more. There just isn't...