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...

Non-Paternal Events

I haven't done much serious work on genealogy in a while. However recently I finally had some distant cousins and possibly great aunts/uncles inquire about a family group we share on ManitoulinRoots. It was a bit unhelpful to see someone else regurgitating photos of mine that they obviously took off my public tree however it definitely collided with the last work I did on the genetic side prior to 23andMe turning into a worthless piece of bunk. After comparing my father and I on a few of the direct tests such as Dodecad9, I took another crack at generating parental emulated files from my own sample. My father's emulated sample perfectly matched his real data so I can only assume that my mothers is more than 75% correct even without her test to confirm it.

Part of the fun on spreadsheeting my results versus my fathers in Dodecad was that I discovered I inherited his older DNA contribution. When run against my mother's 'sample' I inherited her more recent groups. Something glaringly obvious is that the south european, which I had tracked down to primarily Portuguese, is actually from my mother. It's also the most recent population addition for her estimated at two generations above her. That generation just happens to be within the Bryants who everyone is suddenly so interested in.

Ironically in this case the infidelity was entirely well known to the family. What no one ever seems to discuss is the time gaps between children and the fact that only half or less look related to each other. Something more strange is the appearance of a unique firstname for the youngest child. While the story is that the mother chose it because she admired a foreigner her brother had dated once I find that a bit odd. To add flame to this fire in researching the origin of the name I discovered that it is actually of Portuguese origin despite the Italian spelling.

So how does one really confirm a highly likely NPE? I seem to have two avenues, one to compare the male line of my great grandmother's three brothers. This could be supplemented with their sons tests but of course that means a confirmation for a non paternity could also be a illegitimacy in that younger generation. The other would be to compare the autosomnal records of the sister's children for glaring different builds. No one of course wants to confirm a non paternity for the family who raised them and who they believe is apart of their personal identity. In that sense I would require either a science and truth driven youngblood like myself or one of the closer generations who doesn't care. As of yet I have not located either.

I imagine if I was local and a bit more skilled at hard copy research I could probably discover names and dates for the unfaithful spouse after the separation. It is likely that the man who took her in as a live-in maid was also her lover. Perhaps he was Portuguese?

Reuse, Recycle & Revision

Some of you may have noticed a recent post of mine entitled "most recent african ancestor". No doubt it came across as incredibly odd coming from someone so interested in their north american heritage. I haven't perhaps given enough time to the downside of genealogy, especially genetics, and how it can affect family and even your emotional health. We all here the warnings about NPE's and homespun fairy tales such as the cherokee-princess-grandmother. It isn't always however items such as those which really tug on your heartstrings.

Personally I think it is the unknown and the unsaid which are most painful discoveries. A recent genealogy thread I looked at had a entire section dedicated to the family-finder complications. That is to say an only child finding out she has three half siblings from her fathers double life or even just the child who was told the wrong person was her father. Ethnicity prediction is also a big problem for those expecting a certain result. A family of reservation Indians for example finding out they are anything but native though that is the families identity for generations. The MRAA was a push to the limits for me prompted by a small fluke I saw on a single test. The sub Saharan result was possible only as noise or a legitimate marker. As I previously stated:

Most recent intermixed cites percentages, in example from JTest, like Mozabite-Berber, Moroccan, and Algerian. Each is roughly a 2.9-3.2 in distance inside of my intermix. As for Sub-Saharan I had a test the other day ping for both Morocco and Tanzania. I also seem to have a surprising amount of Egyptian hidden around 1.7-1.9 genetic distance in decently large amounts.

Now since I am talking about broken heartstrings you have probably guess right that new testing has rocked my boat. I paid for 23andMe this summer for both the husband and myself in hopes of the mtdna which comes free giving me my subgroup. At the moment it is impossible to classify me though I am somewhere within H1. I won't give out information on my husbands details but needless to say it was a shock on all fronts. Furthermore up came a percentage of African in recent genealogy for myself. Roughly 3-4% as half western Africa and half south African. I am assuming that this may be a sensitivity issue and that what I am really seeing is the African ancestry of my own middle eastern and eurasian predecessors.

Only recently have I come to accept the amount of old world Hispanic I carry. Perhaps the Moorish invasion explains where that might also come from since between ancestry, ftdna and 23andMe my Hispanic percentage dropped. Aggravating to have paid two companies now and no one can give me my mtdna line in exact. But all of this as of late with other changes in my life I find splintering my self identity not strengthening it. Always good to take a break now and then.

Simple Geographic Projects

I have discovered in running raw data analysis that I love making maps. The heat map in the previous post was overlayed on a known births versus population matching chart. Having found yet another cool map making method I wanted to share it with you all! The goal is to find a common origin based on your largest matching populations. I had to run it twice myself because the first time came out some strange collapsing triangle.

1. Visit GEDmatch (presuming you already have genomic raw data and have an account, otherwise, acquire these) 

2. Select Admixture on the main menu.  

3. Insert your ID and select any of the open-source projects (MDLP, Eurogenes, Dodecad, HarappaWorld) and then any of the calculators. 

4. Once the calculator has finished, click the Oracle button (not Oracle-4) underneath your generated component scores. 

 5. Scroll down to the bottom and inspect the "Mixed Mode Population Sharing:" results. Pick one, preferably one with the lowest genetic difference (GD) to ensure better accuracy and one which includes non-diaspora/recently non-admixed populations (localising Ashkenazi Jewish or African Americans as a donor population on a map will be difficult due to subjective guidance regarding their placement on a map). 

6. Repeat the above with at least two other calculators and keep note of the results. For a minimalist approach, Europeans are better off using Eurogenes, Dodecad and MDLP. South Asians are recommended to have HarappaWorld included. Those from elsewhere in the world are free to use any combination, as none of these are specific for other regions. 

7. Download this map (from Wikipedia) or the map below (for McDonald BGA version) and Paint.Net (open-source image editor). Feel free to use another editing software. I prefer Paint.Net because it indicates the 1/3 increments along any line drawn. 

8. Open the map with Paint.Net/another image editor. Pinpoint your McDonald BGA average spot or physical ancestral location if desired. 

9. With a colour specific to the open-source calculator you're going to use, pinpoint the location where each donor population for your selected Oracle result comes from. If uncertain, look up roughly where they're from (e.g. Pakistani Pashtuns will be around NW Pakistan close to the Afghan border). If a national average (e.g. German_Dodecad), place in the middle of the country. 

10. Draw a line between both donor populations. Estimate where on the line you'll fall. Note the numbers are flipped round in practice; for instance, if the Oracle is 70% German + 30% Ukrainian, the spot will end up around the 30% mark on the German end. Make a spot on the line wherever this may be. 

11. Repeat steps 9+10 for all the other Oracle runs, remembering to use different colours for the calculators to keep track. 

12. Join these spots together with a different coloured line, forming the "bounded area" where your ancestry can be narrowed down from.  

13. Completed. Make all the relevant inferences from the results, compare to the additional data in step 8 if present.

My sample using Google Maps

Disadvantages of Generalized Consumer Information

Recently I was introduced to two sources: Snpedia.com and James Licks haplogroup reader. Originally I began an excel chart looking for a map/result of correlating my major rcrs differences to known markers of each subclade. When I completed my cursory search and had found only some related to the in typed mutation I was quite disappointed. Through a happy coincidence I searched that marker coming across a blog post which indicated James Licks haplogroup reader using phylotree data. Indeed I had found what I was looking for! When I third party transferred and took my mtDNA test with Family Tree DNA they had not yet differentiated the basic and full sequence test so while I thought I was getting a awesome deal I was indeed being short changed. For most people knowing your major haplogroup is probably very helpful. The general information will no doubt apply to at least part of your research and you may choose to look no further. In researching H I began to try and guess which subclade I might be. I began to notice that much of the research on Haplogroup H was inconsistent. When I first looked it up I was told H stood for Helena featuring most women found in the area of Greece and Turkey. More recent clippings will tell you it is actually a young line found in Norway and Scotland....the inconsistency being an east or west haplogroup. 

Running the James Lick emulator for my true subclade has been invaluable to discerning not only my origins but also understanding why information is so distorted suddenly on the topic of line H. The result from inputting my hrv1 and hrv2 differences was H2a2a1g. Major research has been done recently in recovering that haplogroup from the eurocentric viewpoint and possible selection biases. My own upper subclade of H2 is perhaps one of the least European of all the H derivatives with H2a2a1 represented in highest amount among Saudi Arabian women. H2a is also the only of the H2 subclade to have integrated back into Asian phylogeography after initial migration towards Europe. [Correction: As of Fall 2015 that build was replaced for giving false positives related to H2a2a. That is not my haplogroup.]

On advisory from a more seasoned genetic genealogist than I was the idea of charting matches to the most recent common female ancestor in the States. Of course for me this actually means Canada. Indeed my female immigrant ancestor of the mtdna line is Elizabeth 'Betty' Beck (1814-1874) who came from Dumfries-shire, Scotland to settle in Grey, Ontario, Canada with her husband John Swanston (1808-1891). From there I am to work backwards into Europe but I have a feeling the separation between North America and Europe might be better served by a more popular female such as Sebithy Ann Coultis (1857-1951) of Manitoulin Island who married William Henry Bryant (1864-1939).

Conversing on Ancestry.com has become even more limited without a subscription much to my annoyance so it will be hard work to find people matching my MRCA to compare mtdna results. Incidentally I noticed that the interactive genealogy map I made sometime ago has a strange overlay with the known path for the development of the H haplogroup both the predominant Eurasian and European subclades. Heatmaping the sources of my major subclade H2a2a has also been helpful though I intend to revise it further with matching recent populations excluding deep ancestry.

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http://dna.jameslick.com/mthap/

Third Party Confirmations!

As much as I work as a lone wolf so to speak in my genealogy work I do enjoy having others input. Recently I took the plunge and enrolled in a small tribal band of Metis-Cree people. As a help for others I explained the methods I had used so far in differentiating my own genetic markers for native blood. To my great surprise another member messaged me who was quite confident with using gedmatch himself. He is lucky enough to be a direct male descendant from Henri Membertou's band of Mi'kmaq. I was provided from him a three way match between him, myself and a even less diluted relation. The result was a positive match to the Mi'kmaq peoples. I would say to Henri himself but more likely it would be through one of his many contributing female relations.

Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
10 92446647 95958204 3.7 903
11 56368374 59769693 1.2 717
13 83990938 88896945 3.1 816
21 21293037 24043081 4.0 716
Largest segment = 4.0 cM
Total of segments > 1 cM = 12.0 cM
Estimated number of generations to MRCA = 7.1

Comparison took 0.05190 seconds.
Distant relation.


So this is a interesting factor in what I already know since I compose over four regions of native populations in the small sector I carry. Another cooperation comes from having limited access to my fathers genetic data. Being able to look at his smaller portion of native dna cleared up any possibility of my larger portion coming from him. Indeed my two largest portions of north amerindian and arctic do not come from him. My fathers tracers are for small portions of the south amerindian and mesoamerican. This I had already presumed but rather it is nice to have confirmed in mathematical calculation.

Another change from this last few weeks of research is discovering some depth to two of my fathers grandmothers lines. Along with that is some details on what was coined "Southern European" in earlier results. I now have confirmation through oracle population matching that my southern component is predominately Spanish with only a smattering of Italian. This follows at least the presence of late Italian ancestry in one portion of my tree but I have yet to connect the Spanish in genealogical records.

Statistical Work in Aborigional Ethnicity Prediction

Last year I set out to comb through the rough of my DNA sampling with many algorithms until I found the clearest percentages. In doing this I clustered Asiatic derivative groups under the heading of tricyclic populations as direct relation to the genealogical evidence of First Nations ancestry. However I did not at the time have a major justification for doing this except that these evidences were non compliant with the majority of my recent generational admixture. I also had my mtdna tested which is passed down from my farthest known matrilineal ancestor who came from Kirkgunzeon, Scotland. The result was the mtdna haplogroup H. I had not considered anything further about haplogroups until today.

Someone had also recommended to me that it could be useful to make a genealogical data map. I decided to place within it known birth locations as well as the locations of genetic populations I matched. The variability of genetic population was in some ways shocking. It did however follow the typical water trade routes in it's spread. The deep Asian line however and the Americas seemed not to be related with the exception of two locales of Aleut. Recently I provided information to the younger sister's of my husband about their own native history as Saginaw band of Ojibway. I did this with only name places, some stories and a map. It surprised me how much a map can say and so I thought of this again for myself.

My statistics produced the average of hard 19%, and soft 20% if one accounts for decimals, of Native genetic material per gene. This 20% however was also not a solid component. 53% was of Inuit derivative, 38% Americas proper including Central/South and lastly a unresolved 21% that was more closely related to Asian heritage. Some strict populations that occurred were Aleut, Inuit, Pima, Maya, Ecuador, Colombia, Peurto Rican. The more exotic was Samii, Tibetian, Han, Thai.

These places however share a major component of Haplogroup. Indeed in map review of the locales it is quite evident that the underlying mtdna associated with the portions of my DNA would be Haplogroup A. The great evidence of this is that Tibetan only hosts A of those also present in the Americas. Asian haplogroups are the predecessor of native american strands which is why it is proper to review them together especially in the absence of actual Asian heritage.

Since Catherine Dufour spoke French-Cree I have come to the assumption that she was Métis-Cree herself as other varieties of Metis would speak their own aboriginal language. Of the localized groups the Cree associated with the region she lived refer to themselves as the Innu. I would not however assume to be exact on which regional tribe of the Cree Catherine came from until we ever have the exact name of her mother. There remains as well the possibility that her father Peter was also of mixed ancestry. Within the Boussey family work I am lucky to have not only a exact name for Anne Marie dit Metisse but also the Indian settlement she lived. Port Royal, Nova Scotia is under the Bear River Nation of Mi'kmaq today. It would be lovely to have exacting answers but native american DNA methods are extremely limited.

Graphing FTDNA for Native Blood

It's common for people to find a unsubstantiated family myth regarding a long lost great grandparent of some tribe. It's part of the Rousseau ideal that native culture is somehow noble through its simplicity and to be admired. Indeed looking just at the surface of things at the time of first contact they had more advanced systems of hygiene and significant ecologically-sensitive agriculture. Those of us with genealogical evidence often find it scant due to the nature of the times regarding the personage and citizenship of a native person in the imperial Americas. As a Metis woman I am at a disadvantage that besides the myth and a lucky interview provided by James Sweinhart, a published journalist, that there is no physical connection I can grasp.

Cherokee Nation at Kansas City, 1994

As a anthropologist, I maintain a certain outlook from multicultural perspective but I have found it fails me when working with more traditional native american individuals. Often I am met with hostility which I believe is less to do with how I look, as some might presume, and more to do with the socioeconomics of tribal living. I certainly don't intend to be a bother and the only community I intend to pursue citizenship with would be the Metis peoples in my local Canadian/US sector. Due to the degree of mixture it simply seems idiotic to sequester anything more specific when indeed I am not specific. 

It is that mixture exactly that is the true topic of this post. After my 3rd party transfer to Family Tree DNA completed I uploaded it into GED Matches album to compare with ancestry original interpretation. It is notable to mention that ftdna actually reevaluated the chip itself not just the raw composite to my knowledge. For the most part I saw predictable and minute changes. Side by side I noticed that ftdna cited more africanized Moorish DNA as apart of my Iberian spectrum. When I reviewed MDLP 22 by chromosome it suddenly occurred to me to class out the asian decent populations and revise it for my native american blood. Trycyclic populations including the middle east are often misplaced amounts of plains native which is so intermixed that it more often registers as middle eastern.

On average I found that 20% of each chromosome was Asiatic derivative. Since the middle eastern connection is still debatable I also went a step further in removing the trycyclic and Asian components to search for individualized known samples of native american DNA. On average this left a 10-12% of each chromosome to be confirmed native american source which is above the threshold for founder markers. Each of the remaining populations confirmed in my chromosomes were set in known genetic regions allowing me to percentage out the confirmed strains by region. Of the 10-12% confirmed; 53% was Northern Hemisphere (Inuit derivatives), 38% was Americas proper, & 21% was trace matching aboriginal societies in the eastern hemisphere. Percentage peaks for the northern group rested on chromosomes 7, 16, 18 & 22. The Americas group peaked at 13 & 20, but only 20 was highly above the margin of error. Lastly the trace societies were highest peaked on 8 & 15 but not as impressively as the other groups. Overall it was North Amerindian which received the highest proportion spikes but it was also one of the least spread matches across the 22 chromosomes.

So I may be lucky enough to have numbers but it also comes down to personal experience and identity. Personal experience has always pushed me to look at aboriginal life in a learning capacity much like a child watching their parents. Even now I am writing my final paper for my degree program on Native American Studies. The expectations of that work is for me to be a participant but I've always been a participant even in times where I was so far away from the source. Part of my most loving experience was the short time I spent with the Cherokee Nation in Missouri. Despite outward appearance I was drawn in and allowed to participate culminating in a honorary membership. While it may have just been words it started me off on a journey I am still following now, as a Metis.

Family Historian: Hit or Miss

I've had a wonderful set of short messages this past week with a second cousin of mine. She brought up the woes of being a family history researcher. In particular she has been rather glum about family secrets and salacious stories. I've encountered a few of those myself and it seems that once you get past someone's reluctance you then have to deal with the next persons dismissal and anger at the facts. Some of my closer family has just discovered my work which apparently was of no value to them previously. I've suddenly found myself put upon with questions and angry dismissals of fact. Whatever romantic notion my father gave me of how important a family historian is must be on its last legs by now.

As a anthropologist I've been trained to look at the qualitative information but not to the disregard of hard quantative sources. I happen to revel in cultural quirks which seem irrelevant to other people. Corrections are one thing to approach but flat out disgruntled and condescending relatives are another. It is a part of my adaption into a specialization instead of a entire pedigree. In fact with the last angry message I've considered jumping ship. Then again I have to remind myself that the person complaining is not apart of my specialization itself. I am barely scratching the surface as it were of my French family history of the Detroit region.

I also had a awkward conversation with my sister this week after having reviewed some DNA research with my father. The insanity of patriarchal naming hit me out of no where in the fact that I carry the surname Grant yet don't have any of its DNA as a daughter. Then again the same would be said for my mothers side that by a juvenile interpretation of genetics I could also not be a Jones. Unspoken irony then to the fact that my research is focused almost distinctly on my matriarchal lines. Still perhaps that is the answer to having any work undervalued that in truth the relevance of that complaint comes from your perception of your place in those families. Simply adjust ones world view and it seems to seldom matter what facetious opinions people hold except for the sake of accuracy. Then again when people are suffering under the delusion of self serving bias its a fat chance that they can admit to the validity of facts even in the presence of documentation.

So who am I researching for myself or my family? I started this all to learn about my origins and connect to family members that were lost. Now suddenly the ones I've always known are resentful that I'm searching. As the black sheep you'd think I'd have more freedom but maybe that is what they are afraid of...finding family more like myself. I am lucky at least to fit into my own little immediate group of four.

DNA Updates and Forthcomings

Well GEDmatch has finally finished with the re-tokenizing of my DNA pack. It seems that some of the simulations had errors which were pinging mostly in unrelated ethnic results but nonetheless gedmatch decided to rerun new editions for errors. This changes my results to a small degree. The smallest changes are to do with my largest portions. My European percentages are now farther east with 47% a solid mix of Fennoscandia and the Slavic countries bordering Russia. At this time my Celtic/British strains are only 6%. I am still left unsure which country provides the dominant amount of my 34% Mediterranean. Northern Italian and Iberian are both cited. The near east populations matches continue to tantalize me if only because I cannot find their source genealogically.  Roughly 10% of my blood is still Persian which I find amazing.

The more drastic changes have come in the form of my smallest amounts. While initially HarappaWorld and MDLP both cited my mesoamerican DNA from the Muscogee it is now something else. In a sense it could be a more accurate result. About 5% of my result is from South Amerindian and Arctic Amerindian. The latter would correspond to my mother's Mi'kmaq heritage. From what I've gathered online the south is most likely representative of Cherokee. I rather guess that does make more sense since there were only small amounts of exogamy in my direct relations. As the Cherokee are fairly wide, the bands can simply interchange children without looking in another region. Eurogenes still says Mayan...Ugh! But it also indicates a southeast Asia portion as well as oceanic which are barely above threshold.

What I do still find strange is my Samoyed and Berinigan DNA. They are very small amounts but I'm not sure which region to classify them under in my processing of this. I gather for the most part I work on a three category system; European, Asiatic & American. If it doesn't fit those groups than it's wasteful knowledge.

I also took a look at the new ancestry ethnicity predictor. I do find it helpful that they separated my Irish and British blood apart. That makes me confused however about whether Scottish is really the same as British. According to their diagrams it is separate and I have none. My new ancestry numbers are: 52% Great Britain, 21% Scandinavian, 15% Irish, 8% Iberian, 2% Grecco-Italian, 1% Eastern European and <1% Western European. At least that is more interesting than my original pie of British, Scandinavian and unknown. Still I find it very odd that Ancestry states my British as high as 50% when all other groups dictate that it is <26%. Consider for one that as of currently all the calculators for gedmatch place me at 6%. I think it makes ancestry look stupid. I still hope however to upload to FTDNA for my maternal test and correspond my admixture there. My tight budget might make it a Christmas gift to myself.

Ancestry: Autosomnal versus MtDNA

DNA doesn't stop with the percentages you find in tests. Often it takes a further investigation into the history of the populations you represent. I have already found a state of questionablity regarding my amount of Middle eastern DNA. In hopes of diving into my alleles and chromosome results representing my aborigional american DNA I also came across the issue of similarity between Appalachian tribes and middle eastern sample groups specifically Berbers. Of special consideration was the Cherokee contribution on my father's side which is intermixed with Muskogee-Creek. The Creeks are known to carry Mayan DNA while the Cherokee often carry, at least autosomnally, markers that are indistinguishable from middle eastern composition to most calculators. The same can be said of other central Appalachian groups while north and south populations are either Beringian or Mesoamerican of some variety, respectively. Therefore for lack of genealogical evidence it is possible that a result as such is perhaps a false positive. 

That brings me to another interesting point regarding researching population groups. My high percentage groups contain the prefix paleolithic. It is important not to overlook this point because it places the history of those people much farther back in the human migration process (it can also indicate a period of isolation). The inclusion of the term beringian also points to a Asiatic admixture of the paleo-eskimo groups spanning from Russian Siberia through Greenland into Canada and Alaska. There is no consideration for any non Inuit first nations group in my results so far. Given my most recent addition of Indian blood I am wondering if perhaps that means the mother of my great grandma Catherine was also a Mi'maq woman along with a more removed grandmother from Nova Scotia. 

I have a favorite photo taken of myself after my parents divorce with a black and white camera. At the time I noticed that I appeared very Asiatic if not Eskimo due to the mongoloid feature of my eyes and wide face, these features are most notable in the mornings. 

A next step I would like to take is ordering a mtdna test, most likely from familytreeDNA for price points sake. It's another consideration I have made regarding Ancestry.com's poor assessment of my little genetic rainbow that perhaps the exclusion of know admixture as "noise" is not the only way they pigeonhole people. While I have a beautiful plethora of source populations I also have very distinct Y-DNA and mtDNA strains from European origin. My father's y-dna is I1a, now called I-M253, which comes from Fennoscandia especially Denmark. This prehistoric movement of  Danish Vikings was apart of the early population of Anglo-Saxon regions in Great Britain. This haplogroup also asserts the fact that according to myth our branch of the Grant clan is a relation of Haakon Siggurdsson and his brood. Haakon's lineage is just one of the possible origins to the Grant clan. 

Maternal dna would be a new chapter into who and what I am. The genealogical record unfortunately stops short with Elizabeth Paterson my 8th maternal grandmother in Kirkgunzeon, Scotland. I would assume given her location and the families association with Ireland that my maternal line may be Pict. This could also be gross generalization based on birth location. Elizabeth is a 18th century woman giving plenty of time for known mass migrations including the historical banishments of eastern Jews who migrated west in 1300, 1400, 1600 and 1700 AD. Autsomnally and from rare alleles it is predicted that I have a middle eastern haplogroup though as I said above error is possible. I am hoping for a surprise but I would be happy with any result. Further research is always warranted.

Unzipping My Raw DNA, Part Two

I don't believe that most people are prepared to make the jump in amateur genealogy to that of the intermediate especially with the inclusion of genetics. When the veil is lifted and you see who you are deep in your cells and atoms it can be either encouraging or feel as though all your work has been through colored glasses. Genetic testing is probably a positive for those whose ancestors were static and the acculturated generations match those that actually make up your being. I'm having the rather mirror-house experience where the recent does not match not only who I am as a person, but also is a falsification or at best over-simplification of the real genetic source.

The time it's taken to run the simulators and compile them into a single excel document however has given me enough pause to collect most of my thoughts. I have to remember that the exotic is mostly deep ancestry so it would not be relevant necessarily except for some quirks. Yet the mirror house experience is that, everything is exotic, at least in comparison to the records and beliefs of those still living today. Working first with admixtures there is a varying degree of interpretation still to the amount of 'white' that I am. Ancestry's estimate was 52% British isles/34% Scandinavian, on the whole roughly 80-90% carbon white.

Harrapaworld, Asia map, disputes this number with only a maximum of 48.5% European. 'Africa 9' on Dodecad echo's a similar opinion that I am 67.5% or less European (including Indo-European as strictly white). Dodecad World version 3 places this number closer to 52% with the rest highly africanized Iberian or west/southwest asian. Eurogenes perhaps gave the most honest admixture result due to it's definitive sub sects. North Sea, which includes water bound parts of Scandinavia as well as the British isles rests at only 20%. JTest states that of these European groups only 25.4% is wholly white and inadmissible as Jewish. I am only 3% however above the noise level (2.5%) for Azkenazi Jewish heritage so the direct line there is remote. Yet the large chucks of central and eastern European do echo the ancestry given my fathers genetic test.

Southern heritage is much more pronounced than Ancestry claimed with some rare alleles coming from Cyprus, Lithuania, and East Asia. Spain and Northern Italy are the founders of my southern heritage with only one so far found in the genealogical record. Dodecad World 9, for example places me at 72.5% Atlantic_Baltic, 25.5% Caucusus/Southern European and around 1.5% Amerindian. 1.5 is interpreted over and over as either Asiatic or Amerindian, notably however it is inferred as Mexican/Central American Indian when addressed. It also increases as high as 3-8% given the presence of oceanic, papuan, beringian and east asian derivatives. If this was a test I don't believe that 20-53% is ever a passing grade so why would I ignore the beautiful multicultural heritage I have.

So what about the estimations given by Ancestry.com? Well I think I figured that out partially inspired by a comment by the authors of GEDMatch's algorithms. "It not just the presence of a unique factor but also the presence of that percentage compared to like individuals." Thus unique factors on chromosomes could be viewed as noise and with strict interpretation ignored completely as genetic drift for known populaces. With the wars over centuries of the Germanic tribes then it would be easy to assume a known factor level of 'noise' and thus exclude it altogether. I believe this is how Ancestry.com applies their ethnicity predictor so it is most simplified and accurate for Europeans, no doubt their largest consumer at whole.

So what am I? Very roughly estimated in admixture...

• 26-40% Southern European (Spanish, Italian, Iberian, Sardinian) 
• 18-24% British Isles/North Seas (Great Britain, France, Scandinavia) 
• 12-26% Middle Eastern (Persian, Near East, West Asia)
• 8-10% Eastern European (West Germany, Balkan, Slav)
• 3-8% Asian/Amerindian (Mezoamerican, Beringian; East-South Asia, Oceania)
• 3-5% North African (Mozabite, Morroccan, Byaka)

Unzipping My Raw DNA, Part One

It's no secret that I was wholly unimpressed with the ethnicity finder on Ancestry.com and it's lack of features. So now that the voices of the many have been heard and my raw data is available I've tried to resist the urge to spread it around like jam on the internet. My first stop was GEDMatch who unfortunately are having server issues because of so many new Ancestry submissions. Moving on then I headed over to Interprenome that is headed by Stanford university science department staff/students.

This new emulator took me from too little data to quite substantially too much!

One of the questions that came about for me was the only unique factor on my AncestryDNA page was a small portion of unspecific southern european. I have been racking my brain and looking for any cooralation in my records that could account for that. The only match I made was to the obscure Italian women who married into the FitzAlan royalty quite far back in my tree's centuries. I am of the opinion that I also need a more specific study journal of my findings since I recall while working inside the Aleramici family in my tree I also came across some women of Spain. The non-specificity even lead too some uncomfortable considerations of probable NPE's and adoption excuses. Interprenome has provided me a unexpected answer in the pan-euro scale. I am quite well into Spanish distribution.

The issue remained of my Cryptozoic-Jewish history supposedly among the women of my father's father ancestry. So using the Asia logarithm I found myself well placed among the Pathan, Sindhi, and Hazara. My closest east/central asian is the Miao Zu people of southern china. To be honest I had no expectations of the Asia group so to find myself clearly defined as a Persian descendant I abesolutley had to know whether I placed on the Pan-Judica map.

Yet another surprise lay for me. I do not place close enough for an exact kinship among the Jewish sample studies. My personal opinion on this is then that I don't have actual Jewish ancestry except to such a minor degree. My Persian history however is echo'ed twice over by my closest match being Iranian and Turkish.

The accuracy of this information of course isn't proven until I run the raw data through GEDMatch. I am hoping to learn my MTDNA haplogroup which according to Interprenome is probably (N1 derivative), but that is just a random guess with very little knowledge behind it.

I look forward to my GEDMatch being finished...hopefully sooner than 4-6 weeks... in order to review these findings and demolish any errors or misgivings I have.

Forms of Respect

So I'm dog sitting this week and with the house empty I've located the records the Canadian Military sent my mom about her Father. Besides copying them I decided to look up some specifics. For one thing my grandfather Harvey was in twice as long as I thought. He began in September of 1944 with the 1st Battalion of Kings Own Rifles of Canada. What's more interesting is the rank waffling he did. Before he was moved to the RCAF he achieved the rank of Colonel. Yet because he did at most costal defense he relinquished that rank and pay increase. After a leave of absence that I believe resulted in my uncle he returned to the war. This time not as a rifleman but a instructor he obtained the rank of acting Sargent. Yet again and to the annoyance of my grandmother I'm sure he relinquished the rank and pay privileges. I wish he was alive today to talk about he rationale for not keeping a military legacy.

I'm thinking that I may try to collect flashing and medals to create a framed memorial. Considering I have little to know hand me downs from my grandpa I'd love to make representations I him. Another interesting find this week was looking into the pedigree of some of my father's grandmothers I came across more Welsh relatives. That echo's the genetic profile I have from Ancestry's DNA test. There is also a new addition to my extended family this week which prompts me to think about children. My fiancée and I share a strong Irish and Austro Bavarian percentage. I imagine our children will be named in that fashion but of course I am titillated alone by the Jones of Wales tartan I found online during some late night browsing. 

...and that's why I like Highland Cows!

A while before I got heavy into genealogy itself I had stumbled upon physical anthropology. While it has been debunked for quite sometime there is a certain level of accuracy it portrays. Most people would remember it from it's use for eugenics during the Nazi regime but that is truly not it's purpose. Today shows like "Bones" still use it to determine ethnic range for deceased and often facial reconstruction has to incorporate some of it to give a accurate result. It is simple fact that Asian's have higher and more delicate nasal cavities whereas African peoples tend to have a wider ridge across the nose. These facts have really no purpose at all except for being used as a tool themselves.

So after learning what I was looking for in the sub-race characteristics I began the process of taking profile pictures and head measurements. For the most part I came up with the generic Dinaric group which is most profound accross europe itself. Upon asking some other intrested students to also look at my findings they came up with East-Baltid and I simply laughed it off as a result of my weight. After all the majority of my research has led me to geographic populations that would have the Dinaric classification or even a Nordic trait. However I should not have overlooked it so quickly I think.

A while back I discovered a cousin on ancestry named Jane Storm. Until then I hadn't focused on the German grandmother of my own french line at all, Lezelie Brunner. However Lezelie's parentage leads straight back to the Sturm (Storm) family that I share with Jane. Today i have come across an interesting fact regarding the couple at which I join Jane's heritage. Johann Jacob Brunner who married Maria Barbra Sturm, had parents that both came from the Kingdom of Bavaria. This would be close enough to the edge of Germany that it would fall within the range of the East-Baltic characteristic type. So perhaps I was not only a bit to quick to judge but also a bit biased against Germany itself. After all it is quite put down in American classrooms as the mastermind of both World Wars. Obviously I have more to learn.

My genetic profile on Ancestry however leans towards a Nordic and British heritage at least in my active DNA. British however brings up the Borreby group trait which is in someways mistakable with East Baltic because of the wide face. Being over 86% north European though makes me more inclined to believe that my hybridization of types is within those groups. My mother, for example, is naturally blue eyed and dark blonde yet my Dad is a obvious Borreby with Mediterranean hints. Speaking of disparity my Ancestry DNA match to my father was unlocked recently and I see that my 8% southern European does not come from him! This was a bit of a shock but it is interesting since I have yet to match my mother to anything except it's neighbors Germany and France. If I am a Borreby at my core however that explains why I think Highland cows are the most adorable barn animals I've ever seen.

Merry Christmas from Brittania

The time has come that my long awaited DNA testing results are in. As mentioned before my Father didn't like his results but I've been reading more about that. As the Genetic Genealogist puts it "Everybody has two tree's!" So I expected the unexpected but also held fast to the fact that I probablly inherited the more obvious traits from my French line in my mother's tree and now a suspected grouping in my Father's. Much to my surprise I came up with results more like what my Father had expected for himself.

To the left is the snippet from my results placing me well into the Welsh/Irish and English inheritance both my parents carry. It was also looking at this that I realized some of the birth locations for my relatives in France must be formatted wrong because they aren't even on the map here. I assumed that I inherited the Scandinavian from my Dad but in relative finder we don't match there which is odd since he has a high percentage as well.


So this has led me into a bit of a History lesson. Having just watched the "Monarchy: UK" show on Netflix I was rather refreshed on some of the Norman conquest details from my supposed 'Stewart' connection. I used this to explain to my Father why his Central European was probably so high since Norman soldiers settled mostly in that area taking indigenous wives as did there sons for generations.

The southern European is my big surprise which also led to some historical research. I came across two theories besides of course a recent 'npe' (Non Paternity Event). The first is that recent studies have shown that Scottish stock was descended from a paleohispanic peoples called Iberians. Their fisherman it said crossed the bay of Biscay about 6,000 years ago into the Isles.

As an after thought it is also possible that a portion of my southern French families could have actually been Italians living abroad. The Boissil's (Boussey) and Grossejambe's both dead end about 1600.

Now more intresting is a more recent migration via conquest before the Normans. When Rome was at it's end as an empire around 300 AD it had just worked it's way into the British Isles. As the war period broke down the Military men settled in Britain, however it was for 200 years (since the winning of Britain), illegal for Roman men to marry local women. This meant that they shipped in women from other countries in the roman empire like Spain, Italy and France. So by the time the law was lifted there was a strong genetic group of Romans within the confines of Britain. This is why a distinct level of Roman survives today in people of British descent despite their lack of knowledge to it. I look forward to more detail being added to the algorithms in the future especially to uncover my 6% unknown which is twice the amount of my fathers. For now I will plug away trying to find this Italian or Hispanic connection I have.

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Read More about Iberians: Independent News/ Wikipedia
Rome in Britain: Surprising DNA