Have you ever thought of having your DNA tested?

[deyana]

Some interesting tidbits I learned. My uncle (my dad's brother) also had his dna done. We know this as Ancestry DNA tells you who you are related to, as long as they have had their dna tested too. I guess it's all in their database.

Anyway, I checked to see what the common countries were and as well as South Asia, there was - Britain, Central Asia, Polynesia, Finland/North West Russia, and Scandinavia. So I can assume that of the 20% of my dna that is not South Asian must come from these countries. The largest amount being from Britain. Of course there is no way of being sure unless I do my own dna test, but it's a pretty good bet I'd say. The strange thing is I think my son must have his British dna mostly through me.

This makes me wonder who that British ancestor was? Did he (or she) come over during the British occupation of India?  Going by the percentages this would have been somewhere during 1730 to 1830.  Or maybe it was more than one person, as both my parents could have been descendants from different English People. As for the 2% Finland/Russia, I have no idea. And nor do I know anything about the 6% Scandinavian which my uncle and my son both have too. These percentages would be double in me. These two genes obviously  come from my dad's side of the family. But I have a feeling that most of the British dna would come from my mom's side of the family.

Frankly I am surprised at just how much European genes there is, I really didn't expect it to be so high. It is a possibility then that one of my parents was around a quarter British, or if both, then that amount was distributed differently among them both.

I will let you know of my dna results at a later date!

[deyana]

Hi Mich

Well, I don't know if insurance companies and so forth would be allowed to use people's dna results in any way. Millions of people have their dna checked without any issues. It took nearly two months for the results to come back, so I think it's getting to be more and more common.

[Deleted]

It is indeed fascinating.
For me, I really think it would be fairly predictable as both sides of my family hail from Eastern Europe.
So, while I believe I am 100% percent Polish, there is most certainly some Russian and perhaps German heritage as the region of Poland where my ancestors hail from is right on the current border of Russia, which at one time was called Belorussia or White Russia or Belarus. It gets complicated and has been for decades.

I have in the past been more curious about the various canine mixes that we have had and what their genetic mix is but it's costly and, well, it's more out of curiosity.

[bjd]

From what I understood about the DNA testing being proposed by National Geographic, for example, is not so definite and recent, like the village your grandmother came from. It's much more distant and shows the different strains of DNA (haplogroups) that make up your genetic signature. So insurance doesn't have anything to do with it.

There is also genetic testing for certain illnesses or crime scenes, but I don't believe it's the same kind.

[kerouac2]

One of the most interesting things I read in the recent DNA articles is that it was discovered that Homo Sapiens has a little bit of Neanderthal mixed in, contrary to what was believed before.

Anyway, I did a quick search of the cost of such a test and it looks like most of them start at about 200€.

[mich64]

Sorry to bring the insurance question into the debate Deyana, I got confused and realized there is a difference between the Ancestry.com tests and the 23 And Me tests. The latter test is what concerns me, that is why I was interested to know of the assurances provided of how long the information is kept or kept at all. The 23 and Me tests define possible medical conditions from the submitted home test.

[spindrift1]

Hello Deyana
This thread is fascinating. I intend to have my DNA tested one of these days. I am of English/Irish descent and would be disappointed if nothing 'exotic' showed up. I see that the DNA website your son used has a special offer so I might go for it. Indeed - several friends also want to be tested so it would be fun for us to send off samples at the same time and open the envelopes together.

[deyana]

Hi Spindrift. How are you?

It is a fascinating subject. It would be so interesting to know what your dna results will be. Please do let us know when they come in!

K2, I don't understand why in France they would be charging you all 200 euros. Here on a special offer it costs $80 Canadian. But usually 100 or 120 Dollars.

No worries, Mich. From what I understand both those companies tell us about our dna in a slightly different way. Or rather different information that is related to it.

bjd, I believe that if you pay for the more expensive dna tests, you will get a more thorough analysis. For instance from which village your ancestors came from and so forth. But I haven't really looked into all that, so am not sure. I think most people just choose the basic one.

[bjd]

Deyana, it wasn't a question of more or less expensive tests. They were all around 80 or 100 US$. The problem was that Natinal GEographic charged postage according to the price of the product, hence it came out to about $80, despite a test kit being much lighter than a heavy atlas or something.

[deyana]

Hello everyone

I just wanted to drop in quickly and post my dna results, which I just got in recently:

There were no real surprises really.


76% South Asian
10% Finland/Northwest Russia
6% Ireland/Scotland/Wales
4% Scandinavia
3% Asia Central
< (less then) 1% Polynesia

[deyana]

Apart from the fact that I was wrong about having British dna. There wasn't any at all!

I guess it's not a perfect science and they did say on there that there are advances being made all the time.  As more people appear on their database, the more accurately  they can predicts a person's dna.

[kerouac2]

I'm still thinking about this! Finland/Russia does not surprise me because they spread just about everywhere in the northern hemisphere.

[bjd]

I had actually decided to have mine tested a few months ago through MyHeritage.com. When I put in my information, I was told that it was unavailable for France. A little googling taught me that it is in fact illegal in France unless a judge orders DNA testing for a paternity suit or something similar. Obviously French laws have not kept up with the times.

[deyana]

bjd, it does seem that way. And dna companies won't ship their tests to South Africa for some reason. Not sure why. Maybe they are forbidden to do so?

[deyana]

So, it's been a very interesting dna journey!

I have been digging into my Russian/European  side of the family/ancestry. And I am getting somewhere.

I have cousins on my dna connections page (on ancestrydna) with the name Herklotz.  I have messaged them and am finding out more as I go along.

I went into it further and this is what I have discovered so far.  The name and family are or were very prominent in India.  And there were some surprises in store.



Johannah Jacoba Bruce formerly Herklotz
Born about 1810 in Chunchura, West Bengal, Indiamap

Wife of John Bruce — married 18 Oct 1831 in Calcutta, Bengal, Indiamap
Descendants
Mother of Mary (Bruce) Lefroy and Emily Helen (Bruce) Hiley
Died 18 Jun 1904 in Stamford, Lincolnshire, England, United Kingdommap



Some more about the family linage:


Johannah is 23 degrees from Emily Brontë, 24 degrees from Steven Tibbetts and 16 degrees from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.


Johannah was born in about 1810.

She married John Bruce on 18 October 1831 at Calcutta, Bengal, India.

They had at least two children in India; John William and Margaret Hannah.

Her husband was in the military. The family returned to England in 1840.

Johannah, together with her husband and their now family of six children (five daughters and an infant son) emigrated to Australia, travelling on the convict transport ship Hashemy, and arrived at Fremantle on 25 October 1850.

They had at least one child after their arrival in Australia.

Her husband went on to become Commandant of Forces of the Western Australia. He passed away in 1870.

Johannah returned to England.

UK Census Date 31 March 1901: Living in St George Square, Stamford St George, Lincolnshire, England. Aged 91. Also in the household was her 50 year old daughter Emily Helen Hiley and three servants.

She passed away in 1904 at the age of 94.

 Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her writings and  the novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature.


The connection to Queen Victoria:

TAKE A LOOK

(I was going to add an attachment too but it looks like I can't do it on this forum).

I'm wondering what Kerouac thinks of my dna connection to Queen Victoria? 

[kerouac2]

Fits your personality!

[bjd]

So which testing company did you use, Deyana?

[Deleted]

I have been leaning more and more in the direction of having mine tested.

While both my parents are of Polish heritage, Poland was invaded so many times, who the hell knows what ethnic origins are mixed in.

My mother's family is from an area of Poland that is so very close to Russia I believe that at one time it was known as "white Russia" so surely there must be Russian blood running through my veins.

It's also much less expensive from what I understand so I may well have it done.

Very interesting and intriguing findings Deyana.
Were you surprised or did you have "inklings" so to speak of what the test revealed?

An interesting topic.
Thanks for posting it D.

[questa]

A friend of mine was born in the city of Lvov, USSR and came to Australia as a child after leaving the displaced persons camps.
His Australian passport showed this as his birth place.

After The Soviet break-up Lvov became part of Ukraine and the city went back to its old name of Lviv.

In due course my friend became due to renew his passport. He gave as his birthplace as Lviv, Ukraine but Australian officials couldn't get the concept that the place of birth was the same, only the names had changed and the borders moved a few kilometres.

They insisted he was trying to change his birthplace to avoid being Russian born on his passport.

Casimira, I'm sure you have heard of similar stories.

[bjd]

Questa, that's a problem with cities in border areas in Europe.

Depending on your friend's age the city has had several names. If he was born between 1918 and 1945, the city was Polish and called Lwów. Between the end of the 18th century and 1918, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and called Lemberg. When the Soviets took over and the border of Poland was moved west, the Russians called in Lvov, even though it was located in the Ukrainian SSR. It's now part of independent Ukraine, and they call it Lviv.

It's actually a beautiful city, at least the old part, even though in Soviet times it was not taken care of. But restoration work is being done now (often badly). My husband and I went there on vacation 10 years ago.

[kerouac2]

Here I am.

imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img922/3765/TEeQuj.jpg

[deyana]

Hey, K2, you had your dna tested!

Such an interesting result too. I bet you were surprised to learn that your 2nd largest dna composition is the Middle East!

It's a small world after all. You and I both have some Scandinavian and Finnish ancestry. (Maybe we have a common ancestor)

So, France does allow for people to have their dna tested I see.   Is that a recent thing?

[deyana]

bjd, I used Ancestry.ca


www.ancestry.ca/

[kerouac2]

I'm not sure if France changed the law or if the DNA companies just decided to ignore it.

[deyana]

I'm glad they do.

[patricklondon]

Interesting article in the Guardian magazine yesterday. Among other things it made the point that when they're reporting how your DNA matches up with others, the potential fallibility of their underlying database has much to do with the fact that they're comparing with the current geographical distribution of DNA information, not a complete historical overview. So telling you there's an n% similarity to Ireland or Scandinavia or whatever isn't saying very much about your heritage/"ethnicity". Few parts of the world don't already have a mixed population anyway.


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[bjd]

I read that too, Patrick. I imagine that is the reason they look for DNA typical of certain areas by testing people whose families have lived in the same place for centures. Although, as you say, that is becoming quite rare.

[kerouac2]

Except for the isolated islands and things like the inuit communities of the far north, I wouldn't expect things to not be extremely mixed. The list of African possibilities was also huge, because I presume that "tribes" did not mix much even if they might have wanted to, due to all of the jungle obstacles.

The thing that surprised me the most was that my DNA was not more mixed. But that part of Europe has been mixing so much for so long that I assume that there is no way to create more sub-categories.

[lagatta]

Inuit are now very much more mixed with peoples from the "South".

[kerouac2]

It is also the biggest zone on the entire DNA map because it stretches across Russia, Canada and Greenland.