So you got Your DNA results. And You open them up. And You see Your ethnicity results.
And a lot of it is probably exactly what You thought was going to be.
Maybe You're mostly European/ maybe You're mostly African. Maybe You're mostly Asian. But in a lot
of cases, You might see that, hey, there's one or two percentage, or maybe five or ten percent,
that is something You weren't expecting- Ashkenazi Jewish, Native American, who knows? There could be
any number of things can You determine how far back in Your ancestry this ethnicity might be.
Howdy, welcome to Family History Fanatics, where we love helping You to climb Your family tree and
have fun along the way. We'll always say that most of Your ethnicity results probably don't have a
lot to do with genetic genealogy. I've said before that Your ethnicity results, for the most part,
don't have a lot to do about genetic genealogy. But for most people, the reason why they took
a DNA test was because of the ethnicity results. And as they're looking at them, they want to know
whether or not some of these small percentages could actually be identified with an ancestor
sometime in the past. So, hypothetically let's take a look at how far back in time we would
need to go for a certain percentage. Well, on average, we know that we get 50 of our DNA from
our parents, and that halves again each generation going back. So, from this, we can start to build a
chart and in this chart here. what it's showing is. It's showing first off how many generations
back- what percentage of DNA. Which is just having each generation and then that relationship.
So, we start with our parents and grandparents go up to great-grandparents all the way to the sixth
great-grandparents at eight generations back. And then also I added a column here for approximately
how many years ago that person was the same age as You. So, I just used 25 Years in general. So,
You can see by eight generations using that it's about 200 Years ago. Which for
most genealogy, You know, that's back to the early 1800s. A lot of records start to die off before
that. So, You might be able to find a nice paper trail back to these sixth great-grandparents.
But it's unlikely that You're going to necessarily find a paper trail for
Your, You know, 7th or 8th or 9th or 10th great-grandparents after that. So,
looking at Your results, You might have 2 percent Ashkenazi Jew and looking at this table here.
You might be thinking, okay, if I'm two percent Ashkenazi Jewish. Well, then that probably fits
in with about fourth great-grandparents. One fourth great-grandparent from 150 Years ago. So,
we think we got two parents. We've got four grandparents. We've got eight great-grandparents,
16 second great, 32 third great, 64 fourth great. So, we're saying that one of those fourth
great-grandparents might have been Ashkenazi Jewish. Now, if this was the exact way the
DNA was passed down. And if this was the exact way that ethnicity was recorded. Then You might
be pretty confident in start searching at that fourth-generation, or sorry that sixth-generation
level- Your fourth great-grandparents, to find who that Ashkenazi Jewish ancestor might be.
But there's a problem with this, and that problem comes up in a couple of different ways.
So, let's look at the first problem, and that problem here is that those percentages are not
always exact. Now, we do get 50 of our DNA from our parents that is true,
but we don't get 25 of our DNA from each one of our grandparents.
There's a range that we could get from each one of them. Now, each set of grandparents,
of course, is going to add up to 50 percent, but for instance, I might have 22 from my grandfather,
and I might then have 28 from my grandmother on one side. Now, that adds up to 50,
but neither one of those is 25. So, that range is about 20 to 30 percent. And then, as we go
down even further, we see that that range extends quite a bit. But on these green highlighted ones,
You'll notice that those ranges start to overlap. So, for instance, hey, between three and seven
percent. Well, that's all fourth and fifth, and in fact between three and five percent. Well,
that's going to include the number six-generation as well. And if I just go down to three to three
and a half percent. Well, I'm really looking at fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh generation.
All could be in that little range. So, for my example here, I had, let's say, two percent
Ashkenazi Jewish. Well, that two percent could be this fifth generation. It could be the sixth
generation. It could be the seventh generation. Or it could be this eighth generation. So, whereas
before, I was saying I need to look at fourth great-grandparents. Well, now, I need to look at
third great-grandparents, of which there's 32 of them. I also need to look at my fifth
great-grandparents, of which there's 128. And my sixth great-grandparents, of which there's 256.
So, You can see here that just by having these little ranges, the number of potential people
that this one ancestor could be has ballooned into quite a number. And honestly, that's, You know,
several hundred people. You're going to have to research in order to figure out
whether or not one of them was this little bit of ancestry. So, that's the first problem that we see
with this table. Before we continue, if You are enjoying this content, there are many ways where
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the second problem has to do with this approximate Years. Now, this is the amount of time between
generations. Now, before on my previous table, I had just used 25. And that's a nice average. But
Your family is probably not average. Just like my family is probably not average. It may be
that that generation was shorter. Or it may be that it was quite a bit longer. So, for instance,
this approximate Years really could be for parents, You know, 20 to 40 Years ago
depending on when You were born. I happen to have been born when my parents were about 25,
26, or so. But I look at our Youngest child in my family, and he was born when
I think both of us were into our 30s. So, the generations can vary quite a bit over time. Now,
that is just going to compound itself. Maybe You had a string of people who
had children very young. Or You had a string of people who had children very old.
What this does is, as we get down here. Before we could get to eight generations in 200 Years. Now,
we are at 200 Years by the fifth generation. So, the sixth generation could be a lot more
than 200 Years- 240 Years. That's for the united states. That's when the united states was founded.
You keep going back to the eighth generation. You're talking 320 Years. So, if You think
finding records 200 Years ago is difficult. Add another 120 Years to that and see how difficult
finding records is for that time period. Now, I know in some places, like my ancestors in the UK,
because of the church records. There's church records back for 400 Years or so. Which is nice.
However, one thing that You'll notice is as those records get older and older, there's less and less
information on them. So, for instance, 320 Years ago would be 1700. So, if we're looking at the
1600s to the early 1700s, a lot of those records only list a first name of the father. And
sometimes not even a first name of the mother. And the first name of the child. And then a surname.
Marriage records, in many cases, wouldn't even list the surname of the mother all the time.
So, when we're looking at genealogy and putting these records together because there's not as
much information, even the records that we do have makes it really difficult to link up to
these different people. So, that is the second big problem with this table. Basically, our
first one is that those percentages are not exact- they're a range. And the second one is that those
approximate Years are not exact either they're a range. And both of them complicate trying to do
research onto a ancestor that is five, six, seven, eight generations back. Now, the last thing that
we have to be worried about is how those ethnicity percentages are calculated. And for this, I can
only just say that we always have to remember that we have two chromosomes. We have a chromosome
from our father, and we have a chromosome from our mother. for each one of those 22 chromosomes,
when we test the testing, companies don't know which letters go to which chromosome. They
don't know which ones are for the paternal they don't know which ones are for the maternal. So,
they're all mixed together. There's sometimes when we can take a look at pieces of our paternal and
our maternal. So, let's just say that, hey, if we just look at this little piece right here.
Because of the sequence of each of them, it might actually look like a slightly different ethnicity
than what we had planned. In some cases, it might look at like a very different ethnicity than what
either one of them is by themselves. So, that's two problems from our chart. plus a third problem
from analyzing this in the first place. Which is why for the most part, when You have Your
ethnicity results, many genetic genealogists will let You know, hey, certainly as You're starting
out. don't worry about ethnicity percentages below, You know, five percent in some cases,
below two percent. Because there's these problems that You're going to deal. Have to deal with in
order to try to figure out whether that is a representation of Your real heritage or if it is
falling into one of these categories of problems and just not able to be resolved. That doesn't
mean that these small percentages are always not going to be resolved. But it's much more difficult
to figure them out. particularly if You don't already have a well-developed family tree. If
You don't already have a family tree that is very well documented for five or six generations back.
I wouldn't worry about these small percentages for separate ethnicities.
But if You have gotten a very good documented tree and You want to try to tackle this. It might be a
fun challenge for You. Now, if You'd like to learn about something similar to ethnicity results, but
in MyHeritage, it's called Genetic Groups, then check out this video up here. And if You'd like
to learn something else about DNA, then check out this video down below. can You determine?