For the last few years, the technology has been available to have your own DNA analysed to reveal your ethnic makeup. I took the plunge and after a considerable wait was surprised by my own results via the Ancestry DNA offering.
It’s a mixture of delightful (in that’s about you) and yet frustratingly vague as it so general and couched in statistical uncertainties.
I was surprised at my own results on a number of fronts. Alongside the expected 29% of East Asian DNA it revealed a proportion of central Asian DNA (12%), and a small amount of Polynesian! In fact, according to this test, I’m more Greek/Italian, Scandinavian, Irish or Polynesian than I am Portuguese! (at a mere 5%)These numbers are all less than 10% in my ethnic blend. My DNA on this test is 18% British.
The timeline of this analysis extends back hundreds and thousands of years – way beyond the generations of ancestors I have been able to identify. This time scale is ample time to account for these ethnic elements. Roman colonists maybe, Viking invaders and Celtic survivors (Ancestry’s ‘Irish’ category includes Scotland and Wales) in one particular part of the western world, and maybe the Polynesians share DNA with my remote East Asian ancestors. The Central Asian DNA is a reminder of the silk road perhaps. Less than 1% of me has roots back to European Jewry. So all in all, there are the makings of a deeply imaginative family history!
In broad brushstrokes, I’m 41% Asian, 50% European, 6% Polynesian and 3% from West Asian (Caucasus and the Middle East).
The real marketing angle for Ancestry is to use this DNA data to identify likely relatives across their membership, that has the potential to provide some surprising information about our ancestors. I’d be most interested if this managed to reveal anyone who is connected to my paternal grandmother, Isabel Agnes Allen, of whom I know so very little.