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Racial Origins, Ethnicity. & Big-Y Analysis Topics covered in this web:
Introduction: Recently I watched a webinar presented by Ran Snir from MyHeritage. It appears that Ran and his group have been working on this process for a number of years and just about have the solution but it still has a few bugs that need to be worked out. I watched this webinar twice as I found it hard to believe that a learned person would attempt to analyze data and predict results that are based on a statistical solution when it appeared what they were doing was using random data and trying to fit that data to different populations. A good way to look at this in a very simplistic form it to take a circle and draw a straight line that intersects the circle in two locations. A population of points near any intersection of the line and circle could be thought of as a population and if your data point fell within that group then you were part of that population. However, if you drew many other lines then any line that intersected the circle close to the same location as first stated would have a separate population and now you would not be able to determine which population was associated with either of the two lines. Different mutations or SNP's as they are called, are random events and happened at different time since the beginning of time when modern man first came into existence. To try and use the random events and try and correlate them to where a person in you ancestral Pedigree was born or their country of origin is nothing but trying to use random data to predict where a future event will occur. The way that different people show how DNA is shared generation after generation is very confusing and in some ways appears to be incorrect according to my understanding of the process. My understanding is as follows: Each person has 23 pairs of chromosomes, the first 22 are pairs while the 23rd is the sex chromosome. These chromosome are one from the father and the other from the mother of the person in question. When we are told that a person receives half of their chromosomes from their father then for each chromosome a single chromosome either from the father or mother is passed on to the child. This can be thought of as a binary number with a length of 23 binary digits. All combinations are possible which gives a total of Hex values from 000000 to 7FFFFF with each value having the same probability. One can think of this in the following way: If the single binary digit is a 1 then that chromosome was receive from the father, if it is a 0 then it was from the mother. All males receive their Y-Chromosome from their father which resulted in a male child. If they received an X-Chromosome from the father then the child is a female, Since the mother only has two X-Chromosomes then one of these will be her contribution to the new child.. Since this is a random process, then on average, half will be from the father and half from the mother but in actual cases, all values are possible. What most, if not all, people tend to show is that the value is half for each generation when in fact, it is random. What each person ends up with as their contribution from their ancestors is totally random but the different testing companies and people who give seminars tend to show this as a fixed value as it helps to cover their lack of knowledge of the random process and helps to sell tests that may be useless in gathering new information on ancestors of that line. A far better approach would be to use a Computer Simulation to show the process but this would only be available to a limited few who are able to understand the complex processes. When one has their Autosomal DNA tested and the results show a match with someone then you must have a full Pedigree that has been obtained by solid research techniques to be able to determine where the common ancestors exist in the Pedigree. The Autosomal DNA test is only usable/usefull for up to 3-4 cousin level, anything beyond that range is pure speculation. One way that a person can look at this is for anyone being tested, the minimum amount of shared DNA must be at least one chromosome or about 150 cM. Since each person has 23 Chromosome pairs and half are passes on for each generation then for each generation the following number of chromosomes, on average, are passed on: First Gen (child) 23; Second Generation(grand child) 12; Third Generation(great grand child) 6; Fourth Generation(great-great grand child) 3; Fifth Generation(great-great-great grand child) 1.5. The next generation would have less than one chromosome which can be interpreted as some will receive one chromosome from the original ancestral line and others will receive nothing and show no shared DNA for that ancestral line. Only people that have been tested and match with someone else on that single Chromosome are related but the number of generations back to the common family is pure speculation. Only a Pedigree chart will tell the connection. The main problem that I find is that most people that match you have a very limited Pedigree and many show none at all which makes it impossible to show how they connect to you. You have been warned as this is the main limitation in Autosomal DNA results. There is also another gross error in the Autosomal DNA analysis databases and that is found when a person has more than one set of Autosomal DNA results then you would be shown as a match to yourself. The results shown at GEDMatch indicate that you are a sibling to yourself when in fact you should show a total shared DNA of approximately double the amount of a child to a parent. This gross error has been pointed out to the company but nothing has been done about it in over one year of lapsed time, Back to Top Actual Images: Back to Top Table of Results:
Back to Top Relationships of people shown are: Arnie & Lila, parents of Janet, Jeff, & Jocelyn Back to Top Testing Companies: Which
one should I use? FTDNA: This is a testing lab only that sell kits and do the analysis and keep your records on file. What you pay up-front for the kit is the total amount that you pay for the results. Your email address is what is used to contact anyone that matches you or any correspondence with the company. This is the only testing company that allows a person to upload their Pedigree that is available for anyone who matches them to view. The format for the Pedigree only shows the first five-generations on your computer screen but can be extended to show five-generations from any starting person. This is a great disadvantage as they should allow a person to show the total Pedigree with the maximum number of generations user selected and the user then would pan across the pedigree to determine where the two Pedigrees intersected, Tools to facilitate finding all matches between the person tested and another person are a major advantage and also allow the user to download the data for these matches in a CSV format so they can be studied using a spreadsheet program. None of the other testing companies offer this tool as far as I have been able to determine. A Chromosome Browser is provided that allows the user to view up to 7 persons at a time on all 22 chromosomes plus the X Chromosome. Images of actual human chromosomes are available at many links. Link to images I bacame aware of this area of research way back in the early 1960's when I knew a person by the name of Dr. Roy Bather who worked at the Cancer Research Center in Saskatoon(See fourth paragraph). Ancestry.ca/Ancestry.com: This is a company that sells
access to information. They do not do the actual test which is done by "The
Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation" now called SMGF as the origial founder
of the company died in 2008. When you purchase an Autosomal DNA kit you also
receive a 6-month free membership in Ancestry.com/Ancestry.ca During this time
of your free membership, you have access to any of your matches but the contact
method is not by normal email but by a special system of internal messaging that
only works if you are a member of Ancestry. If you fail to pay a yearly fee then
you cannot access your results or contact anyone you match. This yearly fee is
$200 for the USA only or $300 for any area that covers the USA and any other
part of the world. This means that you have a $300/year cost to access your
information or contact any of your matches. If you are very active in family
history research then you will have need to access Census and other records in
many different countries of the world and Ancestry.com is an ideal way to do this. It costs a lot
less to view Census or Church records from your computer at home than it does to
travel many hundreds of miles to far off places, stay in hotels for weeks at a
time to find the detailed information that is required to produce your Pedigree
that is as many generations as possible. You need a Pedigree of at least 6-8
generations for people that match you because you share DNA with them. This
means that your complete Pedigree will contain 256 names with a total of 128
different surnames. This is the ideal situation and is very difficult to achieve
in a normal life time unless you have had help from many others who have done
the majority of the work for you. A rough figure for cost is between $100-
$1000/person if you have to do pay someone to do the work for you. To have
access to information at $300/year is a real cost saving factor for any true
genealogy researcher and is a blessing in disguise. However, many people today
have their database with their Pedigree at Ancestry.com and do not have it on a
genealogy program on their own private computer and they don't realize that it
is like vapor-ware that will disappear when they don't pay their yearly fee. The
other factor that these people don't realize is that their database is only
viewable by others who pay the yearly free to Ancestry. this means that
Ancestry collects both ways, once from those that produce the database and
secondly by anyone who views their database. I can't even send my children or
grandchildren a link to our data on Ancestry as they are told that they have to
pay to see their own information. No facilities are available to upload a Pedigree but you
are continuously encouraged to add more people to your tree and have more people
tested. Nothing but a money grab. It is possible to produce a Pedigree diagram
when you have access to someone else's database but to make a hardcopy of a 6-8
Generation Pedigree is impossible. MyHeritage: This Company is very similar to Ancestry.com but they don't have as much general information as Ancestry.com. I have a yearly membership that costs me $150 and that gives me access to information and some records but it is a real pain to try and find anything. It appears that many people left Ancestry.com when people could leave comments on their database that showed they had errors in their research and to get around this they went to MyHeritage and hid behind a shield and didn't receive any comments. No facilities for a Pedigree and very difficult to build your own tree but you are encouraged to join someone else's tree. Has a Chromosome Browser that allows up to seven matches at a time to be viewed for the 22 Chromosomes, no X Chromosome available. Has an Auto Cluster Tool that allows you to view those that you match that are "in Common" with other you match similar to FTDNA's "in Common" tool. No provision for a Pedigree or loading your tree from a GED file, you have to manually enter every person by hand. 23 & Me: To be added by someone who has this service.
GEDMatch: GEDMatch is a free database of Autosomal DNA information and Pedigree files that people can upload their data and everyone has access to the datafile of anyone they match which is the ideal way to see how a person that you share DNA with matches your Pedigree also matches their Pedigree. This is where the problem arises as many that upload the DNA data to GEDMatch do not have a Pedigree and that is like a person with only one arm who tries to clap their hands to make a noise. It just can't be done. There are rudimentary tools available for those who use the free tools section but the real power comes when you pay a fee to use the more powerful tools that cost $10/month or $100/year. This is a very good deal and worth the cost for the serious researcher. Back to Top The following grid shows the shared DNA between each person. The units are in centi-morgans(cM) Total/Longest-segment(cM) Relationships of individuals are shown in the section above. Use you back arrow to return to this grid. All values shown in black are from FTDNA, shown in RED are from Ancestry.com
The table shown above is for people with a close relationship. However, people are related to many others and the relationship is from a connection that is shown on your pedigree from several generations back from the person tested. This section explains how to do an orderly approach to determine the connection and checking the accuracy by using your Pedigree. Family Finder Shared DNA Back to Top Shared DNA - Grand-Parents to Grand-Children This section is being included to give a better insight into
the amount of shared DNA between Grnad-Parents and Grand-Children and what
position on each chromosome this shared DNA is located. This is the same method
that one tries to use when tring to find common anctestral families that go back
many generations but in that situation there is no known data for the
intermediate generations and different families that make up the Pedigree of
each individual. As grandfather, my contribution is my Pedigree from myself
upward(Krause/Andrews) and as Grandmother, Lila, has her Pedigree from herself
upward(Jackson/Thompson) Data for three more grand-children will be available in the next two months. Back to Top Summary: As stated in the
introduction, each facility has advantages and disadvantages and the user has to
choose which one is best for them. None are perfect and sometimes a combination
is what is required. Personally, I use my own computer database for my tree
which is more like a forest of trees as I keep all my trees in one database
that has over 260,700 individuals. I publish my data in the form of eBooks,
charts, and reports to my web so that others have access to the information. My
small database at Ancestry.com is called
Br-01A
Krause and contains approximately 75 individuals to cover my immediate
family and their ancestors and Web links from this tree take the reader to
reports, charts, and eBooks for a particular family line. The profile page for
some of the key people contain links to my web that gives access to all of the
eBooks, reports and Pedigrees.
Example
profile page. The two links shown above are for the paternal side of our
tree, the next two links are for the Maternal side of our tree.
Br-01A
Krause maternal and
Example
profile page maternal. The images and table that shows the percentage ethnicity for different countries vary widely and should only be thought of as a hint to the ethnicity of an individual. The values are arrived at by trying to fit the occurrence of certain mutations on your chromosomes to a reference population. Since all of these factors are random then the results are very unreliable and any researcher should know that you cannot analyze random data but the DNA companies only look at it from their point of view as it sells kits to people and that keeps the shareholders of the company happy. A good example of a person with an ethnicity that is wildly wrong is that of Lila, her ancestors are predominantly Loyalists from New England that came to Canada in 1783-1784. These Loyalists were mainly from England and Scotland. In some cases the ancestors of a Loyalist family can be traced back the Pilgrims who were the first settlers to come to the USA. To say that these people are of a certain ethnicity is very difficult as they are a mixture of all the people that make up a persons Pedigree that goes back many generations. Our children and grandchildren are related to three different Presidents of the USA, namely: Abraham Lincoln, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. The later two descend from families on the Mayflower and you have to go back 16 generations to find the connections. Ancestry of George W. Bush connection to the Mayflower. If I work back and determine the actual ethnicity of our children, Janet, Jeff, and Jocelyn, they are 31.25% European/German and 68.75% Scotish/English/Loyalist . The Wannop grandchildren are 15.625 % European/German and 84.375% UK. The Krause grandchildren are 15.625% European/German, 50% Euopean/Ukrianian, and 34.375% UK. What the DNA test results show differs greatly from the actual ethnicity. We are all Canadians equal with none above or below each other and the faster society realizes that, it will get rid of some the racism that exists in society today. We are all human beings, and we have descended from one common male and one common female so we are all brothers and sisters in the distant past. Be proud of your heritage but also be tolerant of others. If not, you become a racist if you put one group above another. Based on what I see from the prediction of a person's Ethnicity from their DNA, the more convinced I am that Ancestry.com has a copy of my database and have used a GED-crawler to determine the areas and ethnicity groups for many people. My Krause line goes back into Germany but I am on what I call Branch-01. Each Krause line that I track was given a different Branch number that range from 1-87. Some in mine are also in a database by Dick Krause and they included my line and a number of his because he was the Administrator for the Kraus/Krause Surname group at FTDNA but he had his database at the same platform as mine and that was WorldConnect and Ancestry.com is the company behind the screen and they have copies of all the databases and that is how they try to predict or create a population group that is used to predict ethnicity. What they don't realize is that all my Branches and the Branches that Dick Kraus had were either shown as adopted siblings or DNA siblings or better named as DNA-Cousins. Where the common family that connects the children is unknown and any analysis based on this approach is analyzing random data which produces garbage out because they don't understand what they are doing. A hint, YES, but fact, NO!!!!! One of the main precautions that one must take with any company that does your DNA test is that you must ensure that your data will be available to you for further study and analysis in future years. I have recently found out that FTDNA after it was sold to a different company changed their method of presenting information and the results were that the presentation of results were greatly reduced compared to the previous system. The only way that I can see that you can protect yourself from this kind of problem is to transfer your raw data to a different platform that allows you to control how the data is presented and has very powerful analysis tools. At the present time it appears that GEDMatch is the platform that everyone should use and that would bring all data together and allow users free access to tools and data that are much superior to the ones at any testing company or platform like FTDNA, Ancestry.co, MyHeritage, etc. The link to create an account at GEDMatch is found at the following link: GEDMatch Platform For those who use Ancestry.com as their platform for DNA and trees, this is a real dilemma. The best way to describe Ancestry.com is like keeper of information, some that is true and others that are false and you are presented with a green leaf or hint for your tree and you must decide if the information is true or false. In other words, you need to know the answer to be able to use the hint. Most hints and other people's trees are filled with errors and if you just accept the hint and not prove it as fact and associated with your information, then you have created an error that will be perpetuated by others. If you try to contact others about what information they have, you get not reply and it is totally frustrating to try to work in a vacuum with no contact with what others have done. Are they scared to admit that they have only copies the information and will not defend what they have? It takes a special kind of personality to publish information and be able to defend it when required to do so. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Back to Top
Back to homepage Last updated: 08 January, 2023 |
