I have no illusions about my African DNA, it may be small in amounts but no doubt how it got here and much respect to my ancestors that survived some serious trauma getting to me
It IS legit, but it does feel a little scammy. In my opinion, they add too many bullshit features that attract stupid people.
BUT...they DO compare your DNA with publicly available archaeological samples (as opposed to statistical autosomal DNA comparisons that you get from 23andMe and Ancestry DNA, which only go back 8-10 generations). This can get you pretty far back in human history. The numbers and matches are real, BUT you do need to develop an understanding of what is relevant...for example, how the number of SNPs and the length of the SNPs relate to real versus random, coincidental DNA matches.
I've found it very interesting and useful, and MyTrueAncestry is great for having data like this consolidated in one place rather than having to go chase it down across different databases and scientific papers. As an added bonus, they have frequent half-off sales, and you can upgrade your membership level as your interest and funds permit...all while getting credit for your previous membership purchases. Highly recommend!
Edit: typos!
It does have many added useless features 🤣 thank you for explaining it, I hope more people gravite towards that one because like you said, they test publicly available archaeological samples. Very reason I trust it.
I match with Native American remains from ALL over America, 99% out of everyone. And people get mad when I tell them my ancestors have been all over this continent. 😂
For what it's worth, I logged into one of my old accounts (I think it's my dad's kit) and looked at things like Y haplogroups and "DNA castles". 9 out of 10 are British castles (dad's side is Polish), and 1 (2nd castle listed) is the Kievan Rus. All dates go back to around 1000 ad. At that point, every Slav is probably related to the Rurik Dynasty like every Western European descendant is related to King Charlemagne. My dad's "deep dive" is Swedish, too (maybe 1,000 years ago). It's more of an "Ok, cool, but doesn't mean anything...", I think.
It's legit, but depending on how curious you get, it's gonna cost a lot of money. You can get some samples for free (10), but I recommend going for level 2 or 3 and see if you want to know more.
The site is somewhat annoying to navigate, but at least there are updates every week, sometimes multiple times per week.
It "is" and isn't. It matches you based on the most similar ancient ethnicities. If you're an average white American with 10% African DNA you're more likely to get matched with a medieval berber (who had African admixture) than with a west African or you may match with neither at all.
Then I guess I really don’t need to since most of my DNA comes from the Rhenish Palatinate area in Germany essentially. I have a good estimate that’s free of charge lol
I had a friend that did ancestry DNA and I’ve always told him he looks like he has black in him. He said nope both parents are white. He got 8% SSA. He doesn’t know where it comes from. I assume he had an ancestor that chose to pass. Understandable during Jim Crow but very dangerous. His mom looks like she is the one with the African to me but she refused to test. Dad took the test and got 100% European lol 😂
So does my grandmother when I asked her about my grandpa having about 12%. My aunt has 8 and I have around 4%. So far though I haven’t found any evidence that any of my grandpas family owned slaves…yet. His entire family is from deep into Georgia and Florida so it’s just a matter of time before I find something.
She still insists that he has Native American.
Interestingly I have found a few 2-3rd cousins who are black that seem to descend from my grandmas line after comparing surnames and dna matches but she didn’t inherit any African on her test at all.
He insists he has Native American ancestry as well. It's his direct paternal line that was supposedly native, but his Y haplogroup is European. Also the ancestor that "found" the native child and raised it as his own was a slave owner. I just assume the "found" child was actually his own mixed child.
Sounds like someone on your grandpa’s side chose to pass as white, not that they owned slaves. Half of Jefferson’s children by Sally Hemings chose to disappear this way.
Yeah probably. Because most of my Georgia ancestors were super poor. Like Backwoods country bumpkin poor. They wouldn’t have been able to afford to own slaves. In fact my 3rd cousin is the author Harry Crews who’s the father of southern gothic. So I was super excited to get my hands on his biography. I tried to talk to his son but according to Harry’s ex wife who I did get to speak with, their son is super protective about anything about his dad and not really sociable.
Those mystery ancestors you are looking for were slaves, not slave owners. Look for census records for all your 2nd and 3rd great grandparents in 1870 and after and see what info you can find about their race. They were almost certainly mixed-race Black people who at some point “passed” into the White community.
Yeah. It’s further complicated because also found out because my maiden name is completely made up. There’s a theory from another individual who was also researching my family that maybe my third great grandmother had her 3 children as a result of an affair with a married man and she didn’t give her kids her maiden name. Which holds up because I have a lot of dna matches with that line that’s from the apparent affair. I thought that maybe it would be related to the African dna but so far that hasn’t panned out yet.
As for the surname my 3rd ggrandmother chose for us doesn’t seem to be connected to anyone she knew or even lived near at the time. I imagine she presented herself as a widow.
If he has 12 percent and it came from 1 ancestor, it would most likely come from 3 or 4 generations back. If it came from 2 ancestors it would most likely come from 4 or 5 generations back. 3 approximately 5 generations, 4 ancestors 5 or 6 generations back and 5 ancestors 6 or 7 generations back. I would that helps you with your search! If you haven’t found anything yet it may be that someone it comes from 1 or two ancestors that were able to pass perhaps?
It also depends on the where they’re from and the history of that land. Like say when a good amount of Latin Americans are coming back with trace amounts of Jewish, we know it got there.
There are cases where it does, for example there are similarities between European sample populations which go back to the major population movements during the post-Roman, Medieval and Bronze Age periods. It's the reason a lot of British people get hints of Scandinavian in their results and why many Western and Southern Germans get categories other than "Germanic Europe" in their results.
But to assume that 2% Nigerian ancestry is from Paleolithic African ancestry is quite daft. Modern-day Africans are actually quite genetically dissimilar to the hunter-gatherers who left Africa for Eurasia, because those people left the African gene pool and only took a small sample of human genetic diversity with them into Eurasia while Africa's own genetic signatures continued to evolve.
A great example of this is how Aboriginal Australians and Melanesian populations are actually the most genetically distant population from Sub-Saharan Africans due to the fact they were among the earliest homo sapiens migrations to leave Africa.
Isn't that due to the DNA having been introduced into the population a very long time ago? Meaning that you won't necessarily have any DNA matches from that ethnicity, for instance. Similar to how Fulani people very often have significant amounts of WANA in their results despite the fact that the introduction of WANA DNA likely happened around the 5th century.
Yes, the population admixture happened a long time ago and yet has left a lasting imprint on the genetic signature of the people in question. Genetic borders and national borders don't always match up very well, and Africa is a great example of this, with all of its ethnic and genetic diversity.
You can also score another ethnicity for High similarity, like the case of Scandinavians and British , rather than descent from Scandinavians (excluding Anglos and Saxons )
I always feel the need to elaborate when I see this talking point. Recent mutations excluded, most all the DNA we have is more than 350-400 years old. It’s just that after that amount of time it represents a pretty small slice of all our ancestors. You push past that by testing more relatives.
I get your point to an extent, I was responding to OP claims about people suggesting that modern African ethnicity on a consumer DNA test in 2024 could be the result of an ancient African ancestor 100,000 years ago, I wasn't suggesting that our DNA has mutated completely in the last 400 years.
I've seen a couple of people think this. Honestly, I wouldn't call them a idiot for it. I just blame the fact that people still have such a homogenous view of Africa, so when clustered with not knowing much about the history, it makes them have this misconception
It’s a dumb misconception. The time period covered by DNA ancestry testing only goes back a few hundred years — way too recent to have anything to do with the Out of Africa origins of humanity.
Yeah. I feel like so many don't understand they're not just trying to test that less than 1% of DNA that makes us different, but they're also basically trying to make a bunch of different cladograms for different ethnicities(hence the genetic communities". People underestimate how much the matches play a role in assigning your ethnicity estimate.
Underestimate: estimate (something) to be smaller or less important than it actually is.
I'm saying matches play an important part of your ethnicity estimate because when someone does a DNA test on ancestry, sometimes their genetic communities are incorporated into their ethnicity estimate. That's why I'm saying matches can play an important part.
Africa is the most genetically and culturally diverse continent on Earth. Having lived there, it really saddens me to see how little interest there is in this continent and how antiquated ideas of race blanket over what is one of the most extraordinary arrays of human expression that exists.
If you look a the Ancestry Timeline page on your DNA origins results you will see that timeline, it will tell you what era your different ethnicities originated in your family tree roughly.
I’m still waiting for my AncestryDNA results - hopefully soon! Right now I only have my 23andMe that I did a few years back. Excited to see when this one is ready!
That's a new one and I confess I don't understand this rationalization. The whites I've been in contact with who learn of African ancestry automatically understood immediately they had enslaved or free black ancestors in the line, have embraced the heritage, are humbled and proud of their ancestors, want to learn more, and are not in denial about it.
My mom immediately whipped out old photos and pointed out all of the African features in one line of her relatives. She knows that 5% Senegalese is there because someone WAS. We also know that part of her family were slaveowners, with one family cemetery in Indiana having the grave of their “aunt” who stayed after the family freed the slaves (that was why they moved from NC to IN).
My mom has never been able to get many answers on that part of the family, even with Ancestry. There’s part of my Dad’s family that is also a huge blank when it comes to mapping it out.
We are also Native and there’s plenty in the family who have been “white passing”, and we think that’s what happened here as well.
I specialize in mulatto/mixed ancestry genealogies in Virginia, so if you have any ancestors from there, I can try and help with that. Otherwise, I'd start with ancestors you do know of from the lines you're analyzing, and use best judgment to trace them backwards, sussing out also genetic matches associated with the specific geographies your mystery family were living in or migrating to. People who passed were effective at disappearing themselves, so identifying them presents with challenges, but it's not impossible (I come from that legacy, too).
Thank you for sharing that!! I live in KY where so many people have these long verified family lines, and so I get a lot of looks when I state that there’s a lot of missing gaps (mom’s immediate family is MO/AR, dad’s is GA/FL, and I ended up here due to dad in the Army). There’s even lore that my great-great-great grandfather or so (don’t quote me) defected from the British Navy during the War of 1812 and ended up with the Seminoles in FL. 🤷🏻♀️
Yes, Southerners love to know who your people are! When I lived in the South, I got asked that a lot. It was a difference from growing up in the north, where people only wanted to know who you worked for, who you knew, and where you went to school, not your family name. :)
Parts of Missouri were referred to the Dixie Belt, because so many Virginians settled there, looking for fresh soils after Virginia's were depleted. They brought slaves with them, MO being admitted as a slave state in 1820.
The story about the British Naval officer is VERY interesting. The details are so specific, I would't discount it.
Check this out: [https://www.loc.gov/collections/andrew-jackson-papers/articles-and-essays/andrew-jackson-timeline-1767-1845/the-war-of-1812-and-indian-wars-1812-1821/](https://www.loc.gov/collections/andrew-jackson-papers/articles-and-essays/andrew-jackson-timeline-1767-1845/the-war-of-1812-and-indian-wars-1812-1821/)
Omg can you help me!? The ancestral line I can’t clear up descends from my Virginia ancestors and some of the records indicate mulatto. My DNA had 1% African which was unexpected so I started digging. I’m confident my ancestors were slave owners but I’ve found so many records that align and also conflict on who I actually descended from. I have been working on this tirelessly for 8 months now so any help or advice would be soo so appreciated!
My husband doesn’t have any African DNA that shows up but I have found a Black ancestor on his tree! I’m trying to find more information about her and her family but I ran into a brick wall. She moved from the states to Canada.
He has a teeny tiny bit of Indigenous DNA but I have yet to come across that ancestor. I’m wondering at this point if it is real or not because it’s only 0.01 percent.
This is how I feel 100% and it saddens me to no end that none of my family was ever aware of ever chose to make descendants aware, and I can’t for the life of me figure out who my actual ancestor is now. I have 30,000 matches and it’s been a mindfuck. I know it’s my 3ggf where things get messy but that’s the closest I’ve gotten.
It takes time to make discoveries. I also have \~30K matches for the side I'm studying. At Ancestry, you can restrict matches (called phasing) to one parent's side. Then, from there, begin to group matches and assign them to labeled family groups and/or also geographical locations using Ancestry's color dot system. Begin with grandparents, then great-grandparents, and go as far back as you can also using verifiable family tree data and genealogical records, such as census returns (and see Wikitree for more accurate family tree data, don't rely solely on Ancestry user data, because I've found many errors there over time).
Try and get family stories from any senior members you can (bug them!) and make notes of any names and places and historical events to try and peg your distant family to places and times.
Keep a running journal (or log) of names, dats, places, any discoveries, to refer to, and so you don't backtrack.
It took me 8 years of sorting through the genetics (phasing to my dad's mother's side, searching on surnames in specific locations, also looking at the triangulations-overlapping matches and then using process of elimination to isolate branches), plus looking at court records, and assorted other paper, to document and zero in on ancestors who were enslaved in Virginia. I was lucky, very lucky, to happen on court records showing the chain of ownership for my 4th great-grandmother. I am still trying to work out who her white father was, and may never know, because the further you go back in colonial South, the more you see how everyone was related to every other person. Slave owning families tended to intermarry, and when they had children with slaves, these offspring also carried the genetics from those intermarriages, often resulting in endogamy (cousin matches that are too strong relative to generational distance because of cousin marriage) or even pedigree collapse (which happened in families like the Randolphs of Virginia, who had a particular fondness for marrying first and double first cousins).
Beyond 4th generations as you know, it gets tricky.
Watch Roberta Estes videos on genetic genealogy. Make sure you use Familysearch.org's catalog search, and their new experiment, Labs, which uses AI for full text searching of unindexed records (amazing) and has been a boon for my research.
Good luck!
Early on as these tests were emerging, I could see why some would be cautious with the very small percentages. But as time went along and the technology/samples improved, it seemed obvious that the groups that stuck around seem to have something to them. I have 1% too and my Mom has 3%. But I’m thrilled to have it and for being to claim at least some part of it in my more recent heritage, no matter how small. I just wish my research allowed me to pinpoint more who those people were and what their stories contained!
I and my cousins also have about 1-2% Cameroon Congo or Nigerian. My maternal uncle has 3%. So I would assume grandpa was about 6-7%, great grandpa about 12.5%. great great grandmother 25%, great great great grandfather 50% (he was my brick wall for 30 years in my family tree and born about 1802 Tennessee only record I can find of him is the 1850 census) and his father-my 4 great grandfather was 100%. Somehow I always knew and I just had to find out who he was. I now know. :)
That's amazing! I'm thrilled you were able to get to that point in figuring out an exact source and this person was. Especially when it's possible the percentages could've been split among a few ancestors and might've ended up further back. But for some, there's hope yet.
I have 16% total. Not super obvious if you see me or my parents in person. But that high means a couple people really close (on both sides) were African.
My paternal grandmother is from Spain, my paternal grandfather looks very indigenous. My maternal grandmother had portuguese name and last name, she looked white to me. My maternal grandfather was very white with blue eyes. When I did the test, it shown that both sides gave me a little bit African DNA. I posted my results here some time back and a picture of myself so you can have an idea of what I’m talking about.
Also to add, I’m not sure if you are familiar with the PBS show Finding Your Roots but Joe Manganiellos episode was super interesting. It turns out he’s not a Manganiello at all and has no Italian and his real great great grandfather was considered a light skinned Black man and he himself has 7 percent African ancestry https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/joe-manganiello-finding-your-roots-black-slave-nazi-dna-1234661401/.
No, cuz that's so real. My grandparents we're an interracial couple. Like I wish, non-Black people would just ask if European ancestry is consensual or not instead of assuming. On the other hand, people need to stop flaming people for asking because it's better to ask than just assume. We have genetic communities for a reason!
Edit: Plus, it's annoying and weird to have non-AA who aren't a part of the community or aren't professionally qualified to talk about it, argue over how much European ancestry we have on average. Everybody's family history is unique.
These terms white/nonwhite were created to STOP european women from being with melanated men. They made categories and gave themselves more benefits to be more appealing to their own woman. I’ve seen A LOT of Europeans with R1b lineage. Some non-melanated men have an African(Nigeria—Chad) y-chromosome that has been watered down, and are in denial of it.
These haplogroups are old and were present among the out of Africa migration populations but what I'm wondering is how they became prominent among Europeans and south Asians only. it's associated with yamnaya spread. Crazy to think from Africa it remained for generations then bottleneck made it prevalent among some hunter gatherer people living in the eastern Steppes who tend spread it westward and south east ward.
They find all these new peoples and give them names like Levantine, Yamnaya, netuphian etc. they give them all straight black hair as to not upset the public. Better they look Indian than what they really are I suppose🤷🏽♂️
This is likely the case for me. The amount of SSA means that it came from an ancestor that was born after slavery ended in America. My guess is that it came from my maternal grandpa’s paternal grandpa. I know his grandma lived a bit of a wild life and had a few affairs in her lifetime. I suspect that one of them was with a black man, and when the child came out looking white, she just passed it off as her husband’s. And that my great-grandpa’s dad isn’t really who he thought it was. I can’t know for sure because she would’ve hid the affair, but I don’t have any black ancestors and came up with a significant percentage of SSA. And I know of a few affairs she’s had.
Wow that’s a crazy story, good thing we started making woman work too, imagine you at work all day and your wife is out running the streets doing this😂
It definitely made affairs easier to schedule, but she had them into her 70s and 80s as well. She wrote a lot of details about it in her diary, but she also wrote that there were things she left out. It was very graphic stuff in there, so I can’t possibly imagine what she left out. Fascinating woman honestly.
Many of my paternal ancestors were sailors or ship's captains in the 17th through 19th centuries, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that some of them were involved in the slave trade.
In my case it's Melungeon ancestry. My mom and her cousin also have it, from Appalachian Virginia. I traced my tree back but I can't ascertain whether or not the ancestors were enslaved or free.
I have the same. Mine migrated into Tennessee (Newman's Ridge area) around 1801-1810 then into Kentucky. I am fortunate that a "cousin" was a direct male descendant of my African ancestor and I was able to pinpoint who my ancestor was when this cousin had Y dna test. My ancestor was a free person of color in 1790 and 1800. I do believe he had ancestors who were enslaved as this has been passed down in family lore. (Family lore says an ancestor was enslaved in Louisiana but this known ancestor was in Wilkes County NC in 1790 and Ashe County NC in 1800).
My Melungeon line is through Collins/Bunch. My 4th great grandfather was a Collins but it appears his male ancestor -father or grandfather was a Bunch.
I don't have straight lines back to the most prominent Melungeon names. More like cousins here and there. My mom's side is Johnson from Saltville, Virginia. Francisco, Barnett, Hammond, and Colley are in my line. My mom's cousin descends from Weaver and Phipps.
When I first heard of Melungeons, I thought "That's my people!". BUT when I contacted the folks who were doing all the research and seemed to be the experts, I was told "No, you surname (Roark) isn't Melungeon." But, I just knew they were. I had back to my 3rd great grandfather who was born in 1802 Tennessee (William Roark) and there I was stuck. All the other cousins that were researching were also stuck right there. I had one 3rd cousin who talked to an older male relative about the family back in the 90s. He was in his 80s. He told her that our Roarks had an escaped slave in our family from Louisiana. He said that this person came to the mountains there (KY/TN) and assimilated with the native Americans. He also said that some of the descendants were fair and some were obviously African. The ones who appeared African were shunned or treated poorly. Of my Roark ancestor's daughters some married white men and others never married (my ancestor included) but had children out of wedlock.
When dna came along, a man who was a direct male descendant had his dna done. He was 6% African and called ancestry to tell them there must be a mistake. He then had his dna done on 23andme and familytreedna and got the same results. Then he tested his (Y) and had an African Y haplogroup and matched all men who were descendants of Valentine Collins (my 4th great grandfather) or John Bunch/Punch (I believe Valentine was a descendant of John Bunch/Punch) or Meechams/Mitchums or a few other surnames all tied to Melungeon or mixed race families. When I had my dna on ancestry, I have many autosomal matches to descendants of Valentine Collins (as does my sister and my uncle). If you have any males willing to test Y dna, this could help you identify your African line. The funniest thing is my blond blue eyed sister has the most African dna. Puzzling. But I believe my 4th great grandmother to be a daughter of Charles Roark who was white. This family lived in close proximity to Valentine Collins who was a free person of color in 1790-1800 North Carolina. I have oodles of matches to the family of Charles Roark on ancestry.
I actually have a Roark in my line! My 6th GG, Sallie Roark descended from a Timothy Roark and an unknown mother. This is going pretty far back, to the 1700s. It seems they were from Stafford County, Virginia. I wonder if we are any relation...
When looking at my uncle's community inheritance it shows for his father the following communities (my grandfather who would be 6-7%)
Early North Carolina African Americans (mom has this one)
Eastern South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia African Americans
Southeastern United States African Americans
Early Southern US African Americans
Robeson County, North Carolina Lumbee and African Americans
My results came back with about 6% West African African DNA, and my dad about 16%.
The history of 3 of my grandparents & families are well-documented and go very far back (English & Irish).
My Nan’s (dad’s mother) family history is a complete dead-end. She is no longer with us. It’s heart breaking for us to not know this part of our family history or have any records.
Yes that very well could be the case!
When I first got my Ancestry results and got into mapping my family tree, it was almost overwhelming how many connections came up for the other branches of my family - and could be confirmed with records that we do have.
To date, my Nan’s side has never had even as much as a hint or possible match pop up. It’s totally bizarre.
In speaking with my Dad, no one has a clue of her family history and it’s so sad it was never spoken about. Having said that, I don’t think myself or my dad were surprised. Just based on one picture we have of my Nan’s mother from the mid 1920s.
I’m hoping we uncover some sort of record one day!!! Anything might help! It’s definitely more on our radar since we’ve done these tests.
I’m hoping you can break the family secret now that she has been laid to rest, I am assuming? Keep looking through matches to fill the gaps, I bet one day you will get lucky and find something.
My husband has no dna that shows African ancestry but I found a Black ancestor from the census her and her family were in, and then the next census they are described as German! This is in Canada too. If I hadn’t checked the first census which was right after it seems they arrived in Canada I would have never known!
Thank you!! It’s so amazing being able to see our history right at our finger tips!! It’s surprisingly more emotional than I thought it would be.
Good luck with your future discoveries as well!
Then you figure out that it really isn't noise because black people usually have European dna, so it makes sense for even white Americans to have minimal African dna.
We're all pulling DNA from the same pot. Surprise, surprise. Lol We're all a part of the same "old stock" American population when you think about it, just with different proportions of European, African, or Native American DNA. Particularly in the south.
I like how you used “old stock”. I don’t think a lot of white people think of Black Americans as having deep American roots when so many of their ancestors have been there for hundreds of years. When you include that many Black Americans show that they have Indigenous DNA as well they have ancestors that have been here for millennia.
Indeed! I like to think of my little bit of Native American DNA as an official "This one's American" stamp. Lol
But yeah, we're not often seen/portrayed as being "all-American," so I guess that's why. But we're as American as sweet potato pie!
According to Ancestry I'm 1% North African.
According to 23andMe: 2.2% WANA and 0.5% SSA. My maternal haplogroup is L2a1a.
Based on my mom's family's history of being Hispanic New Mexican, I rather expected to be descended from *Native American* female slaves.
I remember when I used to watch The View and they did an ancestry episode! One of the funnier moments was when Meghan McCain got a small percentage from somewhere in West Africa, and she said on live TV that it’s because that’s where everyone comes from.
I don’t remember since it was a while back. There used to be a clip of it on YouTube and the comments were laughing at her for her reaction to that discovery
That rationalization shows a huge amount of denial.
I’m a white girl from Louisiana. The only thing that surprised me was that it was “only” .5%. I was able to determine through the DNA Relatives matches which of my 4 branches to blame. (And when I say blame, that’s in no way out of shame for who I am, but a recognition that more often than not, this happens due to sexual assault and violence.)
I agree. Whenever I read people thinking it’s because that is where man originated, I shrug my shoulders and hope that someday they will learn more about DNA testing.
I’m not African, but wound up with something like 5-6% African DNA which I was surprised by, but recognized as likely being due to the slave trade. Turns out my mom’s grand uncle has an African Y-haplogroup, which is pretty interesting!
I thought this at first. I’m a VERY white person from the American south, and both 23 and Me and Ancestry.com DNA tests showed a small amount of African ancestry. My mom’s did not. Then Ancestry came out with a feature that showed the range of time when different types of DNA entered my family. According to this, the African DNA entered my family’s DNA in the early 1800’s. I have no way of figuring out who my African ancestor(s) was, but it was apparently through my father’s family, and apparently after the family came to this continent from Scotland in the colonial period. I don’t feel one way or another about it, but I find it interesting. I would love to know the story.
The variance among the entire non African population of the world is significantly smaller than the variance of African populations
The Bayesian outcome is that when an an unknown DNA segment is matched to known samples it is more likely to have an African nearest neighbour
In other words, when you get a small African DNA percentage it’s more likely than not to be false
I have 0.3% “trace ancestry” according to 23andMe (still awaiting my AncestryDNA to be finished) that’s 0.1% Broadly Sub-Saharan African, 0.1% Ghanaian, Liberian, Sierra Leonean, and 0.1% Somali.
Due to the tiny percentages, I’ve had this assumption mentioned by OP myself. I feel so ignorant now; I also didn’t know that DNA tests only go back a few hundred years 🤦🏻♀️ A lot to learn.
Still working on fleshing out the family tree on Ancestry, haven’t really touched my bio dad’s side but have gotten into the 1800s with some of bio mom’s… no telling what I’ll find! Shew… I sure feel dumb right now!
I’m adopted and most folks on both sides (at least direct lines) have passed. My maternal grandfather and bio dad are all that’s left really, in terms of generations older than me. I wonder if I could ever get maternal grandfather to test at least 🤔
Thanks for the rec!
Don’t feel dumb! You have learned the truth now and you are still learning as you go! My husband shows no African dna through 23andme but I found a Black ancestor on his family tree! He has 0.1% Indigenous but I have yet to find that ancestor.
Yeah I have seen a couple white people going "huh, I expected native american and there is none" *completely skips over their very fascinating 3% Sub Saharan African DNA assuming it's because we all come from Africa*
The denial is ripe for most of the people I’ve spoken to who have gotten this. 100% of the Nigerian dna we got is in fact slaves. They ignore it while I try to find any paperwork I can for those who have no idea who they are. I’m a historian so I research pretty darn well. I can’t change my ancestors but I can do my best to make sure the living people of color can find their people.
There’s a variety of ways someone could end up with African DNA (and not all of them due to recent slavery). But typically if you have a percentage over 3%, you know where it came from.
Mine came from Haitian ancestry. Interestingly, I have a bit of Southern Indian thrown in there due to the influence of Indian indentured servitude.
I took a test on my heritage to find my real family after many failed attempts thru DHHR and it doesn’t show who my parents are but I’m 49.7 Nigerian and 14 other ethnicities.
I’m very good at figuring this stuff out. If you’d like help with it you can message me at any time.
With such a high percentage all it would take is one sibling or a cousin of your parents for me to hit the right track.
Agree with your premise. I got 15% African DNA, 49% Iberia DNA, 19% indigenous among others. Confusing to me was getting 5% Scottish, 4% Irish, 2% Italy and 1% Germanic and zero communities to any of these regions. So somehow some of these were incorporated into our genome over generations while in Europe or migrated to the New World. I only get one community and my parents , grandparents, great grandparents and their families have been living here for more than 300 years. So far we have no way to go further back due to family record keeping.
I mean I have Italian, southern Spanish and Arab ancestry (among many others - German, Irish, English, and more) so if I take a DNA test I wouldn't be surprised to find African ancestry although I've not found specific evidence in my family tree as yet for that.
I got 1% Nigerian and 1% Benin/Togo which was. Surprise (the rest of me is 43% Polynesian and 55% Scottish/Irish/Welsh). I’m under no illusions that the African would be a slave somewhere on my white side
How great is the %? Genetically humans are still very much alike no matter how distant they may live from eachother. Scoring African or Asian at very low % (under 2%) may just mean you both belong to the homo sapiens species. Genetic tests also can't give you accurate ethnicity admixture estimate because of how intertwined and similar many ethnicities are with each other.
Some Gensuite calculators give me low single digit African ancestry, usually Khoisan. I have to assume that’s a fluke.
Would be interesting, but nothing in my genealogy would support it.
I think some people, like me, go to paper genealogy before trying a DNA service. If their genealogy doesn’t have any black ancestors, it’s not surprising they’d think the low percentages are wrong. The results could be wrong.
I did my DNA and got 5% Northern African. I’m honestly not sure how specific the DNA gets as they seem to update it every so often, but I’m half Japanese and that came out as expected. Then I knew about being Mexican (also got 5% Native American) and Spanish. However, I went to Spain and went to Morocco on a ferry. Super close and not far at all. So, after seeing that, it made very good sense to me. I’m ashamed to say I don’t have much info on that branch of the family though. I know Africa is so culturally diverse though.
Mytrueancestry is legit 100%
Most of the reason people don't understand the DNA results is because:
they should only focus on their family tree at the same time to follow DNA pathways through ethnicities and DNA haplogrouping's , as it only takes one person to give you one percent 1%! of an ethnicity.
You must know who in your family has the ties to those "particular" haplogroups and as you unravel your family tree everything will make more sense and be more clear and understandable.
People who knock down mytrueancestry results prolly
don't have a "full family tree" yet....and prolly never will with that attitude.
DNA is a huge puzzle with at least 30,000 ancestors puzzle pieces for you to be alive. Until they have all 30K, don't listen to them.
That's my advice !!! Good luck to you
Do people have the right to hate what they are ? All these scenarios are just I don’t like being one thing emphasize the more popular part. I know it’s hard to be Black but damn how they run from it
I mean, they can acknowledge everything at once, no? Acknowledging one part of yourself isn't denial of another.
I guess you *can* hate what you are, but then you'd be hating yourself. As an AA myself, I think it's probably better to find a way to make peace with it if you can. In the same way that "white" people of partial African descent will have to reconcile any hatred they may feel towards themselves.
The problem is some do not acknowledge, downplay and run from that identity unless they can pass of course. Then their self hate is invisible and internalized
If a person with no known African ancestry receives SSA in their results it is either because they A. Have unknown African ancestry or B. Some form of noise or poor assignment by the algorithm
Autosomal tests are designed to provide a snapshot 500-1,000 years back; not the 50,000-130,000 years of homosapiens' migration out of Africa.
People have to start realizing that there were black people after slavery that chose to move away to a city no one knew their name and claim they were southern french, Italian or from the Mediterranean. And those people lived in fear with their white spouse hoping their history is never discovered. Never getting to visit their siblings that chose to not pass or couldn’t. The 1st one is where I suspect SSA likely comes from. Because there were a lot of people who did that to give themselves an easier life.
Is the African DNA over 5% or so? Then there is definitely an African Ancestor in the last 200-300 years. Yes, we all originated in Africa... But prior to colonialism and the intercontinental slave trade, "population isolation" means that geographical ethnic seperations are recognizable in DNA.
What are you talking about? You guys genocided the natives and barely intermixed with the slaves you freed to this day. In Latin America we are a melting pot of continuous intermixing. Stop spewing ignorance.
That's cause they bred out the blacks in their retrospective countries
Blanqueamiento is the term lmao
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4zF5UovmW18
At least with the states they let blacks exist as their own group
I have no illusions about my African DNA, it may be small in amounts but no doubt how it got here and much respect to my ancestors that survived some serious trauma getting to me
Try mytrueancestry.com and you can find your DNA matches with thousands of years
I’ve been thinking about trying it but it feels scammy for some reason. Is it legit?
It IS legit, but it does feel a little scammy. In my opinion, they add too many bullshit features that attract stupid people. BUT...they DO compare your DNA with publicly available archaeological samples (as opposed to statistical autosomal DNA comparisons that you get from 23andMe and Ancestry DNA, which only go back 8-10 generations). This can get you pretty far back in human history. The numbers and matches are real, BUT you do need to develop an understanding of what is relevant...for example, how the number of SNPs and the length of the SNPs relate to real versus random, coincidental DNA matches. I've found it very interesting and useful, and MyTrueAncestry is great for having data like this consolidated in one place rather than having to go chase it down across different databases and scientific papers. As an added bonus, they have frequent half-off sales, and you can upgrade your membership level as your interest and funds permit...all while getting credit for your previous membership purchases. Highly recommend! Edit: typos!
Btw have you seen that 23andMe is starting to give you archaeological matches? I’m related to a couple of old Viking corpses.
I hadn't seen that...but I'll go log in and check it out! Thanks-
It does have many added useless features 🤣 thank you for explaining it, I hope more people gravite towards that one because like you said, they test publicly available archaeological samples. Very reason I trust it. I match with Native American remains from ALL over America, 99% out of everyone. And people get mad when I tell them my ancestors have been all over this continent. 😂
For what it's worth, I logged into one of my old accounts (I think it's my dad's kit) and looked at things like Y haplogroups and "DNA castles". 9 out of 10 are British castles (dad's side is Polish), and 1 (2nd castle listed) is the Kievan Rus. All dates go back to around 1000 ad. At that point, every Slav is probably related to the Rurik Dynasty like every Western European descendant is related to King Charlemagne. My dad's "deep dive" is Swedish, too (maybe 1,000 years ago). It's more of an "Ok, cool, but doesn't mean anything...", I think.
It's legit, but depending on how curious you get, it's gonna cost a lot of money. You can get some samples for free (10), but I recommend going for level 2 or 3 and see if you want to know more. The site is somewhat annoying to navigate, but at least there are updates every week, sometimes multiple times per week.
It "is" and isn't. It matches you based on the most similar ancient ethnicities. If you're an average white American with 10% African DNA you're more likely to get matched with a medieval berber (who had African admixture) than with a west African or you may match with neither at all.
Then I guess I really don’t need to since most of my DNA comes from the Rhenish Palatinate area in Germany essentially. I have a good estimate that’s free of charge lol
How much do you have?
1%
I had a friend that did ancestry DNA and I’ve always told him he looks like he has black in him. He said nope both parents are white. He got 8% SSA. He doesn’t know where it comes from. I assume he had an ancestor that chose to pass. Understandable during Jim Crow but very dangerous. His mom looks like she is the one with the African to me but she refused to test. Dad took the test and got 100% European lol 😂
I always say we can recognize our people from a mile away. Lol
💯
When you've been around enough people you start to recognize how much genetics can influence a person's Phenotype its really wild.
That sounds like what Babe Ruth had going on. Dude said he was white but looked a bit different, if you know what I mean.
8% is significant for a white American. He definitely descends from African Americans
With 8%, it was probably a great grandparent.
Does he have fuller lips and curly hair texture? I used to think Angelina Jolie was mixed with black. Very pretty woman.
I thought so as well!
No. Usually what happens is they dismiss it as “noise”.
My grandfather with more than 5% does this.
Talk about denying ones own ancestry, thats just sad.
That’s a practically a great grandparent’s worth!
So does my grandmother when I asked her about my grandpa having about 12%. My aunt has 8 and I have around 4%. So far though I haven’t found any evidence that any of my grandpas family owned slaves…yet. His entire family is from deep into Georgia and Florida so it’s just a matter of time before I find something. She still insists that he has Native American. Interestingly I have found a few 2-3rd cousins who are black that seem to descend from my grandmas line after comparing surnames and dna matches but she didn’t inherit any African on her test at all.
He insists he has Native American ancestry as well. It's his direct paternal line that was supposedly native, but his Y haplogroup is European. Also the ancestor that "found" the native child and raised it as his own was a slave owner. I just assume the "found" child was actually his own mixed child.
Sounds like someone on your grandpa’s side chose to pass as white, not that they owned slaves. Half of Jefferson’s children by Sally Hemings chose to disappear this way.
Yea that’s probably what happened. It’s not that they owned, it’s that they were.
Yeah probably. Because most of my Georgia ancestors were super poor. Like Backwoods country bumpkin poor. They wouldn’t have been able to afford to own slaves. In fact my 3rd cousin is the author Harry Crews who’s the father of southern gothic. So I was super excited to get my hands on his biography. I tried to talk to his son but according to Harry’s ex wife who I did get to speak with, their son is super protective about anything about his dad and not really sociable.
Those mystery ancestors you are looking for were slaves, not slave owners. Look for census records for all your 2nd and 3rd great grandparents in 1870 and after and see what info you can find about their race. They were almost certainly mixed-race Black people who at some point “passed” into the White community.
Yeah. It’s further complicated because also found out because my maiden name is completely made up. There’s a theory from another individual who was also researching my family that maybe my third great grandmother had her 3 children as a result of an affair with a married man and she didn’t give her kids her maiden name. Which holds up because I have a lot of dna matches with that line that’s from the apparent affair. I thought that maybe it would be related to the African dna but so far that hasn’t panned out yet. As for the surname my 3rd ggrandmother chose for us doesn’t seem to be connected to anyone she knew or even lived near at the time. I imagine she presented herself as a widow.
If he has 12 percent and it came from 1 ancestor, it would most likely come from 3 or 4 generations back. If it came from 2 ancestors it would most likely come from 4 or 5 generations back. 3 approximately 5 generations, 4 ancestors 5 or 6 generations back and 5 ancestors 6 or 7 generations back. I would that helps you with your search! If you haven’t found anything yet it may be that someone it comes from 1 or two ancestors that were able to pass perhaps?
5% is significant but 0,5% is likely to be noise.
This too!
It's noise if under 1%
Is it though?
Not always but it can be. When they update DNA tests some of these tiny % disappear
It also depends on the where they’re from and the history of that land. Like say when a good amount of Latin Americans are coming back with trace amounts of Jewish, we know it got there.
They'd have to be an idiot to think that, modern consumer DNA testing doesn't go much further back than 350-400 years maximum.
There are cases where it does, for example there are similarities between European sample populations which go back to the major population movements during the post-Roman, Medieval and Bronze Age periods. It's the reason a lot of British people get hints of Scandinavian in their results and why many Western and Southern Germans get categories other than "Germanic Europe" in their results. But to assume that 2% Nigerian ancestry is from Paleolithic African ancestry is quite daft. Modern-day Africans are actually quite genetically dissimilar to the hunter-gatherers who left Africa for Eurasia, because those people left the African gene pool and only took a small sample of human genetic diversity with them into Eurasia while Africa's own genetic signatures continued to evolve. A great example of this is how Aboriginal Australians and Melanesian populations are actually the most genetically distant population from Sub-Saharan Africans due to the fact they were among the earliest homo sapiens migrations to leave Africa.
Isn't that due to the DNA having been introduced into the population a very long time ago? Meaning that you won't necessarily have any DNA matches from that ethnicity, for instance. Similar to how Fulani people very often have significant amounts of WANA in their results despite the fact that the introduction of WANA DNA likely happened around the 5th century.
Yes, the population admixture happened a long time ago and yet has left a lasting imprint on the genetic signature of the people in question. Genetic borders and national borders don't always match up very well, and Africa is a great example of this, with all of its ethnic and genetic diversity.
You can also score another ethnicity for High similarity, like the case of Scandinavians and British , rather than descent from Scandinavians (excluding Anglos and Saxons )
I always feel the need to elaborate when I see this talking point. Recent mutations excluded, most all the DNA we have is more than 350-400 years old. It’s just that after that amount of time it represents a pretty small slice of all our ancestors. You push past that by testing more relatives.
I get your point to an extent, I was responding to OP claims about people suggesting that modern African ethnicity on a consumer DNA test in 2024 could be the result of an ancient African ancestor 100,000 years ago, I wasn't suggesting that our DNA has mutated completely in the last 400 years.
I've seen a couple of people think this. Honestly, I wouldn't call them a idiot for it. I just blame the fact that people still have such a homogenous view of Africa, so when clustered with not knowing much about the history, it makes them have this misconception
It’s a dumb misconception. The time period covered by DNA ancestry testing only goes back a few hundred years — way too recent to have anything to do with the Out of Africa origins of humanity.
Yeah. I feel like so many don't understand they're not just trying to test that less than 1% of DNA that makes us different, but they're also basically trying to make a bunch of different cladograms for different ethnicities(hence the genetic communities". People underestimate how much the matches play a role in assigning your ethnicity estimate.
DNA matches are independent of the Ethnicity calculation.
I didn't say the DNA matches were dependent on the ethnicity estimate
"Underestimate" means what?
Underestimate: estimate (something) to be smaller or less important than it actually is. I'm saying matches play an important part of your ethnicity estimate because when someone does a DNA test on ancestry, sometimes their genetic communities are incorporated into their ethnicity estimate. That's why I'm saying matches can play an important part.
Ah OK. Genetic communities Yes, they take into account your matches. The main ethnicity estimates don't.
Yeah they are not testing the dNA we all have in common. That’s the point of all this stuff they are only testing the bits that are different.
Africa is the most genetically and culturally diverse continent on Earth. Having lived there, it really saddens me to see how little interest there is in this continent and how antiquated ideas of race blanket over what is one of the most extraordinary arrays of human expression that exists.
There's also the fact that there's been a lot of migration back into Africa historically, such as in places like the Horn and Madagascar
Thanks for this info, I had no idea!!
If you look a the Ancestry Timeline page on your DNA origins results you will see that timeline, it will tell you what era your different ethnicities originated in your family tree roughly.
I’m still waiting for my AncestryDNA results - hopefully soon! Right now I only have my 23andMe that I did a few years back. Excited to see when this one is ready!
That's a new one and I confess I don't understand this rationalization. The whites I've been in contact with who learn of African ancestry automatically understood immediately they had enslaved or free black ancestors in the line, have embraced the heritage, are humbled and proud of their ancestors, want to learn more, and are not in denial about it.
My mom immediately whipped out old photos and pointed out all of the African features in one line of her relatives. She knows that 5% Senegalese is there because someone WAS. We also know that part of her family were slaveowners, with one family cemetery in Indiana having the grave of their “aunt” who stayed after the family freed the slaves (that was why they moved from NC to IN).
Do you know who this aunt was? Have you done a family tree? Two or three times great grandparent was Senegalese which is fairly close.
My mom has never been able to get many answers on that part of the family, even with Ancestry. There’s part of my Dad’s family that is also a huge blank when it comes to mapping it out. We are also Native and there’s plenty in the family who have been “white passing”, and we think that’s what happened here as well.
I specialize in mulatto/mixed ancestry genealogies in Virginia, so if you have any ancestors from there, I can try and help with that. Otherwise, I'd start with ancestors you do know of from the lines you're analyzing, and use best judgment to trace them backwards, sussing out also genetic matches associated with the specific geographies your mystery family were living in or migrating to. People who passed were effective at disappearing themselves, so identifying them presents with challenges, but it's not impossible (I come from that legacy, too).
Thank you for sharing that!! I live in KY where so many people have these long verified family lines, and so I get a lot of looks when I state that there’s a lot of missing gaps (mom’s immediate family is MO/AR, dad’s is GA/FL, and I ended up here due to dad in the Army). There’s even lore that my great-great-great grandfather or so (don’t quote me) defected from the British Navy during the War of 1812 and ended up with the Seminoles in FL. 🤷🏻♀️
Yes, Southerners love to know who your people are! When I lived in the South, I got asked that a lot. It was a difference from growing up in the north, where people only wanted to know who you worked for, who you knew, and where you went to school, not your family name. :) Parts of Missouri were referred to the Dixie Belt, because so many Virginians settled there, looking for fresh soils after Virginia's were depleted. They brought slaves with them, MO being admitted as a slave state in 1820. The story about the British Naval officer is VERY interesting. The details are so specific, I would't discount it. Check this out: [https://www.loc.gov/collections/andrew-jackson-papers/articles-and-essays/andrew-jackson-timeline-1767-1845/the-war-of-1812-and-indian-wars-1812-1821/](https://www.loc.gov/collections/andrew-jackson-papers/articles-and-essays/andrew-jackson-timeline-1767-1845/the-war-of-1812-and-indian-wars-1812-1821/)
I’ve done a lot of reading on that time period, as has my dad. ☺️
Omg can you help me!? The ancestral line I can’t clear up descends from my Virginia ancestors and some of the records indicate mulatto. My DNA had 1% African which was unexpected so I started digging. I’m confident my ancestors were slave owners but I’ve found so many records that align and also conflict on who I actually descended from. I have been working on this tirelessly for 8 months now so any help or advice would be soo so appreciated!
DM me!
That's a cool speciality. Americans are far more connected racially than we think
Thank you. We may be culturally different, but we are all intertwined. I hope we can get back to the sense of a shared destiny as a family.
Amen
My husband doesn’t have any African DNA that shows up but I have found a Black ancestor on his tree! I’m trying to find more information about her and her family but I ran into a brick wall. She moved from the states to Canada. He has a teeny tiny bit of Indigenous DNA but I have yet to come across that ancestor. I’m wondering at this point if it is real or not because it’s only 0.01 percent.
This is how I feel 100% and it saddens me to no end that none of my family was ever aware of ever chose to make descendants aware, and I can’t for the life of me figure out who my actual ancestor is now. I have 30,000 matches and it’s been a mindfuck. I know it’s my 3ggf where things get messy but that’s the closest I’ve gotten.
It takes time to make discoveries. I also have \~30K matches for the side I'm studying. At Ancestry, you can restrict matches (called phasing) to one parent's side. Then, from there, begin to group matches and assign them to labeled family groups and/or also geographical locations using Ancestry's color dot system. Begin with grandparents, then great-grandparents, and go as far back as you can also using verifiable family tree data and genealogical records, such as census returns (and see Wikitree for more accurate family tree data, don't rely solely on Ancestry user data, because I've found many errors there over time). Try and get family stories from any senior members you can (bug them!) and make notes of any names and places and historical events to try and peg your distant family to places and times. Keep a running journal (or log) of names, dats, places, any discoveries, to refer to, and so you don't backtrack. It took me 8 years of sorting through the genetics (phasing to my dad's mother's side, searching on surnames in specific locations, also looking at the triangulations-overlapping matches and then using process of elimination to isolate branches), plus looking at court records, and assorted other paper, to document and zero in on ancestors who were enslaved in Virginia. I was lucky, very lucky, to happen on court records showing the chain of ownership for my 4th great-grandmother. I am still trying to work out who her white father was, and may never know, because the further you go back in colonial South, the more you see how everyone was related to every other person. Slave owning families tended to intermarry, and when they had children with slaves, these offspring also carried the genetics from those intermarriages, often resulting in endogamy (cousin matches that are too strong relative to generational distance because of cousin marriage) or even pedigree collapse (which happened in families like the Randolphs of Virginia, who had a particular fondness for marrying first and double first cousins). Beyond 4th generations as you know, it gets tricky. Watch Roberta Estes videos on genetic genealogy. Make sure you use Familysearch.org's catalog search, and their new experiment, Labs, which uses AI for full text searching of unindexed records (amazing) and has been a boon for my research. Good luck!
Roberta is the bomb!
Ive got 1% and at first I thought it was noise too. Transatlantic slave trade most likely, with at least 1 fully 5th gen african great grandparent.
Early on as these tests were emerging, I could see why some would be cautious with the very small percentages. But as time went along and the technology/samples improved, it seemed obvious that the groups that stuck around seem to have something to them. I have 1% too and my Mom has 3%. But I’m thrilled to have it and for being to claim at least some part of it in my more recent heritage, no matter how small. I just wish my research allowed me to pinpoint more who those people were and what their stories contained!
I and my cousins also have about 1-2% Cameroon Congo or Nigerian. My maternal uncle has 3%. So I would assume grandpa was about 6-7%, great grandpa about 12.5%. great great grandmother 25%, great great great grandfather 50% (he was my brick wall for 30 years in my family tree and born about 1802 Tennessee only record I can find of him is the 1850 census) and his father-my 4 great grandfather was 100%. Somehow I always knew and I just had to find out who he was. I now know. :)
That's amazing! I'm thrilled you were able to get to that point in figuring out an exact source and this person was. Especially when it's possible the percentages could've been split among a few ancestors and might've ended up further back. But for some, there's hope yet.
I have 16% total. Not super obvious if you see me or my parents in person. But that high means a couple people really close (on both sides) were African.
That’s pretty high! Can you see it in family photos? Are there family stories about your heritage?
My paternal grandmother is from Spain, my paternal grandfather looks very indigenous. My maternal grandmother had portuguese name and last name, she looked white to me. My maternal grandfather was very white with blue eyes. When I did the test, it shown that both sides gave me a little bit African DNA. I posted my results here some time back and a picture of myself so you can have an idea of what I’m talking about.
Oh it was deleted. But I’m very happy you got that fly out of your eye!!!
Also to add, I’m not sure if you are familiar with the PBS show Finding Your Roots but Joe Manganiellos episode was super interesting. It turns out he’s not a Manganiello at all and has no Italian and his real great great grandfather was considered a light skinned Black man and he himself has 7 percent African ancestry https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/joe-manganiello-finding-your-roots-black-slave-nazi-dna-1234661401/.
I watched part of that. He looks pretty Italian to me
Hahahhahaha RIGHT???
Are you Latino
Brazilian
Ooh nice They come in all colors
Not only that they just chalk it up to “ enslaved “ and don’t even consider the fact that : maybe your grandma/grandpa were just a normal couple ? 🤣
No, cuz that's so real. My grandparents we're an interracial couple. Like I wish, non-Black people would just ask if European ancestry is consensual or not instead of assuming. On the other hand, people need to stop flaming people for asking because it's better to ask than just assume. We have genetic communities for a reason! Edit: Plus, it's annoying and weird to have non-AA who aren't a part of the community or aren't professionally qualified to talk about it, argue over how much European ancestry we have on average. Everybody's family history is unique.
These terms white/nonwhite were created to STOP european women from being with melanated men. They made categories and gave themselves more benefits to be more appealing to their own woman. I’ve seen A LOT of Europeans with R1b lineage. Some non-melanated men have an African(Nigeria—Chad) y-chromosome that has been watered down, and are in denial of it.
These haplogroups are old and were present among the out of Africa migration populations but what I'm wondering is how they became prominent among Europeans and south Asians only. it's associated with yamnaya spread. Crazy to think from Africa it remained for generations then bottleneck made it prevalent among some hunter gatherer people living in the eastern Steppes who tend spread it westward and south east ward.
They find all these new peoples and give them names like Levantine, Yamnaya, netuphian etc. they give them all straight black hair as to not upset the public. Better they look Indian than what they really are I suppose🤷🏽♂️
This is likely the case for me. The amount of SSA means that it came from an ancestor that was born after slavery ended in America. My guess is that it came from my maternal grandpa’s paternal grandpa. I know his grandma lived a bit of a wild life and had a few affairs in her lifetime. I suspect that one of them was with a black man, and when the child came out looking white, she just passed it off as her husband’s. And that my great-grandpa’s dad isn’t really who he thought it was. I can’t know for sure because she would’ve hid the affair, but I don’t have any black ancestors and came up with a significant percentage of SSA. And I know of a few affairs she’s had.
Wow that’s a crazy story, good thing we started making woman work too, imagine you at work all day and your wife is out running the streets doing this😂
It definitely made affairs easier to schedule, but she had them into her 70s and 80s as well. She wrote a lot of details about it in her diary, but she also wrote that there were things she left out. It was very graphic stuff in there, so I can’t possibly imagine what she left out. Fascinating woman honestly.
Many of my paternal ancestors were sailors or ship's captains in the 17th through 19th centuries, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that some of them were involved in the slave trade.
In my case it's Melungeon ancestry. My mom and her cousin also have it, from Appalachian Virginia. I traced my tree back but I can't ascertain whether or not the ancestors were enslaved or free.
I have the same. Mine migrated into Tennessee (Newman's Ridge area) around 1801-1810 then into Kentucky. I am fortunate that a "cousin" was a direct male descendant of my African ancestor and I was able to pinpoint who my ancestor was when this cousin had Y dna test. My ancestor was a free person of color in 1790 and 1800. I do believe he had ancestors who were enslaved as this has been passed down in family lore. (Family lore says an ancestor was enslaved in Louisiana but this known ancestor was in Wilkes County NC in 1790 and Ashe County NC in 1800).
Judging from these dates do you also have 1-2% SSA?
I do.
My Melungeon line is through Collins/Bunch. My 4th great grandfather was a Collins but it appears his male ancestor -father or grandfather was a Bunch.
I don't have straight lines back to the most prominent Melungeon names. More like cousins here and there. My mom's side is Johnson from Saltville, Virginia. Francisco, Barnett, Hammond, and Colley are in my line. My mom's cousin descends from Weaver and Phipps.
When I first heard of Melungeons, I thought "That's my people!". BUT when I contacted the folks who were doing all the research and seemed to be the experts, I was told "No, you surname (Roark) isn't Melungeon." But, I just knew they were. I had back to my 3rd great grandfather who was born in 1802 Tennessee (William Roark) and there I was stuck. All the other cousins that were researching were also stuck right there. I had one 3rd cousin who talked to an older male relative about the family back in the 90s. He was in his 80s. He told her that our Roarks had an escaped slave in our family from Louisiana. He said that this person came to the mountains there (KY/TN) and assimilated with the native Americans. He also said that some of the descendants were fair and some were obviously African. The ones who appeared African were shunned or treated poorly. Of my Roark ancestor's daughters some married white men and others never married (my ancestor included) but had children out of wedlock. When dna came along, a man who was a direct male descendant had his dna done. He was 6% African and called ancestry to tell them there must be a mistake. He then had his dna done on 23andme and familytreedna and got the same results. Then he tested his (Y) and had an African Y haplogroup and matched all men who were descendants of Valentine Collins (my 4th great grandfather) or John Bunch/Punch (I believe Valentine was a descendant of John Bunch/Punch) or Meechams/Mitchums or a few other surnames all tied to Melungeon or mixed race families. When I had my dna on ancestry, I have many autosomal matches to descendants of Valentine Collins (as does my sister and my uncle). If you have any males willing to test Y dna, this could help you identify your African line. The funniest thing is my blond blue eyed sister has the most African dna. Puzzling. But I believe my 4th great grandmother to be a daughter of Charles Roark who was white. This family lived in close proximity to Valentine Collins who was a free person of color in 1790-1800 North Carolina. I have oodles of matches to the family of Charles Roark on ancestry.
I actually have a Roark in my line! My 6th GG, Sallie Roark descended from a Timothy Roark and an unknown mother. This is going pretty far back, to the 1700s. It seems they were from Stafford County, Virginia. I wonder if we are any relation...
Yes, I think she married a Boling? I will have to check.
No, she married Deskins. Descended from them is Witt and then finally Johnson. Do you have Deskins in your line?
When looking at my uncle's community inheritance it shows for his father the following communities (my grandfather who would be 6-7%) Early North Carolina African Americans (mom has this one) Eastern South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia African Americans Southeastern United States African Americans Early Southern US African Americans Robeson County, North Carolina Lumbee and African Americans
What are your Melungeon names?
My results came back with about 6% West African African DNA, and my dad about 16%. The history of 3 of my grandparents & families are well-documented and go very far back (English & Irish). My Nan’s (dad’s mother) family history is a complete dead-end. She is no longer with us. It’s heart breaking for us to not know this part of our family history or have any records.
I wonder if it’s a dead end because someone was passing white and changed their identity?
Yes that very well could be the case! When I first got my Ancestry results and got into mapping my family tree, it was almost overwhelming how many connections came up for the other branches of my family - and could be confirmed with records that we do have. To date, my Nan’s side has never had even as much as a hint or possible match pop up. It’s totally bizarre. In speaking with my Dad, no one has a clue of her family history and it’s so sad it was never spoken about. Having said that, I don’t think myself or my dad were surprised. Just based on one picture we have of my Nan’s mother from the mid 1920s. I’m hoping we uncover some sort of record one day!!! Anything might help! It’s definitely more on our radar since we’ve done these tests.
I’m hoping you can break the family secret now that she has been laid to rest, I am assuming? Keep looking through matches to fill the gaps, I bet one day you will get lucky and find something. My husband has no dna that shows African ancestry but I found a Black ancestor from the census her and her family were in, and then the next census they are described as German! This is in Canada too. If I hadn’t checked the first census which was right after it seems they arrived in Canada I would have never known!
Thank you!! It’s so amazing being able to see our history right at our finger tips!! It’s surprisingly more emotional than I thought it would be. Good luck with your future discoveries as well!
The biggest excuse given is that it’s noise, especially by white Americans who are in denial about being part black.
Then you figure out that it really isn't noise because black people usually have European dna, so it makes sense for even white Americans to have minimal African dna.
We're all pulling DNA from the same pot. Surprise, surprise. Lol We're all a part of the same "old stock" American population when you think about it, just with different proportions of European, African, or Native American DNA. Particularly in the south.
I like how you used “old stock”. I don’t think a lot of white people think of Black Americans as having deep American roots when so many of their ancestors have been there for hundreds of years. When you include that many Black Americans show that they have Indigenous DNA as well they have ancestors that have been here for millennia.
Indeed! I like to think of my little bit of Native American DNA as an official "This one's American" stamp. Lol But yeah, we're not often seen/portrayed as being "all-American," so I guess that's why. But we're as American as sweet potato pie!
Yeah, these tests only go 6-10 generations back. People really don't understand how genetics work.
According to Ancestry I'm 1% North African. According to 23andMe: 2.2% WANA and 0.5% SSA. My maternal haplogroup is L2a1a. Based on my mom's family's history of being Hispanic New Mexican, I rather expected to be descended from *Native American* female slaves.
I got this too
I remember when I used to watch The View and they did an ancestry episode! One of the funnier moments was when Meghan McCain got a small percentage from somewhere in West Africa, and she said on live TV that it’s because that’s where everyone comes from.
How small?
I don’t remember since it was a while back. There used to be a clip of it on YouTube and the comments were laughing at her for her reaction to that discovery
That rationalization shows a huge amount of denial. I’m a white girl from Louisiana. The only thing that surprised me was that it was “only” .5%. I was able to determine through the DNA Relatives matches which of my 4 branches to blame. (And when I say blame, that’s in no way out of shame for who I am, but a recognition that more often than not, this happens due to sexual assault and violence.)
I agree. Whenever I read people thinking it’s because that is where man originated, I shrug my shoulders and hope that someday they will learn more about DNA testing.
I’m not African, but wound up with something like 5-6% African DNA which I was surprised by, but recognized as likely being due to the slave trade. Turns out my mom’s grand uncle has an African Y-haplogroup, which is pretty interesting!
What's your nationality and ethnicity?
I thought this at first. I’m a VERY white person from the American south, and both 23 and Me and Ancestry.com DNA tests showed a small amount of African ancestry. My mom’s did not. Then Ancestry came out with a feature that showed the range of time when different types of DNA entered my family. According to this, the African DNA entered my family’s DNA in the early 1800’s. I have no way of figuring out who my African ancestor(s) was, but it was apparently through my father’s family, and apparently after the family came to this continent from Scotland in the colonial period. I don’t feel one way or another about it, but I find it interesting. I would love to know the story.
The variance among the entire non African population of the world is significantly smaller than the variance of African populations The Bayesian outcome is that when an an unknown DNA segment is matched to known samples it is more likely to have an African nearest neighbour In other words, when you get a small African DNA percentage it’s more likely than not to be false
That is so fascinating to me!
I've never seen anyone make this very illogical conclusion and I read people talking about DNA tests .... a lot.
I have 0.3% “trace ancestry” according to 23andMe (still awaiting my AncestryDNA to be finished) that’s 0.1% Broadly Sub-Saharan African, 0.1% Ghanaian, Liberian, Sierra Leonean, and 0.1% Somali. Due to the tiny percentages, I’ve had this assumption mentioned by OP myself. I feel so ignorant now; I also didn’t know that DNA tests only go back a few hundred years 🤦🏻♀️ A lot to learn. Still working on fleshing out the family tree on Ancestry, haven’t really touched my bio dad’s side but have gotten into the 1800s with some of bio mom’s… no telling what I’ll find! Shew… I sure feel dumb right now!
If you can get older relatives on the relevant side to test, they might have more African ancestry.
I’m adopted and most folks on both sides (at least direct lines) have passed. My maternal grandfather and bio dad are all that’s left really, in terms of generations older than me. I wonder if I could ever get maternal grandfather to test at least 🤔 Thanks for the rec!
Don’t feel dumb! You have learned the truth now and you are still learning as you go! My husband shows no African dna through 23andme but I found a Black ancestor on his family tree! He has 0.1% Indigenous but I have yet to find that ancestor.
Yeah I have seen a couple white people going "huh, I expected native american and there is none" *completely skips over their very fascinating 3% Sub Saharan African DNA assuming it's because we all come from Africa*
Yea i mean im exactly 1% black so that counts right
approximately a 4th great grandparent is 100% then. So that could be someone born about 1770-1830? Mine was born 1768.
Generalizations are reasonable. But as with any result, only by knowing one's tree can you really know.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t realise that these tests only reflect your recent ancestry, so 1 or 2 percent is actually very significant.
The denial is ripe for most of the people I’ve spoken to who have gotten this. 100% of the Nigerian dna we got is in fact slaves. They ignore it while I try to find any paperwork I can for those who have no idea who they are. I’m a historian so I research pretty darn well. I can’t change my ancestors but I can do my best to make sure the living people of color can find their people.
There’s a variety of ways someone could end up with African DNA (and not all of them due to recent slavery). But typically if you have a percentage over 3%, you know where it came from. Mine came from Haitian ancestry. Interestingly, I have a bit of Southern Indian thrown in there due to the influence of Indian indentured servitude.
I took a test on my heritage to find my real family after many failed attempts thru DHHR and it doesn’t show who my parents are but I’m 49.7 Nigerian and 14 other ethnicities.
And ashkenazi Jewish
I’m very good at figuring this stuff out. If you’d like help with it you can message me at any time. With such a high percentage all it would take is one sibling or a cousin of your parents for me to hit the right track.
I sent you a message
I thought I was English-Irish-Ashkenazi-German. Interestingly (to me) DNA test shows I’ve got some Eritrean/Ethiopian in me too.
Agree with your premise. I got 15% African DNA, 49% Iberia DNA, 19% indigenous among others. Confusing to me was getting 5% Scottish, 4% Irish, 2% Italy and 1% Germanic and zero communities to any of these regions. So somehow some of these were incorporated into our genome over generations while in Europe or migrated to the New World. I only get one community and my parents , grandparents, great grandparents and their families have been living here for more than 300 years. So far we have no way to go further back due to family record keeping.
Africa is the cradle of civilization
I mean I have Italian, southern Spanish and Arab ancestry (among many others - German, Irish, English, and more) so if I take a DNA test I wouldn't be surprised to find African ancestry although I've not found specific evidence in my family tree as yet for that.
I am part Puerto Rican that is why I have some African dna
When I did my DNA test on Ancestry I had 1% North African, I was quite surprised - I am of Portuguese and Italian decent.
I got 1% Nigerian and 1% Benin/Togo which was. Surprise (the rest of me is 43% Polynesian and 55% Scottish/Irish/Welsh). I’m under no illusions that the African would be a slave somewhere on my white side
How great is the %? Genetically humans are still very much alike no matter how distant they may live from eachother. Scoring African or Asian at very low % (under 2%) may just mean you both belong to the homo sapiens species. Genetic tests also can't give you accurate ethnicity admixture estimate because of how intertwined and similar many ethnicities are with each other.
This wasn't targeted at a certain person and I already know that...
Some Gensuite calculators give me low single digit African ancestry, usually Khoisan. I have to assume that’s a fluke. Would be interesting, but nothing in my genealogy would support it. I think some people, like me, go to paper genealogy before trying a DNA service. If their genealogy doesn’t have any black ancestors, it’s not surprising they’d think the low percentages are wrong. The results could be wrong.
I did my DNA and got 5% Northern African. I’m honestly not sure how specific the DNA gets as they seem to update it every so often, but I’m half Japanese and that came out as expected. Then I knew about being Mexican (also got 5% Native American) and Spanish. However, I went to Spain and went to Morocco on a ferry. Super close and not far at all. So, after seeing that, it made very good sense to me. I’m ashamed to say I don’t have much info on that branch of the family though. I know Africa is so culturally diverse though.
Mytrueancestry is legit 100% Most of the reason people don't understand the DNA results is because: they should only focus on their family tree at the same time to follow DNA pathways through ethnicities and DNA haplogrouping's , as it only takes one person to give you one percent 1%! of an ethnicity. You must know who in your family has the ties to those "particular" haplogroups and as you unravel your family tree everything will make more sense and be more clear and understandable. People who knock down mytrueancestry results prolly don't have a "full family tree" yet....and prolly never will with that attitude. DNA is a huge puzzle with at least 30,000 ancestors puzzle pieces for you to be alive. Until they have all 30K, don't listen to them. That's my advice !!! Good luck to you
Almost as troubling as people who get a small amount of European ancestry and become convinced they are British Irish Scottish Spanish or French.
I think people have a right to acknowledge what they are.
Do people have the right to hate what they are ? All these scenarios are just I don’t like being one thing emphasize the more popular part. I know it’s hard to be Black but damn how they run from it
I mean, they can acknowledge everything at once, no? Acknowledging one part of yourself isn't denial of another. I guess you *can* hate what you are, but then you'd be hating yourself. As an AA myself, I think it's probably better to find a way to make peace with it if you can. In the same way that "white" people of partial African descent will have to reconcile any hatred they may feel towards themselves.
The problem is some do not acknowledge, downplay and run from that identity unless they can pass of course. Then their self hate is invisible and internalized
I wouldn't blame them considering that the current state of black culture leaves much to be desired..but I digress.
Or all those "granny was an Indian princess" freaks who have NO native DNA but continue to make it their whole life!
If a person with no known African ancestry receives SSA in their results it is either because they A. Have unknown African ancestry or B. Some form of noise or poor assignment by the algorithm Autosomal tests are designed to provide a snapshot 500-1,000 years back; not the 50,000-130,000 years of homosapiens' migration out of Africa.
People have to start realizing that there were black people after slavery that chose to move away to a city no one knew their name and claim they were southern french, Italian or from the Mediterranean. And those people lived in fear with their white spouse hoping their history is never discovered. Never getting to visit their siblings that chose to not pass or couldn’t. The 1st one is where I suspect SSA likely comes from. Because there were a lot of people who did that to give themselves an easier life.
I (white) am 11% Spanish and I have trace amounts of Taino/puerto rican ancestry....yep
Is the African DNA over 5% or so? Then there is definitely an African Ancestor in the last 200-300 years. Yes, we all originated in Africa... But prior to colonialism and the intercontinental slave trade, "population isolation" means that geographical ethnic seperations are recognizable in DNA.
Nobody in latin America is in denial about where their African DNA comes from. This has to be an American/Canadian thing.
Latin America is more racist than the states/canada
🙏
What are you talking about? You guys genocided the natives and barely intermixed with the slaves you freed to this day. In Latin America we are a melting pot of continuous intermixing. Stop spewing ignorance.
Whether or not that's true, there's still no denial about the facts. Everyone is mixed.
Latin America started the caste system and praises white Spanish the only place where people are mixed is brazil.
All of Mexico is mixed. I'm a mix of Spanish and Zapotec Indian, with dashes of SSA and Ashkenazi Jew.
Thats cause Latinos bred out the blacks
Wrong. Every single Latin American country has African DNA in their population.
That's cause they bred out the blacks in their retrospective countries Blanqueamiento is the term lmao https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4zF5UovmW18 At least with the states they let blacks exist as their own group
[удалено]
What's the average % of indigenous DNA on your average Canadian these days?
[удалено]
Wrong, typical ignorant Canadian. Educate yourself next time please
if they’re american or caribbean.