I took an DNA test to find out my roots

[Heigen5]

Well, because my mamma bought it to me and my bro as a xmas gift. Now gotta send my DNA to USA.

[Trobador222]

I've been thinking about taking one. It's interesting. They are not 100% because they depend on more people sending them back to show the true scope of the genetic spread. So if you have something exotic, it has more of a chance of being misidentified. Thats simply because it's been largely people in the west taking them, so some groups are under represented.

So what are you going to do, if you are part Alien?

[Heigen5]

I've been thinking about taking one. It's interesting. They are not 100% because they depend on more people sending them back to show the true scope of the genetic spread. So if you have something exotic, it has more of a chance of being misidentified. Thats simply because it's been largely people in the west taking them, so some groups are under represented.

So what are you going to do, if you are part Alien?

My mom took it many years ago and she's 51,5% Fin. So I'm also partly Fin but I'd like to know my father's side too.
If I'm partly an alien, I want to get a cut from their property and an alien girlfriend too.

[Mr. Marty]

Naw, you are what you are. A DNA test will not change you. It may tell you something about yourself but it will not really change who hyou are. You are not alien. Your are human 100% just like the rest of the people. It is kinda like the talk about who you were in previous lives. Everyone always thinks they were Joan of Arc or Ghangis Kahn.

Me? I'm part crow, the bird that is. In my past lifes I was prolly a garbage truck driver. Most likely my most famous ancestor was Jessie James. I really don't need to know.

Don't put too much in to this stuff.

[Ashley]

That is good advice Marty, don't read too much into it I say too.

[Heigen5]

Yeah, agreed. We all are homo sapiens and born on here Tellus. It's not gonna mean anything big indeed.

[Ifunkus]

I took the dna test, and found i am 1% viking 90% Scottish Irish and 9% English European, I also found out some dark family secrets as I matched up with 2 cousins that were had through an affair from my grandad, it was actually televised. But I think its a good thing brother. And as Marty said you are not alien, you are human, with a beautiful soul, that will carry on for eternity

[Trobador222]

I took the dna test, and found i am 1% viking 90% Scottish Irish and 9% English European, I also found out some dark family secrets as I matched up with 2 cousins that were had through an affair from my grandad, it was actually televised. But I think its a good thing brother. And as Marty said you are not alien, you are human, with a beautiful soul, that will carry on for eternity

Your grandad's affair was televised?

[Ifunkus]

I took the dna test, and found i am 1% viking 90% Scottish Irish and 9% English European, I also found out some dark family secrets as I matched up with 2 cousins that were had through an affair from my grandad, it was actually televised. But I think its a good thing brother. And as Marty said you are not alien, you are human, with a beautiful soul, that will carry on for eternity

Your grandad's affair was televised?

Yes, shockingly enough, his son and daughter were full on telling their story, one was left on a driveway in a car, the daughter was left in a phone box up in the North of Ireland, crazy, talk about skeletons in the closet hahaha its all public now, he died in the 90's

[Citizen Dolly]

I took the dna test, and found i am 1% viking 90% Scottish Irish and 9% English European, I also found out some dark family secrets as I matched up with 2 cousins that were had through an affair from my grandad, it was actually televised. But I think its a good thing brother. And as Marty said you are not alien, you are human, with a beautiful soul, that will carry on for eternity

Your grandad's affair was televised?

On both channels. Rolling coverage. That's why the revolution didn't get televised.

Not sure I see the point in DNA tests personally, unless you're screening for genetic diseases. I suppose they could be good for African Americans wanting to find out about their roots given that circumstances have generally conspired to obscure them. I suspect that for most Europeans though there's little to learn that hasn't been transmitted through family histories. I mean, it's not much of a surprise for anybody in the UK to find they've got some Irish or Scandinavian or French ancestry given that they're all near neighbours we've had extensive interactions with over the centuries, and the significance of individual ancestors is often wildly overestimated anyway given just how many of them there are in total. Bear in mind that every generation you step back, the number of direct ancestors you have just in that generation doubles, and the numbers involved quickly get insane: just 10 generations back (about 250 years) there's 1024 people who are your direct ancestor, and the one carrying your family name is just one of them. Twenty generations back, and it's over a million. By the time you get back a thousand years, it's far more theoretical ancestors than have ever actually existed. (The secret to resolving this discrepancy, incidentally, is incest. Historically, marriages between cousins were commonplace, and that means that several of the theoretical ancestors are actually the same individuals. I'm not up to figuring out just how much inbreeding would be necessary though to bring the projected number of ancestors into line with actual historic population sizes.) Also, at least as far as I understand it, the DNA results are essentially a sort of palimpsest in that it can't really distinguish or place genetic events through time: having, say, 10% Scandinavian genes could mean that a substantial number of your ancestors were from there further back in history, or it could just mean your grandad was a Norwegian sailor.

Having said all that, I did do some family tree research a few years ago. Twas fun and interesting. The biggest surprise for me was probably just how deeply rooted I am in Sunderland. A good chunk of my ancestors have been here for upwards of 200 years, and at least one of the lines I was able to trace goes back just over 300 years here. As a bairn I was always more conscious of the Irish parts of the family, but it turned out they'd been here longer than I'd expected: the last of my Irish ancestors to have actually lived in Ireland were my greatx2 grandparents on my mam's side, and they'd been in the NE England since at least 1864. The Irish on my dad's side had been here since at least 1828 or so. Other than them and a couple of Germans 4 generations back, every ancestor I've been able to place has been from Northern England, and the vast majority of them from County Durham, and the bulk of them actually from Sunderland. Turns out I'm Mackem as fuck like.

[Ifunkus]

I took the dna test, and found i am 1% viking 90% Scottish Irish and 9% English European, I also found out some dark family secrets as I matched up with 2 cousins that were had through an affair from my grandad, it was actually televised. But I think its a good thing brother. And as Marty said you are not alien, you are human, with a beautiful soul, that will carry on for eternity

Your grandad's affair was televised?

On both channels. Rolling coverage. That's why the revolution didn't get televised.

Not sure I see the point in DNA tests personally, unless you're screening for genetic diseases. I suppose they could be good for African Americans wanting to find out about their roots given that circumstances have generally conspired to obscure them. I suspect that for most Europeans though there's little to learn that hasn't been transmitted through family histories. I mean, it's not much of a surprise for anybody in the UK to find they've got some Irish or Scandinavian or French ancestry given that they're all near neighbours we've had extensive interactions with over the centuries, and the significance of individual ancestors is often wildly overestimated anyway given just how many of them there are in total. Bear in mind that every generation you step back, the number of direct ancestors you have just in that generation doubles, and the numbers involved quickly get insane: just 10 generations back (about 250 years) there's 1024 people who are your direct ancestor, and the one carrying your family name is just one of them. Twenty generations back, and it's over a million. By the time you get back a thousand years, it's far more theoretical ancestors than have ever actually existed. (The secret to resolving this discrepancy, incidentally, is incest. Historically, marriages between cousins were commonplace, and that means that several of the theoretical ancestors are actually the same individuals. I'm not up to figuring out just how much inbreeding would be necessary though to bring the projected number of ancestors into line with actual historic population sizes.) Also, at least as far as I understand it, the DNA results are essentially a sort of palimpsest in that it can't really distinguish or place genetic events through time: having, say, 10% Scandinavian genes could mean that a substantial number of your ancestors were from there further back in history, or it could just mean your grandad was a Norwegian sailor.

Having said all that, I did do some family tree research a few years ago. Twas fun and interesting. The biggest surprise for me was probably just how deeply rooted I am in Sunderland. A good chunk of my ancestors have been here for upwards of 200 years, and at least one of the lines I was able to trace goes back just over 300 years here. As a bairn I was always more conscious of the Irish parts of the family, but it turned out they'd been here longer than I'd expected: the last of my Irish ancestors to have actually lived in Ireland were my greatx2 grandparents on my mam's side, and they'd been in the NE England since at least 1864. The Irish on my dad's side had been here since at least 1828 or so. Other than them and a couple of Germans 4 generations back, every ancestor I've been able to place has been from Northern England, and the vast majority of them from County Durham, and the bulk of them actually from Sunderland. Turns out I'm Mackem as fuck like.

Thats great, i also have some German roots, alot Irish and English also, did you know carrots were originally purple, strange fact...lol, I found it interesting to find out my history with the dna test, yea yea why do it but it can open doors, like mushrooms in your mind, very knowledgeable information, you just learn a little bit of yourself

[Trobador222]

You run into some odd things in the US while trying to do family research. On my fathers side, some cousins tried to do that and found out a lot of the public records were lost during the Civil War. The courthouse where they were kept in the area my family lived was burned to the ground during the war.

We have some family stories going back to when our ancestors came to North America but nothing really about any family in the Old World. We know on my fathers side we were Scotch Irish. We know 7 brothers came over early in the 19th century. We know they had some money because they all bought large land holdings and became large farmers.

When I was a teenager, I had one Aunt who was kind of the keeper of a lot of that family history. Back in the 1970s, she took me around to some of the grave sites of those people who had come here. One of the graves was a large obelisk that had the names of my great great grandfather, his wife and two daughters and was the only surviving marker of an old cemetery that was in the middle of a corn field.

I am the baby of my generation. I will be 60 this month. My father was 50 when I was born. He was born in 1914. My grand parents on both sides were born in the 19th Century and when I was a boy, there were a lot of older relatives still living who were all born in the 1800s. So I grew up with that living history and that’s kind of neat. My father and my uncles on both sides were WW II vets and were in every theater of the war that the US was active in and all came home. So I grew up hearing first hand accounts of their experience.

[Ifunkus]

You run into some odd things in the US while trying to do family research. On my fathers side, some cousins tried to do that and found out a lot of the public records were lost during the Civil War. The courthouse where they were kept in the area my family lived was burned to the ground during the war.

We have some family stories going back to when our ancestors came to North America but nothing really about any family in the Old World. We know on my fathers side we were Scotch Irish. We know 7 brothers came over early in the 19th century. We know they had some money because they all bought large land holdings and became large farmers.

When I was a teenager, I had one Aunt who was kind of the keeper of a lot of that family history. Back in the 1970s, she took me around to some of the grave sites of those people who had come here. One of the graves was a large obelisk that had the names of my great great grandfather, his wife and two daughters and was the only surviving marker of an old cemetery that was in the middle of a corn field.

I am the baby of my generation. I will be 60 this month. My father was 50 when I was born. He was born in 1914. My grand parents on both sides were born in the 19th Century and when I was a boy, there were a lot of older relatives still living who were all born in the 1800s. So I grew up with that living history and that’s kind of neat. My father and my uncles on both sides were WW II vets and were in every theater of the war that the US was active in and all came home. So I grew up hearing first hand accounts of their experience.

Thats awesome, Irish scotch eh? We are not so far apart...I particularly like you had a keeper of the history your aunt, fair play to her good self. It seems my information is spread around the family and I've been gathering it up. Alas I'm at a loss of searching for my great grandfather on my mothers side, he's just invisible on any records. He was a runner for ireland, but the English asked him to run for them, there my tracking runs cold. Maybe he was clever and left no paper trail for what ever reason.

[Mr. Marty]

As I noted in another thread my father was adopted. His true last name was Bevis. McKimmey is the family that adopted him out of a Pine Bluff Arkansas orphanage. His new McKimmey parents lived in El Dorado Arkansas. Tracing the Bevis line is difficult as the brother who actually was old enough to know his father was unhelpful when he was alive. The odd part is that my brother was a dead ringer for Jesse James and what my sister could trace did run up through Missouri. My sister did trace our maternal side back to White Haven Mississippi where the family owned a farm. So I am prolly related to a slave owner. That line actually goes to Greenville, Tennessee , last name Jones. They were actually on the board of regents for the Tusculum College, a place where my Ex got her job when she dumped me. Life if odd.

But that line goes back to William the Conqueror. So as I said I am a theaving overbearing prick.

Here, talk of ancestry is....hmm, what is the best term....frowned upon by most black people. A co worker explained that most blacks cannot trace their ancestry. The DNA tests could help with that. But as Henry noted many southern court houses were burned in the Civil War. Not only were the birth certificates burned but also many of the papers that documented slave ownership and transfers were also burned. Those documents could have helped trace ancestry for the blacks....it could also be a very touchy subject.

[Heigen5]

MyHeritage_Heikki.jpg (383.68 KiB) Viewed 13226 times

Here!

So I'm 48,8% a Baltic
28% a Fin
And 23,2% a East-Europian

I kinda am my own land's own boy.

[Trobador222]

Now that’s about as “white bread” as it can get!