So 23andMe and Ancestry… are nowhere near as accurate as they need to be (or even are), given what I know about my family history. It seems like both sites take a guess assuming that I have substantial British DNA because what European doesn’t? (The answer is me. I am substantially Scandinavian and have less than five percent British DNA in all seriousness. I also know from what side of the family it came from, too.)

Getting back on track though… I did feed my raw data file from Ancestry to Genomelink, and I had it extrapolate my European DNA — not very much of that was a surprise, as it confirmed findings from ADNTRO and MyHeritage’s results — as well as trace Asian DNA that it said I had. The amount of it didn’t surprise me, but the origins of it did. I wouldn’t have guessed that I had Levantine or Turkic DNA. But then again, I have a fairly substantial amount of Iberian DNA, so the Levantine one shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did. But it got me thinking because I have two cousins on one very specific side of the family who have that much trace Asian DNA. However, one of those cousins had Melanesian DNA, so it’s probably not too much of a stretch to assume that some of my trace Asian DNA might be Melanesian and I’m recording something like Turkic, Siberian, and South Indian DNA where he’s recording something else. It’s like how I have Balkan and Iberian DNA where one of my other cousins, way off on the other side of the family, has clearer Portuguese and Spanish DNA. I’m still glad — and thankful — that more and more strides are being made in genomics so people can learn more about their family history, especially people who know next to nothing about their family history for whatever reason. I am definitely going to keep studying this.