What to expect from family finder dna test

[denisecanuck]

My mom's dna has arrived in Texas but not recorded by the lab yet. I realize it could take awhile for the results to come in.

What exactly do you get in the way of results from the testing. Does it list ethnic background categories?

Eagerly awaiting the results.
denise

[KATM]

You might look over these pages in the learning center:

• Overview of autosomal test (Family Finder)
• Descriptions of Family Finder pages in your myFTDNA account

The ethnic background part is called myOrigins. You should take any ethnic analysis of your DNA with a big grain of salt, no matter where you get it analyzed. The broadest estimate is generally okay, but anything very specific will vary.

[denisecanuck]

Thank you.
I am still curious about certain information that showed up on a census from the 1800's.. Time will tell.

[Armando]

It lists general regions and many times there are regions that are unexpected because so many different populations share ancestry from the past 20,000 years. Most of the time it takes thousands of years of drift for unique autosomal DNA to appear in a population but if there is continual admixture then it makes it harder to identify one population from another. One of the few unmistakeable autosomal DNA components is Native American because they were separated from Asians and Europeans for at least 14,000 years but myOrigins messed that up by calling some of it Northeast Asian and some of it Siberian. All other companies and DIY calculators are able to correctly distinguish Native American DNA from Northeast and Siberian.

European DNA is harder to distinguish because of constant migrations of new groups and they went all over Europe and therefore some Europeans with mainly English, Irish, Scottish, and German ancestry get components they didn't expect such as Scandinavian, Southern European, and Middle Eastern. It isn't because they have a recent ancestor from one of those regions. It is because they all have common ancestry in the past 10,000 from multiple waves of migration into Europe and some of that DNA is passed down to certain people and other DNA is passed down to other people. That is what causes the calculator effect which you can read about at http://dodecad.blogspot.com/2012/08/...or-effect.html and it is why the DNA companies have had to do upgrades over the past several years on their DNA calculators.
You can read about a presentation about European migrations by Dr. Michael Hammer at a recent FTDNA conference at http://dna-explained.com/2014/10/21/...st-population/

Two slides in particular make for an easy viewing of how similar different European populations are with three main components. https://dnaexplained.files.wordpress...er-2014-15.jpg and https://dnaexplained.files.wordpress...er-2014-32.jpg

What is your known ancestry? The Family Finder test alone will not answer questions about certain information on a census from the 1800's. You would have to have a lot of descendants of that person or couple to get Y-DNA and mtDNA tests which is something very difficult to do.

[denisecanuck]

thank you, very interesting read.

[Armando]

The following PCA also shows how all Europeans are more similar to each other than they are to Near Easterners. https://dnaexplained.files.wordpress...mer-2014-9.jpg
The original graph can be seen at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...e13673_F2.html

[dna]

Please note a large void

The following PCA also shows how all Europeans are more similar to each other than they are to Near Easterners. https://dnaexplained.files.wordpress...mer-2014-9.jpg
The original graph can be seen at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...e13673_F2.html

However, please notice that this research and many similar to it, have a large void right at the centre of Europe... There were no modern samples included from the area covering Czech lands, Germany and Poland.

[Armando]

However, please notice that this research and many similar to it, have a large void right at the centre of Europe... There were no modern samples included from the area covering Czech lands, Germany and Poland.

Please notice that there are enough populations close to them that are included. The missing populations wouldn't change anything significantly.

Germans would plot between west Europeans, central Europeans, and north Europeans. That is no mystery.

Poles would plot close to the Ukranians, Finns, and Norwegians which are included in the PCA plot.

Czechs are included and they plot next to Ukranians and Belarusians. No surprise there either. There is one French next to a Czech which shows how similar people from two different populations within Europe can be similar. What is in between France and the Czech Republic? The answer is Germany.

The PCA plots by Doug McDonald and Davidski at Eurogenes show the same result and they do include Germans, Poles, and Czechs.

The European populations included in the PCA plot are the following:
Albanian
Bergamo
Bulgarian
Cypriot
Greek
Italian_South
Sicilian
Tuscan
English
French
Icelandic
Norwegian
Orcadian
Scottish
Basque
French_South
Spanish
Spanish_North
Belarusian
Croatian
Czech
Estonian
Hungarian
Lithuanian
Ukranian
Canary Islands
Sardinian
Finnish
Mordovian
Russian

[dna]

I do not know how possibly I could have missed Czech, but I did.

Please let me stay with my opinion that Germany and Poland are not gradient zones between France and Belarus/Lithuania/Ukraine as far as autosomal DNA is concerned. Yes, there are R1 gradients...

[Armando]

I hit the post reply before I was done....

[Armando]

I do not know how possibly I could have missed Czech, but I did.

Please let me stay with my opinion that Germany and Poland are not gradient zones between France and Belarus/Lithuania/Ukraine as far as autosomal DNA is concerned. Yes, there are R1 gradients...

Who said that Germany is a gradient zone between France and Belarus/Lithuania/Ukraine as far as autosomal DNA is concerned? You really need to reread my posts.

This thread has never been about R1 gradients. Why are you going off on tangents?

The post of my that you initially responded to had to do about how similar Europeans are to each other. Why are you bringing opinions into the matter? Please use facts and and please provide sources.

It is a fact, not an opinion, that the PCA plots by Davidski, who maintains the Eurogenes site and has Polish ancestry, and Dr. Doug McDonald show Polish to be close to Belarusians, Sweden, Norwegians, and Finns.

They also show Germans to be close to the French and Hungarian. That is a fact and not an opinion.

This proves that Europeans are very similar to each other when put on a PCA of world populations. The presentation by Dr. Michael Hammer and results of the program called ADMIXTURE (the program's name is all caps) prove that European populations are more similar to each than other world populations. Yes, there are some differences between specific populations but the similarities cause all of the DNA companies to provide results that have north European people looking for an Iberian ancestor or a Latin American thinking that they have a recent ancestor from northern Europe. Why is this point not understood by you?

The following is a PCA plot by Dr. Doug McDonald -