Percentage don't add up

[Jenbon]

Hi, my percentages have recently been adjusted accordingly to the latest "my origins " updates. My parents also have been tested and results updated. Interestingly my results claim I have 15% Greece/Balkans yet my parents don't come back with much if any. I was expecting a lot more on at least one side ...it's just not there. Otherwise the results are showing they are both my parents. Any thoughts on why this would happen? It honestly seems like a mistake.

[KATM]

It happens because these estimates are imperfect; they are the least reliable of any aspect of DNA testing for genealogy. So, yes, relatively often these estimates will have "mistakes," depending upon how much you know of your ancestors' origins, and then how closely you and your parents happen to match the reference populations and algorithms used by each company (which can change with each update). The relationship estimates, on the other hand, are much more solid, especially for close and immediate relatives.

You don't say what the known ancestry is for your parents (and thus for you), but it may be that the new "Greece & Balkans" population cluster (formerly lumped into the previous myOrigins 2.0 generalized "Southeast Europe" cluster*) has some resemblance to a region that is within your known ancestry. Do you have any known nearby geographic areas in your known ancestry, within the last 4 to 6 generations?

You may want to read these blog posts (which apply to estimates from all the companies, although they may use others for examples):

• And Still Not Soup. . . by "The Legal Genealogist," Judy G. Russell
• Ethnicity Testing, a Conundrum by Roberta Estes (DNAeXplained.com)
• Can a Child Have More Ethnicity Than a Parent? gives another way to look at it

*A quote from the description of the Southeast Europe populations cluster in myOrigins 2.0:

The Southeast Europe cluster consists of present day populations from the areas of Italy, Greece, and the western Balkan states from Bulgaria to Croatia. Present day populations in the Southeast Europe cluster show some of the highest rates of genetic relatedness to the second wave of migration into Europe roughly 11,000 years ago.

Compare to the current myOrigins 3.0 population cluster for Southern Europe (not Southeast Europe any more, and thus far no detailed description as in myOrigins 2.0):

Southern Europe contains the following Population Clusters:

• Basque
• Greece & Balkans
• Iberian Peninsula
• Italian Peninsula
• Malta
• Sardinia

[Rhonda Hatton]

Yeah, on this last update they seem to have went a little wild with the Greece and Balkans, because I used to be about seven per cent Western Middle Eastern and Anatolian, but now I'm six per cent Greece and Balkans. It doesn't help things any either that the blog post that explained the new My Origins said they only used national representatives if all four grandparents had been born in the nation that their genetics were to represent. That's a great concept, unless grandpa's parent's both came from lines full of expats, and whether a great grand parent gives you less than two per cent of autosomal DNA doesn't matter, when they passed on who knows what amount to their child, who passed it on to their child, who passed it on to poor little DNA testing you ( or me, or anybody ). Autosomal DNA tests are pretty good in some cases, but we've got a long way to go before we've got it 99 per cent correct.