the thing about ancestry tests is that while they can tell you a lot about your own personal genetic makeup, there's a lot about your family history that they can't. so while his story sounds pretty typical of spicy white people, it's possible for you to have a great-grandparent from a certain region, but it doesn't reflect at all in your ancestry/23andme report, meanwhile your full sibling takes the same test and can read as 34% of something you have nothing of.
it's testing gene expression, so simpified, that sibling can have the cherokee genes while you have more scottish genes but it can be helpful for getting a general picture if you don't know anything about your family background
i think it has value if you're interested in finding out about your potential heritage, but it's more helpful if you have a lot of family members who also take it, so you can track your actual ancestry. my cousins and i were able to figure out who our great-grandfather's father was, and we discovered our grandmother had a half-sister she (probably) never knew existed. it's been really eye-opening!
It's because the chromosomes you get from your parents are randomized among the 23 pairs (among other factors like chromosomal crossover where a pair of chromosomes can exchange portions). So you aren't guaranteed an equal amount of genetic information from every grandparent (and thus every ancestor onwards).
It's still very useful, like the others said, if you have multiple data points (i.e. siblings and family).
i did a 23andme because my dad is adopted and it was amazing to actually find part of his birth family, but the ancestry composition part was truly useless in my case. as if i couldn't have guessed from my entire pasty body that i'm "broadly northwestern european"
In addition to what others have said, these commercial tests (like many things!) simply aren't as good at figuring out the non-white genetic content. So not only is there a significant chance that after a couple generations you have no genetic heritage from one certain ancestor, the tests in general are less able to pick up on say, Native American DNA, because their original sample database was Very White to begin with. However over time as more people use them they may improve somewhat.
Yup. My mom and I both took the Ancestry tests and my results are 100% boring (literally 97% Portuguese and 3% French lmao). My mom's results were a lot more varied than mine. My mom also bought tests for her parents and their results are closer to mine than my moms. It's interesting.
This reminds me. I've always wondered how me and my brothers ancestry results would turn out. He's a spitting image of our white mom while I also look like her but more like our dad (brown latino) than he does. I'm a little darker, have darker hair, things like that.
This is like me and my brother (we're half asian). I have some of my mom's features but really took after my white dad while my brother really takes after our mom. I took an ancestry test and surprise 50% Japanese lol but my brother has not taken it. now i'm so curious
This is why I want to do one with both of my brothers. My oldest brother is a clone of our white dad, my other brother got all of his looks from my mom's Mexican side, and I'm somewhere in between.
i definitely recommend it! i have three cousins who are full siblings who are similar to you and your brothers, their dad (my uncle) is black while their mom is cape verdean. their results are so interesting too, the oldest has the darkest skin but the most portugese ancestry and the one who looks the most mixed race is the one who has the largest percentage of african dna compared to her siblings. it's beyond fascinating how that all works.
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but it can be helpful for getting a general picture if you don't know anything about your family background
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It's still very useful, like the others said, if you have multiple data points (i.e. siblings and family).
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