AncestryDNA’s Ethnicity Update, Ethnicity Inheritance, and Chromosome Painter

Ancestry updated their ethnicities again, although they made some adjustments earlier this year. They also released their Ethnicity inheritance back in May. You can read more about it here: SideView™ Technology.

They also have a Beta version of a Chromosome Painter^Beta where they paint the chromosomes with the regions they’re associated with in your ethnicity estimate.

ETHNICITY INHERITANCE

The Ethnicity inheritance estimates which regions you inherited from each parent.  Once you know which side belongs to which parent, you can edit it, identify your paternal and maternal sides.

 

CHROMOSOME PAINTER

Currently, the Chromosome Painter is in Beta and not everyone have this feature yet.  It attempts to assign each ethnicity to a specific part of your chromosome.

You can click on paternal, maternal, or see them all together.  You can also click on each ethnicity to see where specifically they are located on each chromosome.

 

NEW REGIONS

The former Eastern Polynesia & New Zealand Maori region is now in two separate categories – Hawaii and New Zealand Maori regions. These new regions are supposed to provide more precise results for people of both Hawaiian or Kanaka Maoli (aboriginal Hawaiian) and Maori heritage.

They state that while people from places near or with deep historical and genetic ties to Hawaii and New Zealand like French Polynesia and the Cook Islands, will most likely see their previous Eastern Polynesia & New Zealand Maori percentage split between the new Hawaii and New Zealand Maori regions. This is similar to when they created the Samoa and Tonga categories and Samoans were getting some small percentages of the Tonga region and Tongans were getting small percentages of the Samoa regions plus anywhere from 0% to 2% of Eastern Polynesia & New Zealand Maori, just as we would get 0% – 2% Samoa or Tonga and that would vary with every update.

They have made a few “updates” which I believe was an increase in the number of their reference samples.  

Currently, their reference panel has 68,714 DNA samples that divide the world into 84 overlapping regions and groups.  For the Polynesian groups:

Hawaii – 392
New Zealand Maori – 206
Samoa – 91
Tonga – 164

I tried to see if there was some type of pattern as far as how much of the Hawaii region would show up versus the New Zealand Maori region for Hawaiians and Maoris.  There almost seem to be some consistency from what a few Hawaiians and Maoris have been showing me.  

Just comparing my own results, along with my mother’s and one of my cousins.

Focusing on the Polynesian percentages.

When looking at my cousin’s results, since she’s not admixed, I figured maybe it’s about  70% of the correct region versus the other 30% of the other region that we’re not part of.  Other people have shown me their results and it seems like they do fit that range.

When I calculate the percentages that both what my mother and I have, this is what I came up with:

 

It seems pretty close to that 70% vs. 30%, but not consistently as I do see varying results from other people including some of my other relatives.

At first, I thought this is more prevalent among those who are less than 25% Polynesian since those who were sharing these varied percentages had only a single grandparent or great-grandparent and beyond who was Polynesian.  A closer look at my own relatives I realized it’s still not consistent.

One of them does fall into that range I expected while the other two are similar to each other, more of an 80/20 split.  

And then there are some of my relatives I saw that still have that small percentage of Samoa or Tonga.

While it would be nice to see 100% matching to the appropriate region, that would apply to everyone else who aren’t Polynesian and have mentioned how they do not show the correct amount of German or French or Spanish vs. Portuguese, or like with  my own results where they removed my “England and Northwestern Europe” and replaced some of it with “Wales” and some of it went to my “Norway” region.

I have been keeping track of all of the updates I’ve been getting since I tested with Ancestry back in 2014.

So as they attempt to get specific with our region when back in 2018 they (the science team) told me to my face that they cannot split the former Polynesia region, it becomes less accurate and seems to cause more confusion.

And while their communities are still there (they are below the regions and other features near the bottom of your results), I continue to witness many who still believe that they do have ties to that other region, whatever is not known in their genealogy.  Like a Hawaiian insisting that they have Maori heritage or a Maori having Hawaiian heritage when the paper trail does not support it and/or they are known to just not have that heritage at all.

What confuses people more about the ethnicities is the fact that we can be a very close match to other Polynesians, particularly those of the same region.  So a New Zealand Maori and a Hawaiian for example can be predicted as first or second cousins.

Here I compare that same cousin that I mentioned who isn’t admixed, showing her top/highest/closest endogamous matches.  I identify who is NZ Maori vs. Hawaiian (Kanaka Maoli).  Then I added in my own top matches who are my known closest cousins. 

There is an easy way to distinguish a true 1st, 2nd or maybe 3rd cousin match from an endogamous match.  The longest segment for example is essential in determining a true 1st, 2nd or 3rd cousin match.  Also with endogamous matches are the high amount of segments, something that you will not see with your true 1st, 2nd or 3rd cousins.

In a future blog post, I will blog more about these anomalies that exist for Polynesian matches, and the difference between an eastern Polynesian versus western Polynesian match.

But for now, hoping that with more updates the results become more precise and cause less confusion.