Ethnicity and DNA

Question

I'm a 5th generation descendant of Henry Lewis (Lewis-12891). There is an argument out there among family members as to whether or not Henry was of Welsh or Native American/African American ancestry. For what it's worth, according to Ancestry's testing, I have no Native American, African ancestors, (though I would be glad to have either or both). And no Welsh. Six generations is a long time, and I don't know how ethnicity is passed forward by DNA, or how reliably. I found six other descendants of Henry Lewis on Ancestry (each linked to me via DNA) and their ethnic backgrounds are similar to mine: no Native  American, no Welsh, no African ancestors. Does this mean something, or nothing, or is this a puzzle that DNA can't solve? (One overlooked possibility: that Henry's widowed mother married a Native American or freed African man and that Henry was identified as such by default, rather than birth).

Comments

I would suggest adding DNA and Native_Americans as tags to get the attention of people who have the information you need.

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It’s very unlikely that Henry had any Native American ancestry. Most Virginia tribes were wiped out in the 1600’s and no Virginia colonist would be marrying a Native American during the French and Indian War period (1754-1763). Indian tribes like the Shawnee and Cherokee were actively attacking Virginia settlers from 1750’s right through the Revolutionary War.

Answer 1

For an explanation of how "ethnicity" is passed forward (or not) by DNA, you might like to have a look at https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Unexpected-Ethnicity-Results.

For an explanation of how Ancestry comes up with its ethnicity estimates, you might like to have a look at https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/AncestryDNA-Ethnicity.

Answer 2

Unfortunately the terminology generally used is both vague and confusing, Ethnicity can be from shared ancestry or shared culture, genetically I'm near enough pure caucasian, all my ancestors between mid 1600s to mid 1800s are from the United Kingdom, official NZ forms only give me relevant ethic options of European (I'm not) or other for which I put Celt (I'm Cornish, Scottish, Welsh and Irish by ancestry) if they refuse to accept Kiwi, which is what I consider my ethnicity as.
 And I have cousins who are proud there ethnicity is Maori.

Ethnicity can be genetic or cultural, and could be different depending on which path you choose.
 I also have the same DNA test posted to differing companies, and the differences in their ethnicity estimates are hilarious. Although they all agree that my ancient DNA includes Neanderthal.
 Ethnicity can be revealed well beyond 6 generations, the accuracy of the reports on it are highly questionable.
 Summary, your DNA test results on ethnicity really are not useful.

Comments

A thoughtful answer, for sure, but not a scientific one. Maybe my question was not phrased very well. What kind of DNA 'signature'  allows Ancestry to state that someone has African or Native American ancestors. Or are they just guessing (which I doubt)? The second part of the question would be, how reliable is that testing.

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Gary, Interesting answer and I'm straying from the original question...  I grew up being told I had Native ancestry on my mother's side and decades later, after beginning family history research learned I had the same on my father's side; or so I was told.  Even later I had my and my father's DNA tested and no Native tags were found on either side.  I had been very interested in Native issues and culture and was quite actively involved both personally and professionally for about a decade.  I embarrassed myself probably more times than I was aware by claiming that nebulous ancestry.  Once I learned that the tests showed no Native ancestry, I realized that even if they had shown Native ancestry, I wasn't raised as a Native person.  We had no documentation or family heirlooms indicating a cultural involvement.  While I am still interested in the culture and some of the issues, I am no longer actively involved (I'm quite a bit older as well).  I appreciate the distinction you made because I met quite a few non-ethnic Native people who were born and raised and accepted as such.

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Gordon, in response to your question about what kind of DNA "signature" allows Ancestry to state someone has a particular ethnicity, know that haplogroup Q is most commonly (but not exclusively) associated with the indigenous people of North America.   I can't speak to which markers are indicative of African descent.

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Hi, Gordon. I echo Gary's comment about "vague and confusing" terminology. This resulted from the extremely successful ad campaign by Ancestry several years ago where we were told whether we should buy lederhosen or a kilt, an African gele or a Scandinavian tophue.

It was all about marketing, and "ethnicity" was a word that the general public recognized and--and least partially--understood. Problem is, ethnicity isn't a term that technically applies to genetics. For that, in context, what we're actually talking about is "admixture" or "biogeographical ancestry." But good luck getting an advertising company to recommend trying to use "admixture" to connect to a general audience when "ethnicity" is there to be used for the "where do I come from" question.

Here's an article on the ISOGG Wiki that might help: https://isogg.org/wiki/Admixture_analyses.

I wrote about the "ethnicity testing" issue several years ago on my essentially defunct blog, "Should You Trade Your Lederhosen for a Kilt?" We've come farther since then, and the Genome Research Consortium has delayed indefinitely moving the current genome reference model from GRCh38 (we still use the 11-year-old, deprecated GRCh37 at the genealogy testing companies, unfortunately) to GRCh39, which had been anticipated for a 2022 release. The reason for the delay is the work done by the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium to finally sequence the entire human genome. Prior to that, roughly 6% of the genome had remained invisible to us.

Not to complicate things, but what that new, hybridized sequencing technology allowed us to consider was moving from a single-model reference genome (the majority of which is from one guy in Buffalo, New York, who, back in 1997, answered a newspaper add about DNA testing) to what's referred to as a pangenomic model. Oversimplifying, we know that that different populations have different allele frequencies and different structural variants called tandem repeats. Having a single reference genome makes less sense now than it did 20 years ago. For a short background on pangenomics, here's a five-minute YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swNtGe9QWAQ.

Increasing the identifiable diversity of our genome reference models through fully-sequenced data may help us improve the accuracy and granularity of biogeographical ancestry. But that's still a bit in the future.

The AncestryDNA links that Paul gave in his answer probably satisfy the question about how they come up with their periodically changing "ethnicity" estimates. For a slightly deeper dive there, here's the PDF version of their "Ethnicity Estimate 2023 White Paper".

But since you requested scientific background, here are a few items that can help put you to sleep if you suffer from insomnia any given night. This is by no means an exhaustive list and, frankly, most of the literature deals with psychological and social issues surrounding consumer DNA testing and "ethnicity" rather than the actual mechanisms of analysis. Just in case you want to browse:

Open Access Articles

Blanchard, Jessica W., G. Tallbull, C. Wolpert, et al. "Qualitative Research Barriers and Strategies Related to Genetic Ancestry Testing in Indigenous Communities." Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics 12, no. 3, 169–79 (July 2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1556264617704542.

Blell, Mwenza, and M. A. Hunter. "Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing's Red Herring: 'Genetic Ancestry' and Personalized Medicine." Frontiers in Medicine 6 (March 2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2019.00048.

Damotte, Vincent, C. Zhao, C. Lin, E. Williams, et al. "Multiple Measures Reveal The Value of Both Race And Geographic Ancestry For Self-Identification." bioRxiv (July 2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/701698.

Nanibaa' A. Garrison. "Genetic Ancestry Testing with Tribes: Ethics, Identity & Health Implications." Dædalus (March 2018), an open access publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. https://www.amacad.org/publication/genetic-ancestry-testing-tribes-ethics-identity-health-implications.

Horowitz, Adam L., Aliya Saperstein, Jasmine Little, et al. "Consumer (Dis-)Interest in Genetic Ancestry Testing: The Roles of Race, Immigration, and Ancestral Certainty." New Genetics and Society 38, no. 2 (April 2019). DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14636778.2018.1562327.

Paywalled Article

Rubanovich, C.K., Taitingfong, R., Triplett, C. et al. "Impacts of Personal DNA Ancestry Testing." Journal of Community Genetics 12, 37–52 (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12687-020-00481-5.

Excerpt from the abstract:

"While 46% of survey responders (N=147) reported their ancestry results as surprising or unexpected, less than 1% (N=3) were distressed by them. Importantly, however, 21% (N=67) reported that their results reshaped their personal identity. Most (81%; N=260) planned to share results with family, and 12% (N=39) intended to share results with a healthcare provider."

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Hi Edison:

Thanks! It will take me a while to plow through these references, but they will satisfy my curiosity, no doubt. The consensus seems to be that all I can reliably know about Henry Lewis is that I am related to him. Happy with that!

Gord

Answer 3

I have several lines back to the 1500s and find ethinicity testing just isn't reliable, or at least not inclusive or consistent.  I know I have French and Saphardic Jewish ancestors, but they don't show up.  On the ancestry groups I had Devon which was correct, but on the recent update it us no longer there.   Everything positive is correct, but there is a huge amount missing.

Answer 4

Hi,

I was quite excised about my DNA ethnicities a couple of years ago and I wrote this http://natashahouseman.co.uk/how-accurate-is-ancestrys-dna-ethnicity-percentages-for-english-ancestry/. Basically the paper trail, and DNA cousins (both close and distant) stack up. I don't have Scottish or Swedish/Norweigan ancestry within DNA limits so why were they showing up?

Since then I have learnt a little more about how these groups come about. It's not that we have ancestors from a specific geography, but that we share a lot of long historical DNA with people from those regions. Which makes sense. Yorkshire (England) is close to the southern borders of Scotland and was long ago populated by peoples from Scandinavia. My own ancestry is very static and it is not surprising that I have a lot of commonalities with static people from those regions.

The other thing I learnt is that certain DNA inheritances drop out quickly. Indiginous North American being one of those.

Paul Masini already shared great articles on this, but I thought you might find it helpful to see how it plays out on an individual basis.