Friday, December 25, 2020

23andme are Africanising me again

Back in 2015ish 23andMe were telling me I was some trace percentage of North African. They then changed their minds. Now they have me as 0.2% Coptic again.

Other changes were to delete - entirely - my ancestry from France and Germany, formerly 9.9%; and to rub out the lion's share of my 11.9% Northwest European. The Southern European trace is gone too. This is now subsumed into my British / Irish heritage, and somewhat into Scandinavia now 5.9%. Only 0.3% remains unclassified White Guy.

My father is still marked 5.4% Carolingian (and 2.7% Norse, and 4.7% misc). He's the 0.2% Copt apparently.

My Ashkenaz side went down to 27.6% having donated 0.2% to my Polish side... now 1.4%. Still urban: Krakow and Warsaw.

It is all a question of when you put the markers down. "Northwest European" and "Franco-German" incorporates the whole Bell Beaker / Single Grave cluster. Tough to know when these populations moved over. They are also closely interrelated: what is a "Norman", exactly?

As for the Britishness, again it's weighted to London which I don't want to count, followed by the Mersey region and then by what I've got records for which is father's side Staffordshire. Some Northumberland, also recorded, mother's side (this is where our Scandinavian side got mixed in). Interestingly Ireland is right out, now. But Glasgow City is strong.

I call shenanigans on Glasgow: I think this is a Gaelic signature and there's something wrong in the algorithm. And why're 23andMe less clear on an earlier generation's genome? Add all that up and I'm unsure these results are an improvement on what I already had, which although less clear were at least less suspicious.

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