Since I hit several dead ends in my previous endeavors, this afternoon I went back to all the ancestry.com hints and started more research.  My last ancestry post indicated my surprise at the DNA results.  In that post I failed to mention that the reports indicate a possible range as well as exact numbers.  Today’s endeavor made me reconsider once again because everything I was able to trace went back to England over and over again.  Although the DNA results specified Europe West as 77 per cent, it did show a possible range with a low end of 50 per cent.  Great Britain’s number is 9 per cent with a range up to 27 per cent.  My guess is that the reality is more like 20  per cent Great Britain and  60 to 65 per cent Europe West which I can trace to specific places, e.g. Switzerland mostly.  An acquaintance had her DNA done by two different sources with somewhat differing results.  I also realize that over many centuries people have migrated to Great Britain from continental Europe.  In the south the Romans were there for centuries.  However, no Italian showed up in my DNA even though I know the name of one ancestor who migrated from Italy.  Perhaps she was from northern Italy–all I can find is simply Italy so have no idea from where.  Northern Italy, unlike southern Italy, is included in Europe West by ancestry.com.

After quitting ancestry.com for the day, I went back to the matrilineal part of my grandson’s National Geographic Genotype data.  It provides a totally different type of analysis that goes back even further into history with illustrations of the movement of your ancestors over thousands of years and provides your exact Haploid Group.  I am J named after Jasmine in the book, “The Seven Daughters of Eve” by Bryan Sykes, a British geneticist.  This book traces the mitochondrial DNA of modern Europeans back to seven women located in different parts of the world.  Jasmine was the result of a mutation that occurred approximately 45 thousand years ago in the Near East/Caucasus from which I probably get that small percentage of Caucasus DNA.  Today not only are J Haploid people found in Europe but also in the UAE, Yemen, Iran, etc.  More specifically I am J1C3B which is found most commonly today in Switzerland and Austria.  Only  .2 per cent of the Genotype project participants have that DNA.  Furthermore, unless you were born in Africa below the Sahara or are a descendant of Africans, you will have some Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA, usually between one and four per cent.  My grandson has 1.2 Neanderthal.  Scientists now believe that for non-Africans, a great deal of our immunity comes from those genes.  The Genotype project provides links to a different family tree source than ancestry.com if you wish to go that route.

The book also indicates that working out your family trees with who married who and all their children may not be accurate because what is official may or may not be what really occurred.  The author tells the story of a friend who insisted his DNA get analyzed and eagerly awaited the results which provided the author with a dilemma once he realized his friend could not possibly be who he though he was.