Part 501rs – Smith Robertson Genealogy – Maybe Martian?

Good Afternoon,

Isn’t genealogy fun? Who knows what may turn up in my DNA mappings, especially as the technology becomes more and more “sophisticated” and fine-tuned. With the supposed speculation of fossil life in the Martian meteorite ALH 84001, who knows what may be just around the corner in my search for that most distant ancestor?

Okay, okay, I’m not holding my breath, nor am I suggesting that I should follow my roots to Mars… Nor am I looking for that connection. (There I go again with the double or triple negatives…) I am just amazed at how quickly the genetic and genealogy technology is advancing exponentially.

Following up from Part 497, I have now included a 23andMe Autosomal DNA component into my graph/chart. And yes, this is not scientific… It is just my way of visualizing which assists me to understand what the three viewpoints, aka testings, are saying.

As you can see, the three firms: 23andMe, Ancestry By DNA, and Family Tree DNA have all concluded, from their vantage arguments, that my Autosomal DNA is above 93% European in origination. See Part 500rs,and I would presume that that is far back as they can go, up to the current day, with their present techniques.

From my comprehension, and as I try to represent in the graph/chart, I now understand that each firms’ results, as per Megan Smolenyak, “have to do with different approaches being used to do the analysis”. All three have concentrated, the oval area labeled, on “European”. My Autosomal DNA of European origins, albeit ancestry, range from 93% to 97%. Family Tree DNA and 23andMe have similar estimations, approximately 3% to 4%, regarding African origins.

Only 23andMe provides the <1% Asian results. All-things-being-equal, this may mean that Family Tree DNA either did not take that percentage into account in their reporting, or they did not test or examine the corresponding populations. They, Family Tree DNA, did report my results for Europe as 95.85% ± 0.11% and for Africa as 4.14% ± 0.10%. A question I would ask is “If they are that detailed with the result percentages, why would they not “see” any factor for Asian? These two results do add up to 99.99% ± 0.11%.

That is still pretty close to 100%. Per a Family Tree DNA FAQ – “Why don’t the percentages from each population add up to 100%?” Their corresponding response is “Your results may not add up to 100% if you have a small amount of DNA that matches a population. The Population Finder program does not report a match when it is too distant to report with confidence…” So does that mean that Family Tree DNA did or did not see, or report the population match for Asian?

The “blank space” in my graph/chart is that area in the brackets, in my own words… and maybe understanding may be, where the three firms have not analyzed based on their own techniques. Taking a wild guess this is “My Autosome Continuum”. It is in those areas which as time progresses, new and exciting technological developments will reveal more. It would be nice if these tests, and again I am only thinking out of the top of my head, would be able to tell me the “close” geographic origins of my ggg-grandfather James Smith.

Mars, maybe?

Enjoy,

Jim