Confusing Results between Ancestry and gedmatch.com

[Dutch]

So I uploaded my Ancestry DNA data to gedmatch. I took their results via the Eurogenes K36 and I am confused by the results.

Ancestry says I am 73% British, 22% Irish, 2% Norwegian, 2% Swiss and 1% Balkan. My K36 results shows British as the highest # with 92. It is most around the London area. I get that. Where I am confused is K36 also has me as a 92 for Dutch. I am confused about this. Here are my results. Does this really mean I am as much Dutch as I am English? I am including the results so that hopefully someone here knows more about this than what I am assuming.

I am just now learning about my father's side of the family. He was abandoned as a baby in 1923. His last name from his birth certificate is not in any of my dna matches so I am thinking the mother may have picked a name out of the phone book.

Thank you for any insight you can provide.

Steve

[Generalissimo]

Lots of issues here, but the two main ones are probably these

- the K36 was never designed for what you're using it for, see here...

https://bga101.blogspot.com/2013/03/...-gedmatch.html

- the ancestry test at Ancestry is kind of crap.

[Dutch]

I thought the K36 pointed out where my dna was likely to be from or match. Am I wrong?

So there is no real way of knowing?

[Dutch]

I was in a hurry with my last reply. I thought that K36 was kind of like a heat map per se. The numbers being a percentage of how closely my dna is similar to people in those areas. With a 92 in both the London and Netherlands areas, I read that to mean that my dna is 92% similar to people there just like it is 0% similar to someone in Japan.

I’m not expecting it to tell me I am this or that % Dutch or % British. I am reading into it that my DNA is more closely connected to the people living near London and in the Netherlands than it is to say Eastern Russia. This would also mean I likely have a Dutch background I haven’t discovered yet. Am I correctly getting what my results are saying?

[dosas]

I was in a hurry with my last reply. I thought that K36 was kind of like a heat map per se. The numbers being a percentage of how closely my dna is similar to people in those areas. With a 92 in both the London and Netherlands areas, I read that to mean that my dna is 92% similar to people there just like it is 0% similar to someone in Japan.

I’m not expecting it to tell me I am this or that % Dutch or % British. I am reading into it that my DNA is more closely connected to the people living near London and in the Netherlands than it is to say Eastern Russia. This would also mean I likely have a Dutch background I haven’t discovered yet. Am I correctly getting what my results are saying?

Yes, you are correct, it's a heat map of genetic similarity of sorts but it can't paint an accurate picture of ancestry, especially in cases of mixed background. For example, in my K36, the map paints me as most likely a Cretan/Aegean Islander, but I have zero connection to those places, even when it comes to my extended family, it's just that I have similar components in similar %s, a result of meeting midway my parents' genetics.

[Dutch]

Thank you for your reply. I know that I have some German in my lineage. It does seem that I am more Germanic than Celtic based on my North Sea vs North Atlantic. Also, there’s the fact that I don’t know all of the heritage from my dad’s side of the family.

The heat map places as much similarity in the Netherlands as it does the London area. There’s a missing relative here somewhere. Even if I haven’t found the individuals yet, something in my dna somewhere caused it to be there. If it weren’t, it might still be there but on a much lesser scale.

[Dutch]

I guess my question is this. I know I have family from England from the side of the family I have verified proof from. It makes sense to me that there was a 92% similarity in the London area. My question is should I believe the 92 for the Netherlands. Could that be a false reading or should it be trusted as much as the one for London? I have DNA matches in the Netherlands. Does that make it an accurate estimation?

[msmarjoribanks]

92% is quite high. Someone who was 100% English (whatever that even means) could probably get 92% in southern England, and 92% in the Netherlands.

To add to that, my dad is mostly British Isles (bits of French, German, and Dutch, but small percentages well back). His ancestry is mostly English with a good bit of Welsh. He only gets 87 in Southern England (89 in Wales, and highs of 90 in Ireland even though he is not Irish at all). In addition, 83/84 in NW France, and 83 along the coast of NW Europe otherwise.

My mom is in fact about what you are speculating about -- roughly half British Isles (English and some Ulster Irish) and half Western German and Swedish. She gets her high of 93 at the southern end of Denmark, but only gets 86 in England and Wales and northern Scotland and 87 in SW Scotland, as well as 90 in the Netherlands.

One problem is that there is a lot of overlap in these countries, you can't use this as a way to figure out ancestry. Your results could signify some German mixture or the like, or it could just be consistent with being English.

[Pylsteen]

Generally, Northwestern Europe is genetically quite similar, especially Dutch and English often overlap in these calculators. If you have a mixed Northwestern European background such as English and German, I wouldn't overanalyse the similarity to Dutch on a heat map or in the gedmatch calculators. The best indication for Dutch ancestry are significant Dutch DNA-matches.

[Dutch]

Thank you Marjori. I’m not pure English. We have some Welsh, Irish and apparently German.