My Ancestry.com Experience

So the first DNA test that I ordered was from dna.ancestry.com. They often run sales and most recently ran one for $79, but at the time that I ordered, I didn't know that. I paid $99 but googled an online discount code for free shipping that worked.

Timing (i.e. the wait) 

I ordered the test on Wednesday, March 9, 2016. The test kit arrived on Monday, March 15, 2016. I spit in the tube and mailed it back. I could see in my online account that the test began processing on March 18, 2016. I signed up to receive weekly emails regarding the status of my tests, however they only sent me two emails: one to let me know that my test kit had shipped out to me on March 10, 2016 and one to let me know that they were still processing my results on April 6, 2016.  I received an email that my results were ready on May 3, 2016. So for me, from start to finish, the process took 55 days. The time that they processed them was about 46 days (a little over 6 weeks).

Again, I watched many youtube videos from other people who had gone through the process, and many of them reported receiving their results in about three weeks. So I figured either they were really busy or my results were really mixed up. Both may have been correct, because these results are a bit of a head scratcher.

The Results

So I won't make you wait to see the results. Here they are, and I'll write more about my thoughts afterwards.

The first screen you come to looks like this. It shows you an overview of your DNA results. It also shows you a few "matches" that you have. These are other people with DNA that match yours. They may be related to you (but there is a chance that they may not be related to you. More on that in a later post.)

I clicked the green button in the left column that said "SEE FULL ETHNICITY ESTIMATE", and it took me to the next screen with my results. The word "ESTIMATE" is really key here, and my results are a prime example of that.

So here you can see that I'm 77% African and 23% a lot of other stuff. I call it "a lot of other stuff" because it is apparently not clear what that other stuff is. In all of the videos that I've watched, I haven't run across another result set like this with ALL trace regions (outside of the African portion). For example, usually under European, for other people there would be listed at least one or more confident results and then the trace regions. However, in mine, as you can see, ALL of the results outside of the African ones listed first, there are trace regions. From the explanation, they mean "iffy" to me.

Trace Regions

So here's the explanation provided about what trace regions are:

My Thoughts

Overall, I'm glad I took the test. Although I came away with more questions than answers, going into this, I figured that I would. However, I didn't realize how unclear my results would be. I'm not upset or anything about it though. I know that genetics is a science that is developing right before our very eyes. Over time, as more people get tested, my results will become clearer. I'm already planning to have more members of my family get tested in the near future.

Also, I think that my trace regions come from the European ancestor(s). I'm pretty sure that nobody was from Asia or Polynesia in the recent past. I think that whatever ancestor(s) I inherited these DNA segments from already had DNA in them from these regions- although I could be wrong. I am a complete novice at this.

I chose to test with Ancestry.com for several reasons:

(1) I knew that they are more specific about what regions in Africa you match to. Many of the others (23andme.com, familytreedna.com, etc.) tend to group Africans in large vague categories like West African or Subsaharan African. We already know that much, and I'd rather spend these coins of mine on something more specific.

(2) I knew that Ancestry.com would provide me with a list of people that match to my DNA. Others do too, no doubt. But I have the whole family tree set up on Ancestry, and my DNA test correlated well with that.

Here are some more detailed photos of my results (including the specific Trace Regions):

Africa

Europe

America

Asia

Pacific Islander

West Asia

So there you have it. Basically, my ancestors had babies by everyone who was invited to dinner. Just kidding! It's just jokes.

Until next time...