Ancestry

[Tautalus]

After reading countless articles, also on this forum, for years about genetic ancestry, I decided to do the tests to find out my autosomal DNA, Y-DNA and mtDNA. Knowing my country's history and what had already been written about its genetics, I knew more or less what to expect.

And the results from the autosomal DNA were not a complete surprise.
The most surprising were the results from the mtDNA and mainly from the Y-DNA.
I have a Y-DNA that approximately only 2% or 3% of the Portuguese have.

I did the tests in different companies.
These are the results obtained from Living DNA.



It is impressive how Living DNA assigns percentages for Great Britain not in national terms but for each region, which also makes them more confusing.

These are the results obtained from FamilyTreeDna.



The areas are roughly the same, Iberia, Central Europe, Great Britain, North Africa. The percentages vary.
Genetic ancestry is not an exact science, i guess. The reference groups each company uses are different and changing all the time.

The central Mediterranean area is more difficult to interpret.
One test says I have 21.5% ancestry from South Italy, the other that I have 12% from Sardinia and 3% from Malta.
So, I don't fully understand, I think these two areas correspond to somewhat different genetics.

The trace percentages from Baltic and Southern Caucasus are also strange.


And according to FamilyTreeDna these are my WHG, EEF and ANE results (if Metal Age Invader corresponds to ANE).
I've read on this forum that these results are not very reliable, but I think they shouldn't be too far from reality.



I also did tests at 23&me, but as they only analyze a period of 200 or 300 years, it was useless to discover my ancient ancestry.

So far, it's been a fascinating journey and the next step is to do the Big-Y700 to discover a deeper branch that I might belong to.

 

[Duarte]

I did the DNA test on FTDNA and these are my results for aDNA, yDNA (Big Y 700) and mtDNA(Full Sequence).
The FTDNA results match my ancestry. Very cool to see the Native American B2 mtDNA, although I have no detected Native American autosomal ancestry in FTDNA, and nice to see also the typically Iberian yDNA R1b-DF27.

I believe that Living DNA has an algorithm that is very focused on identifying modern ethnic groups that are more common today in the various regions of the British Isles, ranging from the original British to the various descendants of immigrants who arrived in the islands throughout the existence of the empire British and contemporary times. I did not the test on Living DNA, but uploaded my raw autosomal data from the FTDNA test. My impression is that in Living DNA my MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) ancestry appears inflated.

 

[Tautalus]

Hello,

The Y-DNA haplogroup to which you belong (R1b-DF27) was the one to which I thought I was most likely to belong, given that it is the most widespread haplogroup in Iberian populations.

I got to know my haplogroups through 23&me, which performs a limited analysis of the male Y chromosome, not comparable to the Big-Y700.



I believe the FTDNA results are more consistent with my ancestry also. If you look at my LivingDNA results, there's a blank void in the middle of the four European areas, and that void is France. But Iberian genetics have a significant contribution from France. So, it's not very credible that I don't have any percentage relative to France.

Your results are interesting, you have a very diverse and rich genetics, with many components similar to mine.
I agree that your results regarding LivingDNA's MENA seem too exaggerated compared to FamilyTreeDna. LivingDNA test is best suited for people with British ancestry (with origin in Great Britain), as you said, at least that's the idea I also got after reading some reviews on sites about genetic ancestry.

 

[Duarte]

Hello,

The Y-DNA haplogroup to which you belong (R1b-DF27) was the one to which I thought I was most likely to belong, given that it is the most widespread haplogroup in Iberian populations.

I got to know my haplogroups through 23&me, which performs a limited analysis of the male Y chromosome, not comparable to the Big-Y700.

View attachment 13808

I believe the FTDNA results are more consistent with my ancestry also. If you look at my LivingDNA results, there's a blank void in the middle of the four European areas, and that void is France. But Iberian genetics have a significant contribution from France. So, it's not very credible that I don't have any percentage relative to France.

Your results are interesting, you have a very diverse and rich genetics, with many components similar to mine.
I agree that your results regarding LivingDNA's MENA seem too exaggerated compared to FamilyTreeDna. LivingDNA test is best suited for people with British ancestry (with origin in Great Britain), as you said, at least that's the idea I also got after reading some reviews on sites about genetic ancestry.

Hi Tautalus,
The only observation I would make in relation to the my FTDNA autosomal results would be in relation to an alleged North-Italian ancestry attributed to me, in a relatively high percentage for someone who does not have Italian-Brazilian ancestry, as is my case. In the FTDNA algorithm there are two modern ethnicities corresponding to mainland Italy and Sicily: The 'Italian peninsula' which corresponds the central northern Italy and 'Greece and the Balkans' which is inferred include the regions of modern Italy that were a part of the ancestral Magna Graecia (Southern Italy and Sicily). In my case, the attributed Italian ancestry refers much more to an ancestry coming from the north-northeast of the Iberian peninsula than exactly from central-north Italy. This is a typical case of genetic overlap between modern populations of these regions: In addition to the ancestry of the North from Portugal (majority) from the colonial and contemporary times (the colonial Portuguese probably carried to me some admixture of locals indigenous and African slaves), I also have contemporary Spanish ancestors (minority), but I don't know any Italians. Below I listed all ethnicities that the FTDNA’s algorithm includes as ‘ Southern Europe’.

 

[Tautalus]

Hi Duarte,

I know that in the peopling of Brazil, in addition to the usual Portuguese, African and indigenous components, there was also a strong Italian component (Brazil was one of the largest destinations for Italian immigration).
So I thought that your North-Italian ancestry really came from these Italian immigrants.


Curiously the ancient kingdom of Aragon, which has existed since 1305, located in the north-northeast of Iberia, had vast territories in the Mediterranean, namely, Sicily and the kingdom of Naples. But these territories were located in the south of Italy. Not in central or north Italy.


Regarding my most recent ancestors, as far as I know, they are all from Portugal.



The families from which I descend are essentially farmers, linked to the land they cultivated, who, I think, have lived in the center of the country for several centuries.

There may have been older internal migrations, from north to central Portugal for example, but I'm not aware of them.


There are people who invest their time in genealogical research and look for information on their ancestors in civil and parish registers, I never had the patience for that.

My level of effort in that regard is limited to spitting into a tube or rubbing my cheeks


I think that the ancestry that I have from other regions outside the Iberian Peninsula cannot be explained by recent movements of people. They must correspond to ancient migrations or invasions. The different peoples that invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Celts, Romans, Germans, Berbers, etc, brought their DNA, which ended up spreading throughout the population.

 

[Duarte]

Hello Tautalus.
The presence of Italian blood is in fact very strong in Brazil. It is estimated that in my hometown around 30% of the population has Italian ancestry. Like you, I don't have much patience to do research in notary offices, parishes, burial records, etc. and, from there, build a consistent family tree. My action was also limited to rubbing cotton swabs on the inside of the cheeks and sending the test tubes with the material collected for laboratory analysis. I attribute my “Italian” side, until proven otherwise, to the genetics of ancient migrants and invaders of the Iberian Peninsula: Celts, Romans, Germans, without forgetting the important genetic contribution of Berbers and Arabs. Until proven otherwise, I always start from the premise that all the autosomal DNA that I carry today came to me from Europe through the Portuguese and Spanish, from America through the Tupi Indians, and from Africa through Angolan slaves. Strong hug.

 

[Jovialis]

Thanks for sharing your results!

I myself have also done these tests. If you want to take it to the next level, I'd recommend doing a company like Nebula for WGS 30x. Because you will be able to utilize the raw data for many more 3rd-party calculators. I'd wait for a sale, usually around holidays.

 

[Tautalus]

Thanks for the advice.
I'm going to do the Big Y-700, but beyond that, I was undecided on what next steps to take.
I will look for information about the test you refer to.

 

[Jovialis]

Thanks for the advice.
I'm going to do the Big Y-700, but beyond that, I was undecided on what next steps to take.
I will look for information about the test you refer to.

In that case, you may be interested in Yfull.com integration with Nebula. Not sure if they still offer it, but when I was tested, they transferred my info to Yfull as part of the package deal.

 

[Tautalus]

In that case, you may be interested in Yfull.com integration with Nebula. Not sure if they still offer it, but when I was tested, they transferred my info to Yfull as part of the package deal.

Thanks once again, I will look into it.

 

[Tautalus]

One question I had was whether I am a typical Portuguese or not, that is, to what extent did my percentages for the different admixtures resemble that of the average Portuguese.So I've been having a little fun with Admixture Studio.

One of the calculators I used to figure this out was Dodecad K12b.

The result was this.



Graph with the decomposition by admixture



And by region.
Europe : Atlantic_Med + North_Europe
Middle East : Caucasus + Gedrosia + SouthWest_Asia
North Africa : North_Africa + East_Africa
Others : South Asian + Siberian + SSA



There are some small differences, some higher values, others lower in some admixtures, but in general it is similar.

Thus my admixture profile fits the average values for Portugal.

The populations closest to me are the Galicians and the Portuguese.

I also used Eurogenes K36.



I grouped the admixtures according to a classification proposed by Maciamo in the thread “To what do Eurogenes K36 admixtures really correspond?”

Neolithic farmer	56,82	Iberian / Italian / West_Med / North_African / East_Balkan / East_Med / Armenian
Mesolithic hunter-gatherer	25,42	North_Sea / North_Atlantic / East_Central_Euro
French	5,92
Basque	4,91
Central_Euro	3,69
West_Caucasian	3,25

For the K36 I don't have average values for Portugal so for this calculator I can't make comparisons with my results.

 

[Dalmat]

This is mine

 

[Tautalus]

The average values of K36 for Portugal were available on the calculator Eurogenes K36 – Marques Modern.

Below graph with the decomposition of K36 admixtures.

Because the averages for Portugal have values for 33 components, I narrowed it down to the 7 most significant components to be clearer. In these 7 components are 80% of my admixture values and 75% of Portugal's admixture values.



The biggest difference is the value of North_Sea, the others are relatively similar.


And below the map with the rate of similarity that I have with the average of the different regions/countries.

If with the Dodecad k12b I was closer to the Galicians, Portuguese and then the other Spanish populations, with the K36 I am closer to the Portuguese of course, and then to the Northwest Italians and the Center / South French.

 

[Duarte]

My dnagenics’ Eurogenes K36 results

 

[Tautalus]

Hello Duarte,


There's the Italian part you talked about in a previous post. If that part of your ancestry comes from the north-northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, as you said, then you are actually 47.02% Iberian


My values do not surprise me, with the exception of two of then. I always thought my North Atlantic component was bigger than it really is, because of the influence of the Celts and all that. And the relative size (for a portuguese) of my North Sea component was a surprise.
Maybe it has to do with my Y-Dna haplogroup and the people who passed it on to me.

 

[Duarte]

Hello Duarte,


There's the Italian part you talked about in a previous post. If that part of your ancestry comes from the north-northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, as you said, then you are actually 47.02% Iberian


My values do not surprise me, with the exception of two of then. I always thought my North Atlantic component was bigger than it really is, because of the influence of the Celts and all that. And the relative size (for a portuguese) of my North Sea component was a surprise.
Maybe it has to do with my Y-Dna haplogroup and the people who passed it on to me.

View attachment 13870

Hello Tautalus.

yDNA gives us this interesting insight into ancient migrations. I often wonder why my subclade R-FGC35133 (R-Y45921 in YFull) came from an R1b-DF27 line that left Mediterranean Occitania, passed through British Cornwall, and then crossed the Atlantic to reach the center of the Iberian peninsula. In my mind, the most logical way would be to have left the south of France, already close to the Pyrenees, going directly to the Iberian Peninsula.

 

[Tautalus]

Hello Duarte,

Yes, the map does not make much sense. But one thing it shows is the area of uncertainty in that path. And that uncertainty covers a large area, all of western France all the way to northern Spain. That means your ancestors could have passed through any part of that area on their way to Spain without having to pass through Great Britain.




The area of uncertainty for my haplogroup is smaller and is essentially centered around the North Sea.

 

[Duarte]

This analysis of the degree of uncertainty of the path, Tautalus, is interesting. I didn't know about this feature of this app. It really helps a lot with understanding. In fact, my final branch is shared with three other Spaniards, which leads me to believe that R-FGC35133 is not an exotic branch of R-DF27 in Iberia.

 

[Tautalus]

Duarte, I didn't know the specifics of your subclade, so I looked it up on the Net, but there is practically no information.
In the search I found what you wrote in the thread “R1b DF27 in Iberia” on Eupedia (27-12-19) about you and a Cordoba Spanish being the only ones to have this mutation in FTDNA and Yfull (R-Y45921). That´s cool.
In Yfull there is already a third person, but they do not identify the nationality, maybe it is one that belongs to the unknown country that you mention in your post.



I would like to know my terminal clade too, below CTS6433 there are many subclades. There are two branches found in Portugal, maybe one of them is mine, I will only know when I make the Big Y-700.

 

[Duarte]

@Tautalus
Very cool the complete tree of your clade: Yes, it certainly arrived in Portugal brought by ancient Celtic migrants, as you said earlier.
I was very curious when the ID YF 112252 was listed by YFull with the caption “new”. My expectation was that after the sample was completely processed by YFull, the nationality would be displayed. But that didn't happen. In the meantime, the FTDNA included other samples from Spain, in addition to that of Spaniard man of Córdoba, in subclade R-FGC35133. As you can see in the block diagram of the Big Y 700, they form subclades further downstream of FGC35133. “El Cordobés” and I continue together with our 27 private variants waiting for new Big Y testers that, who knows, match us forming a new subclade more downstream yet. I think that we we will still be waiting for much time yet, until Big Y 700 reach a more honest price for new testers.