This much awaited new feature attempts to determine the percentage of total (autosomal) ancestry in 23andMe customers. We expected an detailed ancestry painting in the lines of an advanced Dodecad admixtures. There are in total 18 specific populations, among which 11 from Europe, and five additional nonspecific continent-wide groups. It's good, but it is considerably less than I expected. The most annoying is that some European members get a very high percentage of nonspecific Northern or Southern European, or an even more general nonspecific European.
I am also disappointed by:
In these regards, the Dodecad admixtures are much more useful.
The Advanced Global Similarity tool on 23andMe had reference populations that are missing here, like the Basques or the Orcadians, which could have been interesting. I find it surprising that some reference populations are very specific (near isolates like the Sardinians, Finns and Ashkenazi), while others are aggregates of vastly different populations, like the Provençal French and the Saxons (under a common French-German category) or almost any Balkanese, Middle Eastern and African population.
In conclusion, it's an fairly interesting tool, but which has plenty of room for improvement.
I am also disappointed by:
- the complete absence of Siberian and Central Asian categories
- the lack of distinction within Balkan populations (Croatians share little in common with Albanians)
- the lack of distinction between French and German (that is, Gallo-Roman vs Germanic, two root population that were originally completely distinct from each others)
- the lack of distinction between Northeast and Southeast Asians (a Korean and a Thai both get 100% East Asian, which is pretty useless for them to know)
- the lack of distinction between any group of Sub-Saharan African.
In these regards, the Dodecad admixtures are much more useful.
The Advanced Global Similarity tool on 23andMe had reference populations that are missing here, like the Basques or the Orcadians, which could have been interesting. I find it surprising that some reference populations are very specific (near isolates like the Sardinians, Finns and Ashkenazi), while others are aggregates of vastly different populations, like the Provençal French and the Saxons (under a common French-German category) or almost any Balkanese, Middle Eastern and African population.
In conclusion, it's an fairly interesting tool, but which has plenty of room for improvement.