what race am I? if it's a three way tie? and what are north Africans?

[3way1993]

I took ancestrydna and I got 35% North African 32% European and 30% African. My heritage is mostly from the Sahel/Southern Sahara as far as I know. I was just wondering what race are north Africans? And how did I get nearly the same amount of European ancestry?

 

[Mark]

I took ancestrydna and I got 35% North African 32% European and 30% African. My heritage is mostly from the Sahel/Southern Sahara as far as I know. I was just wondering what race are north Africans? And how did I get nearly the same amount of European ancestry?

Without more information about your ancestry and where your ancestors came from, nobody can answer your questions. Sahel and Southern Sahara are massive areas and give us no detail on your ancestral makeup.

If you do not have a recent European ancestor then you likely simply carry the DNA of constituent ancestors also with partial European ancestry. For instance, if you had 2048 ancestors at a level of your tree then perhaps roughly 700 were of some European extraction, according to your test. Your brother or sister might show more Euro or less but that is the nature of DNA and these tests. Your mother could have had 300 and your father 1000 and you came out in between.

You could also have some ancestry that is recognized as European because it has only ever been found in Europe...

 

[markozd]

Do your ancestors come from the vicinity of Mali or Mauritania per chance? There seems to be an excess of Mediterranean ancestry in North-West Africa, which might ultimately have come from Europe. It is ancient admixture for sure - these tests tend to be biased towards European populations, so this type of ancestry is assigned to the 'Europe' cluster.

 

[Expredel]

I took ancestrydna and I got 35% North African 32% European and 30% African. My heritage is mostly from the Sahel/Southern Sahara as far as I know. I was just wondering what race are north Africans? And how did I get nearly the same amount of European ancestry?

There's not much data available for north Africa. The population is a mix of Indo-European, Horn of Africa, and Arabic. The European ancestry for African Americans is somewhere between 10 and 30%.

 

[IronSide]

. I was just wondering what race are north Africans?

North Africans are predominantly West Eurasian (Caucasoid) but have 15-25% Sub-Saharan African ancestry. The African-WestEurasian blend in North Africa is as old as the Iberomaurusians.

 

[3way1993]

Generally Mali/Niger and on my dad's side possibly Mauritania. I have some Fulani heritage so possibly distantly Senegal as well. I'm predominantly Tuareg. My mother's great great grandfather was also maybe Irish. But I came up with 6℅ Irish. I got all my results like a big puzzle with lots of fragments on my European side the only result I didn't get was Italy. I got 5% Spanish 5%swedish 4% Russian 4% English 3% west European 3% east Europe 2% Jewish. Now the Spanish and west European and even Jewish I can understand. the Swedish the Russian English and east European I don't get at all. That's still 16% I don't get where it came from at all. That's a whole great grandparent and then some unknown and I know all of my great grandparents.

Without more information about your ancestry and where your ancestors came from, nobody can answer your questions. Sahel and Southern Sahara are massive areas and give us no detail on your ancestral makeup.

If you do not have a recent European ancestor then you likely simply carry the DNA of constituent ancestors also with partial European ancestry. For instance, if you had 2048 ancestors at a level of your tree then perhaps roughly 700 were of some European extraction, according to your test. Your brother or sister might show more Euro or less but that is the nature of DNA and these tests. Your mother could have had 300 and your father 1000 and you came out in between.

You could also have some ancestry that is recognized as European because it has only ever been found in Europe...

 

[Mark]

Hi 3way... have you registered on gedmatch yet? I’d ask you to run the following tests:

Ethiohelix k10 + French
Ethiohelix k10 + Palestinian
Ethiohelix Africa only
HarappaWorld
PuntDNAL k8 African only
PuntDNAL K13 Global

Return here with the relevant content from the Oracle4 section.

If you are majority Tuareg, I believe these tests above will demonstrate that your DNA confused Ancestry.com calculators. These calculators are generally geared toward Westerners so that is where they devote most of their accuracy. Tuaregs are one of those unfortunately understudied groups in terms of DNA. It’d probably give us some very useful insights if we did more research on the group. I’m intrigued by the people that stayed in the Sahara... in the ice ages it was so much more.