Small Percentages - A "real" ancestor, or not? (Chuvashia)

[Euchu70]

Europe 97.6%

Great Britain and Ireland 86%
Southeast England 27.4%
North Yorkshire 11.5%
Southwest Scotland and Northern Ireland 9.2%
Northumbria 9%
Devon 7.3%
Cornwall 7.2%
Aberdeenshire 5.4%
Central England 2.5%
East Anglia 1.9%
South England 1.9%
Ireland 1.6%
South Wales 1.1%

Europe (North and West) 9.6%
Scandinavia 8.5%
Germanic 1.1%

Europe (South) 2%
Tuscany 2%
Asia (Central) 2.4%
Chuvashia 2.4%

Hello everyone, this is my first post, and have included the results above. I have done some research and it is my understanding that if you receive a small percentage of ethnicity, it's best to be cautious in accepting it as a likelihood you have an actual ancestor from this region. I have never heard of Chuvashia or Russia mentioned in our family, so if it is for real, noone in recent generations has heard of it. I did the test out of curiosity - haven't done a huge amount of family history, just know that the majority of family is Irish, English and Danish (as shown in the results). I did expect much more Irish, but was certainly suprised to see the Chuvashia percentage.

My question is this: When I checked complete, standard and cautious model - the Chuvashia percentage appeared in all three. When I read the description of cautious, it says Here we have grouped genetically similar populations together. We are most certain about these assignments of your ancestry breakdown.

What does everyone else take that to mean? It sounds like "this is where you're from" to me?

Mitochondrial haplogroup V

Thank you!

[DavidCoutts]

Good question, and one I've been trying to find an answer to myself since I received my LivingDNA results

Great Britain and Ireland: 95.5%

Scandinavia: 4.5%

I love the Vikings as much as the next guy, but I somehow doubt that 4.5% of my DNA can be traced to some hairy Norseman raping one of my female ancestors during a raid almost a thousand years ago.

[waltematec]

Well, just because you have Scandinavian heritage doesn’t mean that your ancestors were Vikings. The Viking age was a short period of time in the history of the region. And keeping that in mind, not all Scandinavians were Vikings. The Vikings were basically the pirates of Scandinavia. Hence all the raping and pillaging. But not everyone from Scandinavia was a pirate.

[hrvclv]

@David

Maybe you have read this already. In case you haven't... :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Scotland

[Euchu70]

David, I'm pretty sure Scandinavia and The British Isles are all part of one big package, so may be not so surprising. All very close areas there. Chuvashia is waaaaaaaay over in Central Asia, a long way from Europe, that's why I was pretty taken aback.

[DavidCoutts]

@David

Maybe you have read this already. In case you haven't... :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Scotland

Thanks for the link. It's probably not connected, but one of the things I noticed about my regional breakdown is that the highest percentage of my Family Ancestry(21.4%)is in Northwest Scotland. But the second highest(18.6%)is found in Lincolnshire, which used to be part of the Dane Law.

[DavidCoutts]

Well, just because you have Scandinavian heritage doesn’t mean that your ancestors were Vikings. The Viking age was a short period of time in the history of the region. And keeping that in mind, not all Scandinavians were Vikings. The Vikings were basically the pirates of Scandinavia. Hence all the raping and pillaging. But not everyone from Scandinavia was a pirate.

Yeah, I was joking about that. According to my results, the Scandinavian DNA goes back at least 10 generations, but that's only 250 years. I'm pretty sure the Norwegians had stopped the whole rape and pillage thing by then...

[DavidCoutts]

David, I'm pretty sure Scandinavia and The British Isles are all part of one big package, so may be not so surprising. All very close areas there. Chuvashia is waaaaaaaay over in Central Asia, a long way from Europe, that's why I was pretty taken aback.

Yeah, I'd honestly never even heard of Chusvashia until I read this thread.

[DavidCoutts]

Also, the Scandinavian DNA only shows up in my Complete results. In Standard and Cautious versions it simply reads, "unassigned"

[Euchu70]

Yeah, I'd honestly never even heard of Chusvashia until I read this thread.

I hadn't either, until my DNA results! When you google them, they are people who look predominantly European, with varying degrees of slanted eyes. Nothing like me, haha.