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AncestryDNA update 2025

thunorr

Regular Member
Messages
125
Reaction score
85
Points
28
Ethnic group
Scots-Irish Appalachian
Y-DNA haplogroup
R-CTS8277
mtDNA haplogroup
N1a1a1a2
Compare your results from before the update and after the update. From what most people have claimed, the update was bad. For my own DNA, the results have been quite good, so it was a shocker to hear that some people got garbage results.

My 2025 results:
1760035399001.png

My 2024 results:
1760035424497.png




How do your new results compare to the old results?
 
I also got my update and its interesting and overall correct. They assigned me Germans from Russia, which is not correct in theory, but understandable in practise, because I have many Russian German matches and they come from shared ancestry with those. Relatives of my ancestors moved to Russia.
They correctly identified Czech, but put it into Eastern Czech (should be rather Western) and its too low. Apparently the rest of this ancestry goes to "North Central Europe", which is basically the mixed Germano-Slavic zone from Eastern Germany and Poland down to North Western Czechia. I got a bit of Scandinavia, which is nonsense. Nearly all my German is Southern German, but there should have been some Western German too, that's missing.

I'd say, overall, its still the best estimate for myself from AncestryDNA so far.

For my father its good too, but he gets way too much British (10 %), but its still an improvement compared to the old version.

My mothers update is probably the worst, she got unnecessary new ancestries she doesn't have, like Balkan.

Both my mother and my wife got Slovakia - when in reality it should be Czech or Austrian/South German. I guess they had quite a bit of German and Czech in their Slovak reference. But I guess it can be hard to differentiate between Austrian, Czech and Slovakian at times, since people moved in various directions...

Looking at the chromosome browser, it is clear that the brush being way too coarse. Like there is no way I have almost whole chromosomes from say Denmark, that's just impossible. I might have small shared segments with Danes, from very far back in time, most of the time because of non-Danish ethnic people moving up there, but definitely not something that big. Too much smoothing still. My father gets a whole "Cornwall" chromosome, which is obvously not correct.
 
I also got my update and its interesting and overall correct. They assigned me Germans from Russia, which is not correct in theory, but understandable in practise, because I have many Russian German matches and they come from shared ancestry with those. Relatives of my ancestors moved to Russia.
They correctly identified Czech, but put it into Eastern Czech (should be rather Western) and its too low. Apparently the rest of this ancestry goes to "North Central Europe", which is basically the mixed Germano-Slavic zone from Eastern Germany and Poland down to North Western Czechia. I got a bit of Scandinavia, which is nonsense. Nearly all my German is Southern German, but there should have been some Western German too, that's missing.

I'd say, overall, its still the best estimate for myself from AncestryDNA so far.

For my father its good too, but he gets way too much British (10 %), but its still an improvement compared to the old version.

My mothers update is probably the worst, she got unnecessary new ancestries she doesn't have, like Balkan.

Both my mother and my wife got Slovakia - when in reality it should be Czech or Austrian/South German. I guess they had quite a bit of German and Czech in their Slovak reference. But I guess it can be hard to differentiate between Austrian, Czech and Slovakian at times, since people moved in various directions...

Looking at the chromosome browser, it is clear that the brush being way too coarse. Like there is no way I have almost whole chromosomes from say Denmark, that's just impossible. I might have small shared segments with Danes, from very far back in time, most of the time because of non-Danish ethnic people moving up there, but definitely not something that big. Too much smoothing still. My father gets a whole "Cornwall" chromosome, which is obvously not correct.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people from the German-speaking regions of Europe often get British isles admixture. This happened to my friend (ethnically) from southwestern Germany (Volga German and Ukrainian German descent) as well. I think it might have something to do with being northern shifted?

I also got “Germans in Russia”. I think that they model German ancestry which is too drifted to be assigned to a specific region as “Germans in Russia”, especially since the amount of this given region I score roughly matches the amount of Transylvanian Saxon ancestry I have. (yes, I have that!)
 
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The update was bad for me, many regions that don't make sense, my spanish ancestry is super low and they overestimated by a lot my Indigenous American and Sephardic Jewish percentages.

I have seen many results (Family, friends, Reddit and Facebook) and I could say the update for us hispanic americans was horrendous.
 
The update was bad for me, many regions that don't make sense, my spanish ancestry is super low and they overestimated by a lot my Indigenous American and Sephardic Jewish percentages.

I have seen many results (Family, friends, Reddit and Facebook) and I could say the update for us hispanic americans was horrendous.
Yeah, I noticed that the update was terrible for Iberians. One guy even went as far to say that they made the update bad on purpose (though I think that this is BS).

I noticed that it was great for me, and Americans with ancestry adjacent to mine, though. Mine (almost) makes perfect sense.
 
Wow, it looks line IllustratedDNA mish mash. All I can go by are my matches. I have very few non-Greek matches Does anybody knows what the time horizon is? Modern ethnicity, 300 years, 500 years, 1000 years????
Screenshot 2025-10-12 at 11.03.57 AM.png
 
In my experience, the macro-region assignment is not too bad, but a lot gets "smoothed away", since ancestry uses an extremely coarse bruch, assigning whole chromosomes.
Your macro-region assignment seems to be fine, since you get more than 90 percent Balkan/South Eastern Europe.

The finer details are often wrong, like a lot of Germans get various British and Scandinavian regions.

Same for you within SEE.
 
In my experience, the macro-region assignment is not too bad, but a lot gets "smoothed away", since ancestry uses an extremely coarse bruch, assigning whole chromosomes.
Your macro-region assignment seems to be fine, since you get more than 90 percent Balkan/South Eastern Europe.

The finer details are often wrong, like a lot of Germans get various British and Scandinavian regions.

Same for you within SEE.
I am kind of surprised of the lack of Bulgarian contribution to my ethnicity. Other calculators have Bularians either the first or second closest ethnic group. After all the geographic closeness should count for something since as far back as I have researched it, my ancestors have stayed in the same area for a long time.
 
I am kind of surprised of the lack of Bulgarian contribution to my ethnicity. Other calculators have Bularians either the first or second closest ethnic group. After all the geographic closeness should count for something since as far back as I have researched it, my ancestors have stayed in the same area for a long time.

They don't have a "Bulgarian" category judging by a couple of results from Bulgarians that I have seen...
 
They don't have a "Bulgarian" category judging by a couple of results from Bulgarians that I have seen...
Huh? Wow, do they include them in "Romania" category? Or South East Balkans?
 
Ancestry returned many Greeks who were in South Italy back to Greece. Many may have strong affinity with south Italy and Sicily but are from places like Crete and the Aegean Islands. They should be placed in their ancestral homes.

They separated Greece from Albania, which is good. These populations have been marrying within their own groups for a long time. Arvanites left their own areas and went to Greece centuries ago, where they intermarried with other people. The very low percentages of Balkan, Albania and Slavic in many Southern Greece samples would justify the separation. At this point, it appears the outside groups who migrated centuries ago got deeply absorbed in the local population, and this includes Greeks from other areas.
 
I'm curious as to how exactly they separated ethnic Albanians & ethnic Greeks. The labeling in South Eastern Europe seems a little weird, "Southwestern Balkans" vs "Albania" as they seem to be the exact same thing from the results. I am wondering if Southern Greece and Northern & Central Greece in my family's case is actually Hellenic and not picking up some Albanian ancestry in those regions from the past.

My results
View attachment 18857

Dad's results (Diber)
View attachment 18858

Mom's results (Korce)
View attachment 18859

Wife's results (Tropoje)
View attachment 18860
Greece itself is mixed, so it's possible. Endogamous people with extremely high local DNA scores are a mix of different people who intermarried over many years.

It would not be surprising, however, if people with ancestry geographically closer to Greece might carry some genetic signatures that are lacking in Montenegro, northern Albania and regions that comprise Ancestry's Southwest Balkans.
 
Hi everyone: My Ancestry update

rCTpaxK.png
 
A few too many regions for my liking. I just don't see it. I have to be shown migration routes for all these regions. The only explanation would be that among all these regions are the common paleo-balkan ancestors that spread all over the Balkans.
 
Could you please write it out so I can judge.

I cannot view the content in my region.
You should be able to click the expand link and see the entire regions that the Ancestry Update gave me.
 
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