Alvaro Oare: Yes there are MUCH better options - I assume you are talking about the atDNA test. Ancestry.com offers no tools for actually evaluating your so called matches so too many of them are total BS. And they only sell in the US so the database is limited.Shirley has given you a good basic breakdown of the types of tests, except that the X Chromosome test is included in the atDNA test and the results can be extremely useful.The best place to test is a toss up between FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe. Both are excellent companies with a variety of useful evaluation tools. Both offer the test worldwide so they have an extensive database. 23andMe has a larger database but about 60% of those who take the test took it for health reasons and are not interested in genealogy so the size is comparable. 23andMe is no longer offering the health report but this could change. Both charge $99. Currently 23andMe has the most accurate ethnic predictions, but FTDNA is updating their result! s which should be finished in 6-8 weeks.Here is an excellent getting started guide for genetic genealogy to read before you test:https://sites.google.com/site/wheatonsurname/begin...Please ignore those who don't yet know that DNA is the future of genealogy....Show more
Fritz Sisomphou: no doubt the new Ancestry DNA
Sena Highman: ALL DNA tests are entertainment value and they only match your DNA to WHAT THEY HAVE ON THAT DAY IN THEIR DATABASE and so as they have different databses each and every 'test' will show different results and if you test again with the same company you will get some more different results........ so as long as your friend realises it will thell them nothing at all about their ancestry,nothing at all about where THEY or their ancestors came from ...............then enjoy................Show more
Wilmer Skidmore: Well, it is according to your purpose. There are 4 types of DNA, Y, X, Autosomal and Mitochondrial.Now for years people i! nvolved in genealogy have used Y & Mitochondrial if they feel ! they share ancestry with another and if they are both tested and match then they are in a position to share information. Y is passed from father to son. Mitochondrial is passed from mother to both sons and daughters but only the daughters pass it to the next generation. Now with each they will assign a person to a Haplogroup and show that person the origin or their ancestors going way back in time. However you get each from only one person in each generation you go back so if your purpose is to get an overall view of your ancestor origins then Y & Mitochondrial won't do that. Get back to your 32 great great great grandparents and 30 of them will be excluded from either result unless you have some duplicates, that is if a great great great grandparent in one family line is also your great great great grandparent in another family line. Now the Y can be very helpful for a male as there are numerous surname projects that enable people to see if they match another. Now ! for an overall view of a person's ancestry Autosomal is used as well as the X. Both males and females get X from their mother and in addition a female gets a X from her father. Autosomal is what most of your DNA is and you get it 50-50 from both parents but not necessarily 25% from each of your 4 grandparents. The reason why when your parents passed on the Autosomal they received from their parents to you it went through a process of where it was randomly jumbled and recombined. So there can be a bias in what you inherited from grandmother and grandfather on both sides of the family. How you inherited any bias will not be how your siblings inherited it unless you have an identical twin. There are no Haplogroups with Autosomal and the only thing they can do is match you with population samples they have. It has been reported if you go to more than one company the results will not be the same. That is no doubt because one might be deficient in or not have certain popu! lation samples another has and vice versa. Therefore a person should b! e cautious about taking as fact any pie chart or fractions they are presented with showing their background. Understand there are no pure nationalities, ethnicities, ancestries. A lot of countries today did not exist 200 years ago. Nations have conquered others and borders have been changed. The U.S. is not the only melting pot. It is just one of the newer melting pots. You should investigate exactly what 23andme, FamilyTreeDNA and Ancestry.Com are offering and see which of those 3 is what the person you are buying a gift for would prefer. Also any genealogy DNA test really isn't all that useful without traditional genealogical research using documents/records....Show more
Tawny Grosskreutz: DNA tests aren't genealogy tests. They won't tell details of who the person's ancestors were.
Kellie Waycott: With SOME exceptions (ie surname studies using dna), I personally think any of the marketed dna testing is useless, and there IS NO BENCHMARK ( ie way to prov! e or disprove) any of it. The majority of persons wanting such tests are completely inexperienced, and want shortcuts that they think will prove their ancestry. And 99% of those.. do not get what they expect. A test that tells you that 1000 yrs ago, you had maybe an ancestor from Asia, means nothing. Records showing the name of a gr gr grandfather, his birth/death date, his will with details of his land, his Civil war file with descriptions of his service... THAT means something. Names and locations are not branded onto dna/ chromosomes. And testing like this is only maybe 20 yrs old. No way to know if correct. Genealogy has been around for centuries, uses records and shows persons and relationships.. THAT is based on provable facts. There is no best in what is likely to be unreliable or misleading. If the person is fully educated on the topic, then maybe they won't be disappointed. I would not trust them with a stick....Show more
No comments:
Post a Comment