Genetic Ancestry

I received today an update from 23andMe announcing some updates to my ancestry on file. It is funny, and wrong.

I did a 23andMe DNA test a while back. As a disclaimer, there are a lot of issues with data confidentiality, 23andMe having gone bankrupt so tread carefully with your genetic data. It is too late for me so let’s have at least fun with it.

The Data

23andMe claims: “We nearly quadrupled the number of reference populations in Europe.”. Let’s explore the new data versus the old one. The old one are from memory but are I think very close to what I got at the time.

I remember telling to my family when I received the old results “at least no-one lied!”.

The Dad

My dad side is indeed very French. There are a bunch of family stories around my dad’s paternal side that I know nothing about, but from what I understand they were from our hometown (my dad’s dad left never to be seen again when he was young). Same thing for my paternal grand mother, so that’s an easy half of the genetic ancestry sorted out. A pure “Jambon beurre” as we would say in French (name of a ham sandwich).

The data shows that they are local to the region, no real movement even inside France.

The Mom

My mom side has seen more of Southern Europe. My maternal grand father side came from Italy I believe in-between World Wars. I do not exactly recall all the details, but they emigrated from the North of Italy twice, before the first World War, got drafted, went back to Italy, got drafted again. The war being over, they went back to France after Mussolini took power. The whole family grew mushrooms in the numerous caves of Northern France. Most of those caves would be used later by the Nazis to hide and protect their ammunition. The data checks out. Their last name is Valenti, very Italian.

Now the fun part: my maternal grand grand mother was Portuguese, last name Pereira. In the old data, those 18% are coming from Portugal. But in the new dataset the 1% are Irish / English / Scottish. In short, my Portuguese ancestry got erased. This side of the family coming from a woman, it is very unlikely there is fool-play. I guess everything is possible but it seems that the new data from 23andMe is not more but less accurate.

Identity

At the end of the day it does not matter much. Those results were always a bit disappointing to me. It never really answered the fun questions like “where are my ancestor from the 1500 coming from”. If you know your story up to your grand grand ancestor you should be able to predict those results. They do try to give a timeline but it seems a bit funny and broad.

I am French, it is the identity I was given and raised with. This culture does not let much place to express multiculturalism like our Anglo-Saxon neighbour see it. It is mostly why no-one spoke Italian or Portuguese, even the grand parents in my family. There is only one community, the French community and you assimilate into it. The then, French ambassador to the USA, Gerard Araud wrote a very good letter, responding to a talk show host, resuming this view of the world that stem from the Universalism of the French Republic. It is one of my favourite debate topic.

But let’s not forget the punch of the story: 23andMe have made their dataset worst, do not use.