Time to get that Viking tattoo removed? Ancestry updates DNA results
By Liam Mannix and Alexandra Gauci
The Sunday Morning Herald
April 28, 2019
DNA-profiling website Ancestry is rolling out a huge update to its ethnicity database - and changing the ethnic origin of many of its customers.
The company says the database changes, due to be rolled out next month but showing up for some users now, make the results more accurate.
But for some users, they challenge what they had been told about their identity.
Simone, who asked for her last name not to be published, is so disappointed with the new results she’s refusing to accept them.
An Ancestry DNA test two years ago suggested her son had 31 per cent Spanish DNA.
That makes sense, because there is Spanish blood on his father’s side, and seems to agree with other DNA-heritage tests he has had done, she said.
The latest update dropped his Spanish heritage to just 11 per cent while dramatically increasing the amount of DNA that comes from Great Britain.
"His ethnicity is massively different now. It's quite upsetting," she said.
“I haven’t accepted it as I don’t agree with the results. It seems like too much English and Irish, it just doesn’t make sense. I’m upset because that’s his identity.”
Ancestry determines a person’s ethnicity by taking their DNA and comparing it to a reference panel of DNA samples from around the world.
As more and more people send their DNA in, the results get more and more accurate, said Brad Argent, a spokesman for the Utah-based company. Regular updates allow the company to offer more-precise results about where a person’s DNA comes from – down to the level of cities, in some cases.
The company has tried to make light of the changes. A list of common questions along with the new update includes ‘How do I get my Viking tattoo removed?’
But identity is serious stuff. For some people, like Simone, ancestry cuts to the core of a sense of self.
“I can definitely relate,” Mr Argent said. “Prior to the update, I was far more interesting, genetically speaking. I’m 75 per cent English, and 25 per cent Scottish. And before the update I was a little bit Scandinavian – I was definitely claiming that Viking badge. And then it disappeared.”
Mr Argent said the company were very clear the ethnicity results were just an estimate, and would change as more data came in.
“Some people will lose ethnic regions. And some people will gain them.”
People needed to remember that DNA was not the be-all and end-all for a person’s ancestry, he said.
DNA from a particular place might not always make it to the next generation, he said. A person might have a Spanish grandfather, but not receive a lot of their DNA.
“It does not mean you don’t have Spanish heritage. It’s just not in your DNA.”
Danni Flynn, from Randwick in NSW, says the new update has only made her results more interesting.
Her first estimate said her DNA was from Eastern Europe, as well as Ireland, Finland and Russia.
Now, the service has singled out the Baltic States rather than Eastern Europe. That’s spot-on, she says, as her mother is from Latvia.
And Ancestry now tells her the Irish roots come specifically from the province of Munster in the south-west of the country.
“It’s crazy," she says.
"I was like ‘how do they know specifically that part of Ireland?'"
EDITOR’S NOTE: Now I know why Boomer, one of the Houston Zoo’s siamangs, and I got along so good when I was a volunteer in the zoo’s primate section. Sadly, my pal Boomer passed away in 2011.
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