As of writing this article, I am anticipating my results after submitting my saliva sample to Ancestry DNA. I am pretty nervous about the results, though I shouldn\’t be because I was already building my Ancestry Tree on the very site, meaning I have a clear-enough image of what my ancestry would look like.
I will admit that like many Americans, I grew up with the myth of the Cherokee ancestrix. There has been increasing reason to believe that it is not true, though I can never be sure. Even so, it would not automatically mean that I am an official enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, since I have no proof of it.
Although my maternal grandmother got her Ancestry DNA results, I do not know about my father\’s side.
Nonetheless, I am ready to see who I really am.
After Seeing The Results
Although I expected to not see any outlandish features, I am surprised how evenly mapped out my European ancestry is. This excludes my Celtic ancestry being the slight majority, while my Baltic ancestry is 1%.
My ancestry is:
- 32% Scotland
- 19% Ireland
- 18% Sweden/Denmark
- 13% England/Northwestern Europe
- 11% Germanic Europe
- 6% Eastern Europe/Russia
- 1% Baltic
I did expect to see a fair amount of Sweden/Denmark ancestry, perhaps due to Viking and Saxon ancestry. As for the Germanic Europe, I am not surprised there is Dutch ancestry, because it turns out that I am descended from both the English colonists but also the Dutch colonists who assimilated into the British Colony of America. Of course, I am surprised that I have 11% Germanic Europe ancestry, because I was led to believe that my maternal ancestry is mostly German. Though, as I have seen with the ancestry, there was a lot of intermixing between the German immigrants and other European ethnic groups such as the English.
Although I knew that I had some Polish ancestry, I did not expect to also have Slovakian and Ukrainian ancestry. Of course, while there is a light shade on the Russian side, it did not extend to Siberia. I was surprised to see that I have 6% Eastern European ancestry, when I thought I would have had 1%.
I also did not expect to see 1% Baltic. The area where the likelihood is possible is Latvia.
My Traits
As far as Traits are concerned, there are 3 free ones while I have to be a subscriber to see all 40+. Nonetheless, 2 of them are correct. I am not a nap taker and I am a night person. As for the average heart rate recovery, I am skeptical of that, because heart disease runs in my family.
I did think it was important for me to see that baldness is a genetic trait because I already started experiencing it when I was 23. It also stated that I was more likely to have a unibrow. Although I do have subtle amounts of unibrow, I don\’t have a Helga Pataki unibrow.
As for being less likely to enjoy spicy food and more likely to be a picky eater, I can say that those are caveats in my case. Although I do enjoy spicy food, I do not enjoy food that is prepared hot, rather I will wait until it achieves that lukewarm Goldilocks range of \”just right.\”
(7/25/2024)
Ancestry DNA added new traits to their project. It turns out that I am more likely to be adaptive and less likely to be a leader. Those describe me perfectly.