Member-only story
Wait, Where Did My DNA Go?
DNA test sites change their algorithms, and your ethnicity percentages can vary wildly
A Cautionary Tale
It is ironic that the first versions of my family’s DNA test results were what pulled me in to researching ancestry. I was intrigued by our heretofore unheard of Native American ancestors, and by proof of what previously was only suspected Jewish heritage.
It is ironic, because this year, version 3.0 of our tests came out, and the first two versions are now wrong!
I wonder if I would have gotten the ancestry research bug, gone down all those rabbit holes, and learned quite so much human history, if 2023’s version of our tests had come out in 2014. (I am still waiting to hear back from FTDNA about getting a copy of those earlier versions. I want proof that I am not making this up!)(They have replied, first version not available.)
In 2023, our Native American heritage is gone entirely, while both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish is greatly reduced. More than a quarter of our genetic cousins are still 50–100% Jewish, though. We also now have zero English ancestry, but we know for a fact that we have ancestors who lived in the same English town going back to at least 1500. Were they Iberian and Italian Jews, escaping The Inquisition and…
