Post AmUTLbFwV7iXOSpieu by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
(DIR) More posts by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
(DIR) Post #AmUQNnLaDavRbrpJI0 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T08:20:30Z
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I think most people know not to mess with 23 and Me or other genetic testing operations. It's all very sketchy. But, also the tests they do and the way they analyze the data tells you very little. My mom has done a lot of paper and interview research on our ancestry and we were able to find out that our ancestors were brought to the US about 200 years ago, and we know where they worked, but not exactly where they came from in West Africa. 1/
(DIR) Post #AmUQoMnB3acJ4OP6Se by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T08:25:19Z
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But, it's not like it's some huge mystery, there are about eight countries that make sense. Imagine my surprise when, for the African portion of my ancestry 23 says "Kenya 20%" and "Angola" ... Angola makes a little sense, but KENYA?I was expecting Senegal or Gabon. These places aren't close together or interchangeable. I can only assume their representative samples of Kenya are wrong maybe? Or maybe the whole thing is just nonsense. 2/
(DIR) Post #AmUR3iNZ4zn6Mdk5i4 by Nicovel0@mastodon.social
2024-09-29T08:28:00Z
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@futurebird the human genetic data from Africa is particularly sketchy. While it’s the part of the world with the most genetic diversity, it’s also the one with the worst coverage.
(DIR) Post #AmUR5v2ixzWWDg2skK by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T08:28:31Z
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I mean as a former long distance running obsessive I kind or want to believe it. Yes my ancestors ran west and then said "wow we shouldn't have come over here" and ended up kidnapped to Georgia.The only good thing about the test is it's made my aunt who *swore* we didn't have white ancestors and were "Part Indian" stop saying that. LOL. (We know who the white ancestors are, like their names. She just doesn't like it.)3/
(DIR) Post #AmURAHfMnOrZXiCYSm by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T08:29:16Z
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The paper research has told us so much more than the genetics. Don't give them your data.
(DIR) Post #AmUS5Tg0oWLnIZm8mG by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2024-09-29T08:39:33Z
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@futurebird There was a paper some time ago that the reason so many European folk seem to have Irish ancestry is more to do with the sample they had of Irish settlers in the US than with actual ancestry. Same problem as with AI, in other words.
(DIR) Post #AmUSStyJDPjtVnVFsu by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T08:43:49Z
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@martinvermeer We have some very cool ancestors who lived deep in the woods in GA independently before slavery was legally ended. Some were mixed race children others escaped slaves. It was a really hard life, I've been to the land they worked and it isn't even flat. I don't know how they did it.She likes to imagine that the escaped slaves married "Indian Princess" more romantic than the truth. I think it's interesting that some white people didn't want their mixed race kids to be slaves.
(DIR) Post #AmUSV04rUADz1lZK9A by GoblinQuester@dice.camp
2024-09-29T08:43:56Z
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@futurebird I was drunk, tired and bored and scrolling the internet and made the questionable decision to order one of those tests and then followed through and sent it in. The answer was unsurprising to 99% all around the Baltics, buut a very odd Italien 1% popped up. Quite fun that. Anyway, as I understand it those percentage develops all the time according to them gathering more and more stupids in the various regions. I imagine that Africa still is low on numbers and thus high in error range
(DIR) Post #AmUSYs33HPNfHeZGe8 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T08:44:52Z
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@jens To be fair this country has been packed full of Irish people for 100s of years... it's less absurd than me being "Kenyan"
(DIR) Post #AmUSf1cgatGgiVAbaK by holsta@helvede.net
2024-09-29T08:46:01Z
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@futurebird I've seen identical twins get *weird* results to the point where I assumed the reports were just auto-generated randomness. Someone sent in a sample from their dog and got a report back.So sketchy. A pity because I'm sure it could be useful if it wasn't.
(DIR) Post #AmUT00XLpL23QhgDOS by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T08:49:50Z
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@martinvermeer I'm a little biter about being told stories about Indian Princesses as a child rather than something closer to the truth. Because, by hiding the truth it gives the notion that it's shameful rather than heroic, and shocking and interesting credibility. And it rightly irritates Native Americans who don't deserve to be used as fictional props.
(DIR) Post #AmUT8an0vNfMBL6EfQ by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2024-09-29T08:51:14Z
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@futurebird I may have phrased this badly. I don't mean people from the US with European ancestry. I mean Europeans who didn't emigrate. There has always been travel and trade, far more than we like to imagine, and for sure it's possible for folk to have been visited by the Irish. But it seems statistically unlikely that Irish ancestry would be so prevalent here.
(DIR) Post #AmUTCV2IG3gFUo6r56 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T08:52:05Z
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@jens Ah. Ok that is a little more suspect. Because if you needed to guess the ancestry of any person from the US "Irish" is a pretty good bet.
(DIR) Post #AmUTLbFwV7iXOSpieu by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2024-09-29T08:53:40Z
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@futurebird Yes, exactly!So probably because the baseline is pretty Irish, they identify certain genetic markers as inherently Irish, when they need not be.
(DIR) Post #AmUTgHzJKpkXiPv3MO by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T08:57:28Z
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@martinvermeer My perspective is fairly biased but there is SO MUCH "race mixing" you can find when you research history in the US ... it's almost like all of the laws and fictions had little impact at all in some places. None of my mixed race ancestors are recent, it's all from 4 or more generations back... but there are so many. It's horrible, and amusing since that's not how the official story goes. I don't think my family is very atypical either.
(DIR) Post #AmUUOyu98J69YpoYWO by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T09:05:30Z
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@Lily_and_frog Yeah maybe... or it could be that they just have bad samples.
(DIR) Post #AmUUrzePRCRcGzHtFw by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T09:10:45Z
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@Lily_and_frog One of the stories I don't think gets told often enough is how much having all of those people taken from the region hurt West Africa. How much the depopulation, destabilized everything along with allowing the local leaders willing to participate in the trade to have power. Generally population decreases are bad for any culture or nation. Having people taken on that scale drained all the labor, knowledge, culture and gave it to the US instead.
(DIR) Post #AmUVgpCO3ctOcqQ1BY by tadbithuman@mastodon.social
2024-09-29T09:19:56Z
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@futurebird @Lily_and_frog absolutely
(DIR) Post #AmUVyqocmkBGqttpMe by davep@infosec.exchange
2024-09-29T09:23:11Z
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@futurebird @Lily_and_frog I imagine there was a lot of feeling of insecurity too over a very long time, which can't be good for society.
(DIR) Post #AmUZuhCmyQMRhlTavw by adrinux@social.vivaldi.net
2024-09-29T10:07:09Z
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@futurebirdOh I think it's definitely the sample data. It's well known there is vastly more human genetic diversity in Africa than any other continent (populations elsewhere went through genetic bottlenecks when leaving Africa).I think it follows from that you'd need vastly higher number of samples from Africa to get a good data set -- I doubt they spent the money to do that or that they have a large enough customer base there.@Lily_and_frog
(DIR) Post #AmUbsLt5SfWIuzGrxI by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-09-29T10:29:14Z
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@Lily_and_frog @dilmandila As early as the 8th century apparently, although my understanding is that things really got going in what we call "the middle ages" in Europe. In West Africa this was a time of building trade networks and sometimes invasions by Arabs. This is when Islam and Christianity started catching on in some places.
(DIR) Post #AmUdnNpj01thPgSOJc by catselbow@fosstodon.org
2024-09-29T10:50:46Z
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@futurebird There was a great series of articles in Science News by Tina Hesman Seay about genetic testing a while back. Here's one:https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-testing-ancestry-family-treeFrom the article:"Generally, estimates are most accurate on the broad continental scale. All of the companies agree that my heritage is overwhelmingly European. But that’s where the consensus ends."
(DIR) Post #AmUiDk0rYfqpY2UTFw by justafrog@mstdn.social
2024-09-29T11:40:15Z
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@futurebird @martinvermeer People always want their ancestry to be fancier than it is.Truth is most people don't have any real fancy ancestor. It's fine. It's very normal.And any family who can make it through generations of subsistence farming is tough as nails. Nothing to be ashamed of.Obvious bias showing, but I always get irritated when people pretend that it's an easy life for lowly incompetent people.It is neither easy nor forgiving of incompetence.
(DIR) Post #AmUj9AfN8NXoiap5eK by dilmandila@mograph.social
2024-09-29T11:50:40Z
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@futurebird @Lily_and_frog Yes, pretty much it. But the Arabs/Asians mostly loitered around the costs and their trade/interaction with Bantu gave rise to some cities that stand until today, like Zanzibar, Mombasa, Lamu, and even birthed a new language. Kiswahili. From about 1600s they went far away from cost searching for ivory and slaves, and they introduced guns; conflicts increase. When whites came about 1800s people were easily subjugated due to weakened structures from bloody conflicts
(DIR) Post #AmUjzPs7qRIqw6hViK by dilmandila@mograph.social
2024-09-29T11:59:14Z
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@futurebird @Lily_and_frog so many people, like Baganda, quickly accepted European rule (they they didn't realize they were surrendering their autonomy till later) because they wanted guns to defend themselves. Others, like Acholi, had their cohesion weakened as Arabs turned neighbouring people against each other by stoking simple conflicts into bitter war. By the time they united against the English (re: Awich, Lamogi rebellion) early 1900s, the colonialist had established themselves firmly.
(DIR) Post #AmUl3upAo3kw2u1s1o by louisffourie@c.im
2024-09-29T12:12:04Z
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@futurebird In my ancestry there are people recorded as being "from Angola", but the DNA indicates more West African descent (Togo-Benin). Then I realised that the Dutch used "Angola" as shorthand for somewhere on the west coast of Africa. I also have slave ancestors from Bengal, and there, the DNA and records correspond very well, but Malagassy and Malay ancestors (recorded) don't show up in the DNA. Khoi and San ancestors again show up in both. The European side of the ancestry is a bit mixed to - I show a fait amount of Norwegian DNA, but few in the records - then I realised I have fairly recent ancestors from Orkney that would explain that. These things are complicated. High precision origin DNA is probably going beyond good science, by and large.
(DIR) Post #AmUlcJ2hGpN30Ekm6S by paulc@mstdn.social
2024-09-29T12:18:25Z
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@futurebird I did testing via Ancestry because a relative was doing geneology and they needed someone from my branch of the family. So this is genetics plus lots of documentation. I’ve learned a lot about my Lithuanian family, including that everyone who didn’t leave that country by 1914 were probably killed due to antisemitism during WW2.
(DIR) Post #AmV8WcrowqNjhCvVwW by econads@mendeddrum.org
2024-09-29T16:35:04Z
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@futurebird @futurebird @Lily_and_frog I can't imagine that slaves were given full freedom to develop their potential either.
(DIR) Post #AmVGlfYu0gvC1ylIw4 by xdydx@mastodon.social
2024-09-29T18:06:52Z
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@futurebird I'm sure you know both Africans and Arab were trading Africans as slaves long before the colonialists turned up.Coastal trade was for sure more prevalent, but cross land trade was a thing.https://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C04/E6-97-09.pdfAnd also West Coast Africa was also a holding post. It's possible your East African ancestors were stolen somewhere else and simply held there and your long-distance running obsession does have a genetic determination? :)
(DIR) Post #AmVefEOgUdZOwXRgSO by lolonurse@ohai.social
2024-09-29T22:35:13Z
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@futurebird Hi. I have no idea if there may have been similar movement throughout Africa as there was through Europe/Middle East/Asia, like the Silk Road. For example, there are ancient settlements of Jews in India, Turkey, China. They went to trade, & stayed, had families, became "locals". My late husband & I participated in the National Geographic Genome Project when they first offered their DNA testing to raise money for their studies. I wasn't at all surprised by my results...
(DIR) Post #AmVfR2rYgFp74Pkay8 by lolonurse@ohai.social
2024-09-29T22:43:50Z
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@futurebird 2/2... It showed that my maternal side is 99% Ashkenazi Jewish, which is totally in line with my family's history. My dad's side was a little weirder, with a haplogroup that's often seen in Native American people, but his family was also Jewish. But they were Romanian/Turkish. I've never tried the newer tests. I agree that they need to be balanced by good research. But it's frustrating to meet a wall. We did find long-lost cousins, though❣️
(DIR) Post #AmVgqjaB5RUUkyQzDs by Apiary@mastodon.social
2024-09-29T22:59:41Z
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@futurebird genetic data has tended to skew very white. My workplace has been part of efforts to try and fix this, but I’m not sure how much of that has made it over to commercial genetic testing.
(DIR) Post #AmVhosSfCkBdfWb8j2 by EverydayMoggie@sfba.social
2024-09-29T23:10:34Z
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If you think about it, it seems obvious that most people whose forebears were enslaved in America probably have some white ancestors, given that slave owners likely thought it was their god-given right to avail themselves of enslaved women. @futurebird @martinvermeer
(DIR) Post #AmViXhITYmGq4gCkAS by cshlan@dawdling.net
2024-09-29T23:18:37Z
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@futurebirdThe problem as I understand it is that the samples are still small and uneven. So there could be a few people in Kenya that you match with who've sent in samples and tons elsewhere but they haven't sent in samples. That's why it's still really vague although they try to make it look specific.
(DIR) Post #AmVun3edus79D0fE3s by kmmfoo@friendsofdesoto.social
2024-09-30T01:35:55Z
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@futurebird cmon, everyone knows that 2% doesn’t allow us to say the n-word. so relaxremainder: unknown. let’s all just accept that.