Ancestry
Ancestry refers to the practice of tracing one's family history and genetic heritage, a growing trend particularly in the United States and other countries. This exploration often utilizes DNA testing services provided by companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe, among others. These tests analyze a person's geographic ancestry rather than their racial or ethnic identity, revealing information about lineage over the past several hundred years. The three main types of DNA tests include autosomal tests, which assess both maternal and paternal ancestry, mitochondrial tests focusing on maternal lineage, and Y-chromosome tests for paternal lineage, available only to males.
While the allure of uncovering family history is strong, individuals may encounter unexpected results that challenge their preexisting beliefs about their heritage, particularly in cases where family stories have been altered over generations. Additionally, the test results often reflect broader geographic ancestries rather than specific national identities, which can confuse those with more recent family histories from the Americas. Consequently, the impact of these discoveries can be profound, sometimes necessitating genetic counseling to help individuals process their findings. Overall, the popularity of ancestry exploration continues to rise as more people seek to understand their roots and connect with their heritage.
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Ancestry
In recent years, tracing one’s family history, genealogy, and genetic ancestry has become extremely popular in the United States and other nations. Major companies that offer DNA ancestry testing services include Ancestry.com and 23andMe, although numerous other lesser-known companies also exist. Many companies also allow access to birth, death, and other historical records to trace family history. Between 2012 and 2015, more than one million individuals purchased DNA ancestry testing kits from Ancestry.com, while 23andMe reached its one millionth customer in August 2015 after it began selling kits in 2006. During their first years of availability, these tests were extremely expensive (costing $600 or more), but due to increased competition today, prices have dramatically decreased. With many Americans intrigued by the possibility of discovering new information about their family histories and the regions of the world from which their genetic ancestry descends, the number of individuals undergoing DNA ancestry testing will likely increase considerably in the coming years.
Background
In countries such as the United States where families are made up of many mixed ethnicities and backgrounds, tracing lost family ancestry has become very popular. Initially, this could only be done through researching through official records. In addition to this kind of research, DNA tests have also become one of the most-used tools for tracing ancestry. One of the biggest misconceptions that the general public often has regarding genetic ancestry testing is erroneously assuming that these tests reveal an individual’s racial background or ethnic heritage. This is not the case. Instead, DNA analysis can reveal a person’s geographic ancestry—which is not exactly the same thing as "race" or "ethnicity" (in terms of how these two concepts are commonly understood by the public). Within biology and physical anthropology, race is not considered a valid means of classifying human biology because racial categories are social (rather than biological) labels used to classify members of a society on the basis of a few arbitrarily selected physical traits. Instead, DNA testing provides information on a person’s geographic ancestry, which some people then attempt to reinterpret in terms of common, everyday socially constructed racial labels (which may make more sense to them). In other words, if a test reveals that a person is of 61 percent West African ancestry and of 39 percent Great British ancestry, they may simply interpret this data to indicate that they are 61 percent "black" and 39 percent "white," respectively, thus reflecting the way race is popular constructed in the United States.
Three distinct types of DNA ancestry tests are commercially available: the autosomal DNA test, the mitochondrial (or mtDNA) test, and the Y-chromosome test. The autosomal test analyzes a person’s recent geographic ancestry on both their maternal and paternal sides—typically back to the past 300–400 years or so of that person’s ancestral lineage. The mtDNA and Y-chromosome tests reveal a person’s deep, or ancient, maternal and paternal geographic ancestries, respectively—going back in time to more than one thousand years. The Y-chromosome test is only available to males (since only males have a Y-chromosome), but the mtDNA test is available to everyone since both males and females carry mitochondrial DNA. Depending on the company offering genetic testing services, all three tests might be included for a single price when purchasing a kit, or the company may require customers to purchase each test separately.
Impact Today
When an individual purchases a DNA ancestry test, they receive a kit in the mail within a few weeks. This kit contains the test. Two basic versions of the test exist. One version consists of an individual filling a plastic tube with a sample of their saliva. The other version contains a few small, toothbrush-like objects that customers are asked to brush against the inside of their cheeks (known as a buccal swab). Customers then return the tube or brushes to the company so their DNA can be analyzed and results can be processed.
Although DNA ancestry testing currently enjoys tremendous popularity, the results that a customer obtains may conflict with or contradict their preexisting notions or anticipated results regarding their heritage. This is because the information that people receive from relatives regarding their family history or heritage is not always necessarily accurate. For example, it was not entirely uncommon for immigrants to the United States from Southern or Eastern Europe to change their names and conceal their ethnic heritage in the early twentieth century to assimilate easier or to avoid experiencing anti-immigrant prejudices from Anglo-Protestant society. As such, an individual who always thought of themselves as being of English, Scottish, or Dutch heritage may take a DNA ancestry test and find out that they are largely of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. In another hypothetical scenario, if siblings undergo genetic ancestry testing and the results differ markedly from one another, this is strong evidence that at least one of them may have been adopted or had at least one different biological parent. Such revelations can understandably lead to psychological pain or trauma, which is why several companies that provide these tests also offer genetic counseling should customers need this service.
Persons with ethnic heritage from nations in the New World are also sometimes surprised or confused that their results do not read as Mexican, Jamaican, Brazilian, Puerto Rican, or Haitian. DNA ancestry testing will not indicate countries in the New World as geographic ancestries because these nations were formed through conquest, colonization, migration from the Old World (Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia), and the transatlantic slave trade in very recent times—over the past five hundred years or so. Other than indigenous American Indians, the peoples living in the nations of the New World have ancestors who came to the Western Hemisphere within the past several generations. When a DNA ancestry test indicates "American" in its results, it is specifically referring to American Indian ancestry. The various countries of North and South America and the Caribbean today are comprised of people with recent ancestry from a wide range of geographic regions—Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia—as well as those of indigenous American Indian descent. As a result, if Latinos, or individuals of Jamaican or Haitian ethnic background, undergo DNA ancestry testing, their results could reveal various combinations of Old World populations, along with American Indian ancestry.
Bibliography
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