With all the DNA testing, would you really want to know if ALL the ancestry you

Question:No, what if I decended from a certain race I don't like or something, or I find out all my ancestors were loosers. I come from a line of Spanish Conquestedors and Mayan warriors who built pyramids, and developed astronomy and trigonometry. I wouldn't want to change that.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: No, what if I decended from a certain race I don't like or something, or I find out all my ancestors were loosers. I come from a line of Spanish Conquestedors and Mayan warriors who built pyramids, and developed astronomy and trigonometry. I wouldn't want to change that.

yes

I'd love to.

YES

I come from a bunch of rednecks..I can do without...thanks!

Yep. It be interesting no matter who's in my family tree.

sure- I could find my richest relative and ask for money/car/house

ya id b so cool 2 figure out exactly who i am (n terms of race/ethnicity)

of course! i know i'm about 50% german, and 40% irish. that last 10% is small, unknown, percents. i really want to know what that last 10% is.

it would be pretty cool to know exactly where you stem from - good or bad

Yes, it's very interesting. This year I had a DNA Tribes test done. I knew I had Irish and Spanish ancestry, but the main population sample that I share a similar genetic profile with was in Mongolia. I had another match with a different area of Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, as well as various European countries in the top 20 matches. They say this test shows your "deep ancestral origins", not necessarily recent ancestors. I just wish they could tell me more details!

Yes, I would.
It would be interesting to know
how far my bloodline goes
But not if its too expensive.
:)

Certainly! I presume that I'm a mixture of a lot of things, including probably every race in the book, even though I'm physically a very white-skinned person - like, sunburn-in-fifteen-minutes white. Your question implies that one should be ashamed of SOME of one's lineage if it doesn't meet some arbitrary standard of purity, and that's just plain ignorant, in my opinion. The notion that one race or other wouldn't be an acceptable part of my ancestry (as though I can just throw part of it out???) is repugnant, and I hope that I'm never that narrow-minded.

That sounds cool.

Yea, sure as long as someone else pays for it.That would be nice also.

I'd Love It! That would be so cool to truly know my whole history! You imply it might be a bad thing to know all your bloodlines. Why, may I ask? Is one better than another? And if so, I'm curious, which one do YOU think is so superior?
HUM?
I'm Creole. So I realize I have a wonderful lineage!

DEFINATELY! That would be the coolest ever! I would love to know where all I'm from and who I'm related to.

Interesting question, but keep in mind that there is no testing technology available that will reveal ALL of your ancestry or even any more than a tiny fraction of it. Presently, for most people there are usually only two "ancestry lines" which one can easily research: (1) your paternal line (i.e. your father's father's father's ....ad infinitum going back through fathers only IF YOU ARE MALE or get a male relative tested) by means of study of the Y-DNA which is largely preserved with each generation except for occasional mutations, and (2) your maternal line (i.e. your mother's mother's mother's....ad infinitum going back through mothers only) by means of study of mitochondrial DNA which is largely preserved with each generation except for very rare mutations. Because mitochondrial DNA changes so slowly compared to Y-DNA, most people find the Y-DNA studies more informative and more interesting. [Please carefully note my use of words like "most", "usually", and "largely" in the above simplification of this subject. Yes, some families/ethnic-groups/traditions MAY discover interesting information through additional types of genetic testing but your very broad question requires an equally broad answer.]

Yet, it is important to consider that even a paternal line Y-DNA test only give one information about ONE of the enormous number of "lines" of ancestry which lead to any given person walking our planet today. After all, this one test describes just 1/2 of one's parents, 1/4th of one's grandparents (i.e. one's father's father), 1/8th of one's great grandparents (i.e. your paternal grandfather's father), 1/16th in terms of that ancestor's father, etc. etc. etc. Therefore, my Y-DNA test may tell me some interesting information about my ancestor who "sired" my paternal line sometime around the year 1500 or so (for example) but it doesn't tell me ANYTHING about my over one million OTHER ancestors who lived around the same time. (How do I figure that I had over one million ancestors around year 1500? Because with each generation back in time, I have twice as many "grandparents", so if I go back 20 generations, that would be 2 to the 20th power, which is 1,048,576! Indeed, if one goes back 20 generations [about 500 years if one assumes an average of 25 years per generation], one had, potentially, OVER ONE MILLION ancestors in that ONE generation.)

So, "Blondie", you ask a good question (and those who complained about it based upon their trying to guess at your motivations are revealing much more about their own biases than yours!) But now that you know just how limited DNA testing technology is in identifying ALL of one's ancestry (perhaps only one-millionth of one's ancestry in looking back only 500 years, for example), you realize that your question will probably remain mostly hypothetical for a long time to come. I ordered Y-DNA tests for my own paternal line and discovered that my DNA suggests an origin in the Glasgow area of Scotland (probably in pre-colonial times before my grandfather's great-grandfather found himself in Virginia around the time of the American Revolution) and an ancient origin before that in the Basque region of Spain. Indeed, I discovered that my Y-DNA "signature" is one of the most studied at this point in the history of scientific research such that there is a particular name for it: PICT47. The Picts were ancient aboriginal inhabitants of Scotland and were encountered by the Roman armies when they invaded the British Isles. Now, of course, it is likely that many of my other ancestors also came from that area of Scotland -- because they had to meet and procreate, after all -- but it is doubtful that I will ever know all that much about my millions of other ancestors even if I only want to go back a thousand years. (I could also explain that there are many "overlaps" in our ancestor lines and because most people in history until quite recently tended to marry someone who grew up near them, that "overlap" in terms of "inter-marriage" within a community, ethnic group, tribe, or country, most of us ARE actually much less "diverse" than the maximum numerical possibilities could theoretically allow.)

So -- with those facts in mind -- yes, I would love to know all that I could know about my ancestors, just to imagine what their lives might have been like. But because we are all a mixture of so many genes coming from millions of ancestors, there are great limitations on genetic science at this point in terms of telling us much about those who contributed the genes found in our bodies today. What we can know for sure about our ancestors is that they were SURVIVORS of whatever adversity they encountered -- or else we would not be alive today!

yea id love to

*sigh* Blondie, the wording of your question sure left things open. And your question did get placed in the genealogy area.. trust me, the people here generally ALL want to trace their ancestors. A key factor in this, is openess to whatever facts they find.
Actually, I imagine that some persons have NO interest in genealogy, and are just as happy to cut themselves off from their history (and even immediate family). You are just in the absolute wrong place to find them.