Genetics is fascinating. What makes you who you are, at least genetically? Does it matter? Does having a specific set of DNA give you a certain identity? In the October 2013 National Geographic there was an article called the Changing Face of America that explored how multiracial the population of America is becoming. My family is a part of that.
Look at these faces. Aren’t they beautiful? If you head over to National Geographic you can click on each photo to read how each individual defines their racial ethnicity. You might be surprised by some of them.
Over a year ago my husband and I decided to see what our ancestral DNA make-up was from 23andMe. We knew going into it that I would have some Spanish, maybe a little Native American, and who knew what else. We also figured (correctly) that my husband’s ancestral DNA composition would be kind of boring. Here’s his DNA make-up. Strictly northern European, mostly from Great Britain and Ireland. How vanilla. 🙂
Now here’s a look at mine. It has changed somewhat from the first initial report because my parents have both had their DNA tested. This has refined my results even more.
Having my parents do their DNA also made for some interesting discoveries. We initially figured my 3.8% African came from my father’s side of the family, either through Moors invading Spain or through Sephardic Jews that fled to Morocco to escape the Spanish Inquisition. Check out my parents DNA results.
My Mom’s Ancestral DNA
My Dad’s Ancestral DNA
Will you look at that! The African comes from my mom’s side! Her family has lived in Mexico for generations. Now our theories have changed. Some Spanish explorers must have brought slaves with them and whoever it is is now part of our ancestry. Isn’t that a neat discovery? Another interesting discovery – both my mom and I are more “Spanish” (Iberian) than my dad! His father was born in Barcelona, Spain where his family lived for generations. It looks like they had more French/German than Iberian.
For Christmas we bought the three older girls DNA kits. We knew there would be differences in their DNA (obviously) but we were surprised at how different they actually are!
Miss Eve with the “castaño” hair color is much more Spanish (Iberian) than her sisters, by at least 9%, which is a lot! When her fiancé showed his parents a picture of her his mom immediately said, “Oh, she’s Spanish?” I guess I never really thought she looked any more Spanish than the others but some people see it. She is also 1.6% more African than the other two.
Miss Marie inherited more French/German than the other two and has more broadly northern European DNA (meaning the DNA is shared by all in northern Europe and is not specific to any one country).
Finally, Miss Sara is more Native American and more British/Irish than the other two. One fascinating thing about Sara is her hair gets progressively more blond, especially in the summer. There is no hint of red, or the ‘castaño’ color that is present in Marie’s and Eve’s hair.
I cannot wait to get the other kids tested. Will Ira be more Native American with his jet black hair? Will Gideon and Jason have much more British/Irish or French/German because of their lighter skin and hair color? And will Julie, who is the spitting image of Sara when she was little, have a very similar genetic DNA make-up to Sara? Next Christmas the next three in line will get their DNA kits. Only time, and test results, will tell.
Have you done DNA testing? Were you surprised by the results? Has it helped you find out more about who you are? Is there anything you want to explore further in your DNA?
P.S. There will be more posts about the DNA results. It is just fascinating what we have found!
I love how Marie has Australian in her and no one else does!
I have a feeling if I did this, it would be rather boring – I’m Northern European to the bone (some great-great-such and suches were Swiss, so I know that for sure, and my whole family fits into that physical-appearance category of Northern European people xD
The advances that they have wtih this stuff is crazy, though! Who would have thought ten years ago that your DNA would be able to tell your ancestry links, and not just who you physically belong to (ie your father or mother)
that is soooo cool! I’ll have to try it with my fam.
That would be fun to do since our family is similar to yours except the opposite with my husband having Mexican and Spanish roots and me having mainly English roots (however I don’t think my roots are boring at all 🙂 It would be so much fun to see our kids as well as some look more Hispanic and others look more white.
I love this idea! We’ve been doing a unit on genetics for homeschool and I’m amazed how much new interest we’ve felt in finding out who we are, based on…I don’t know, where we came from, I guess? I even saw these DNA kits online but it never occurred to me to get them for the kids individually. I guess I figured they’d all be about the same, but now I see how many differences there can be just from the way everything gets combined and shuffled. How awesome for your kids to get a better idea of how individual each one of them is!
This is so neat to see. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time but I’ve always been put off by the cost. This one looks much cheaper than the others I’ve seen. How did you decide which one to do? Have you been happy with everything?
Fascinating! I love this stuff. I had my husband’s grandfather and my mother-in-law tested last year. My husband is from Colombia, and I’m the boring vanilla girl in our family. His family, at least those two, were roughly (off the top of my head) 45 % Native American and 45% Southern European and the rest a mix of North African, the Middle East, West Africa, and the Caucaus region, with hints of Jewish and the British Isles.
And you should watch the documentary Black in Latin America. There’s three episodes and one is about Mexico. Very interesting. Kind of points out that there were a lot of slaves bit less seperation between the races so they married in more the Native tribes and since most Latin American countries (I know I saw this a lot in Colombia) are fairly racist still, nobody likes to bring this up, at least the older generations anyway. Collective forgetting.
And I was just wondering, why did you go with 23andme instead of Ancestry? Just curious.
We originally went with 23and Me for the health reports but they can’t do those anymore because of the stuff going on with the FDA. So we stuck with them to be able to compare the kids DNA, etc. I will be writing several more posts about it and will probably go into a bit more detail about why we went with 23andMe rather than Ancestry.com or Genographic (through National Geographic).
I’ll look up that documentary! Sounds very interesting. With as small of a % as our African is it must have been quite a few generations back. I think it’s very funny how cultures can be racist against each other. Sad really. I know many in Uruguay claim to be purely from European descent and do not want to be tainted with “Indian” blood.
The documentary is on youtube.
My mom and grandma have done the ancestry DNA tests. My dad did a y-chromosome one a few years ago. I did a mitochondrial one about 10 years ago but the results they are giving now are much more interesting.
This has made me so curious. Hunter may have his dad’s darker skin and dark hair but Hunter and I are identical creatures under the skin. We have the same taste in food, clothes, colors, music. Whereas Halle got my light hair and skin yet has so many similiar traits to her paternal grandpa. Which percentage would be higher, the genes that make up our looks, or the genes that make up our personality and character?
I think its an even mix. We tend to focus on what we can see, the physical traits, but the other genes that make up our likes and personality are also passed down. I’ll do a post sometime showing how we can see what specific genes are passed down on each of the 23 chromosomes. Pretty cool stuff!