The Beginning Of A Journey

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to get DNA tested and the results are in! It’s both disappointing, interesting and frustrating.

One of the bigger disappointments that the test showed is that there are zero markers for Native American. Now, according to genetic science, it’s really about statistics. So, statistically speaking, I have no Native American markers. But, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have native heritage – only that the markers weren’t passed to me. However, it’s very likely that because I don’t have the markers, that I don’t have nearly as much native blood as I thought.

This has also been corroborated by my inability to find a close-proximity Native American in my family tree. Being told each of my parents was likely 1/8th native led me to believe that, for example, my maternal grandmother should have been 1/4th and one of her grandparents should be full blooded. That didn’t turn out to be the case and I have yet to find one. Which of course leads me to believe that there might not be near as much as I though and, if there actually is, it will be much further back than any of us thought.

It’s also frustrating in the sense that I haven’t really found out much of anything new in my family line that I was hoping to, but it’s also interesting that I found a smattering of DNA showing a more Mediterranean heritage than I thought. I thought, in fact, that there wasn’t one – that I was mainly northern and western European. However, the test showed almost 5% Italian or Greek, which is not yet something I found in my line.

It made me want to dig further.

In order to dig further, I’ve now submitted another test, a Y chromosome DNA test that will be able to better identify my direct paternal ancestry.

We’ll see how that turns out when the results come back.