DIVING INTO THE GENE POOL PT2

UPDATE: I have broken down my John Cutter West brickwall. Details to follow in a 
later post. 


Late Saturday afternoon I glanced at my email and found  my Ancestry DNA test results were in!  This was an early and pleasant surprise because Ancestry had said it would be 6-8 weeks before I'd see them and here they were in 4 weeks.

So I opened the email, hit the link to see my results....and found my self slightly confused and mystified.

Here's the Ethnicity Estimate graphic:

And here's the entire Ethnicity Estimate:
51% Irish
25% Scandinavian
12% Iberian Peninsula

Low confidence:
1% Africa North
3% Italy/Greece
2% Great Britain
2% Europe East
2% Europe West.
Less than 1% European Jew
Less than 1% Caucasus

It's those small amounts of exotic (for me) genes that have m emystified : North African, Italy/Greece, Europe East, Europe West, Caucasus. Did I have Crusader ancestors who brought home wives from the wars or did some Vikings with wives from their travels settle among the Irish?

More bits of information from the test results:

I have 449 DNA matches who are 4th cousins or closer, and 138  of them with share hints I have.

My total DNA matches when more distant cousins are factored in are  19,300!

As Ancestry finds more matches those numbers will go up.

The frustrating  part is the number of people I have matches with who don't have family trees on Ancestry so I can see how we match up. I don't understand why people would do that. Are they only interested in their ethnic origins but not in their ancestors? It's like buying a sports car but never driving it!

Ah well!

I'm in the early stages of exploring all this. I'll be blogging more about it as I go along.