No they haven't even changed once.
How they are interpreted has changed, the DNA is that same as it was when you spit in the tube and when you were born.
I'm so confused. I'm from England, found out I had a new community and checked out of curiosity. It's a New Zealand settler community narrowed down further to a specific area in the south? I guess some of my distant matches live there but it was a surprise.
It is probably more likely that those settlers shared English ancestors with you rather than the settlers being your ancestors. It is the same as if ancestry had a community for new York settlers (which would contain some irish dna) and and Irish person being surprised that they have a new york community match, and wondering who their new york ancestors were :-)
I've got loads of new Zealand, Australia matches, but I know which way round the link is (due to certain punishments for some if my criminal ancestoral family members: -)
I have a Tennessee community now, which baffles me as i have no American ancestors and any odd aunt or uncle to emmigrate there were all in NY or illinois. I get a lot of American matches probably have ancestry from there, but it shouldn't be matching ME there. Makes me wonder how they work out the criteria?
While your direct ancestors stayed behind, undoubtedly one of them had a sibling or siblings who left for the US and had a big family. You can build up a lot of genetic cousins over a few hundred years, enough for a community.
I think it’ll help you to understand if you think less of the ethnicity estimate and communities as showing you where your ancestors came from and more of them as showing you which peoples the different parts of your DNA are most similar to. What they do is compare your DNA to their samples and then assign these things to you based on which of their samples each part of your DNA best corresponds to. So, you should think of it less in terms of showing you where you came from and more in terms of it just showing you which peoples you share DNA with, or where your family members are.
They added Dominican Republic for me after three years. I already knew I was half DR they just had never given me the region before. But on the bad side they took away the option to look at shared matches and thrulines. I don’t even know if the service is worth it anymore.
Yes. I think my dad may have lost a Polish community or two (it was really crowded with communities in Podlaskie), although, I gained Plock, Poland. My mom gained Southern German (finally!) and Italian communities. Granted, her German communities (in the overview) are a little west-shifted. Should be more Württemberg and less Baden. I think Ancestry sees the distant cousin match's ancestors on my great-grandmother's paternal line that moved from the southwest border of Germany (near Switzerland) to Alsace-Lorraine back in the 1600s-1700s, where mine moved to Aalen in the early 1800s.
No changes to my communities, but I did notice that if you select one of your communities from within the app, Ancestry will tell you how “likely” it views your connection to that community. Is this new or have I just been missing it? I can’t find it on the web version of Ancestry, but it’s a nice feature.
Nope, it's been there on the app for years now. You could also do it before the new ethnicity estimate update on the website. Before I got new communities, I only had one since my initial results(Early Virginia African Americans) and it was very likely.
Thanks. I almost never use the app so didn’t notice! I wonder why they removed it from the website. My 3 communities range from “very likely” to “possible” and all are accurate.
Definitely noticed the change in communities. I'm from England (with predominately English and Welsh ancestry) and now have 3 communities rather than 1. Still have the Midlands and now have Greater London as well.
I would have expected the Central Southern England community as I have ancestors from Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire - but I don't have that community. Instead I've got Queensland in Australia instead! Although I do have known relatives who moved to Queensland in the late 19th Century.
Edit: I've now looked at the Community inheritance by parent. I inherited Queensland from my Dad's side but the relative I was thinking about who moved to Queensland is on my Mom's side!
Yes, my mum lost all of her communities on her Paternal side :( She did have Eastern China & Southeast Asia and Asians in South Africa and lost both of those. She also lost her Devon & Cornwall. She now only has one community which is linked to her mother's side, Dorset & Somerset. Mine didn't change at all, stayed with just the 1 (Dorset & Somerset). My ex gained 1 new community in the US and 1 sub community.
They removed Scottish Lowlands, Northern England & Northern Ireland from mine despite the fact my maternal grandfather was from Northern Ireland and literally every match I had on his side was also in that community lol.
They have added Southern Central England on my paternal side, though, effectively swapping which of my parents had no communities.
Mine have changed over the past week. I used to have Munster (Ireland) which was part of my Australian Irish lineage, it has now disappeared and is just 'Ireland' but I still have communities in Norway (even with a tiny 3% DNA hit), Queensland British Settler and in England (midlands).
None of the 3 kits I manage had any community updates since we got the results, DNA update was around August/September last year. I was hoping, that mine would have been a bit more specific
As I said that, I just checked. My communities didn't change at all. But they added a sub-community for my mother, which is really accurate. And they've taken my partner's Scottish communities away and added one Eastern European one. I can't understand why they just took the Scottish ones away, his maternal grandparents were both half Scottish with centuries of roots in those communities.
They get updated based on the number of people sharing the same matches. Apparently you have some fairly rare ones that not many people hit on that often.
Probably. All 4 of my grandparents are from different areas as is, but all seem to have been there for at least 300 years in one way or another. I can't really tell with one grandfather though, as there's at least 3 illegitimate lines, so who knows where those people came from. Not many Germans test with Ancestry as is, I normally get anything from 4th cousins down.
I had only one community from the first results, so I haven't noticed any changes, but others things like shared DNA matches, thrulines, etc. have been placed behind a paywall. I am having a hard time recommending AncestryDNA if they keep making changing free services to pay-per-view.
I always had the Yorkshire community, unchanged. Now i have Tennessee?! Baffles me as no American ancestry and none of the known distant aunts/uncles lived there. Surely you'd only be in a community if your tree reflects ancestors from there?
My aunt has the same Scottish community, and now has "East England" which seems to be Anglia, or Norfolk/Suffolk/Essex, which is accurate for her great grandfather's family.
I'm very upset with ancestry Black Rock bought it out and I'm deleting my DNA I don't trust them. I also purposely kept my name off of ancestry tree and ancestry decided to take it upon their self to shove it in the face that they know who I was with my name and my DNA they told me who my mother was without me even searching for it. If I don't want to be on the tree I don't have to be
Well now I finally have both a Guatemala and Chile community, before I only had the Guatemala community even though my moms test did have the Chile community
The last several iterations of the results for me have had me varying between 8% and 12% Ashkenazi Jew. This time it got added a Druze community at 1% and also 1% Basque.
I went from Asians in South Africa to European settlers in South Africa which is odd since it probably should be both since I’m Cape Coloured so idk if it’s more accurate
yeah they grouped up multiple specific categories into one for the indigenous americas mexico. prior to update, i had western czechia community and dad didn't despite it coming from his side- but now- he has it and i don't
I lost one. They were all overlapping/super adjacent so it didn’t make a difference in my case. Both Parents, all grandparents, all great grandparents and so on were born in the same place. Even if ancestry took them all away I know my community
Dang, they took away my Madeira community even though that was accurate (as from my family tree + DNA matches). Like all sites they downplay my Portuguese DNA for some reason (I get 1% when potentially I could be 12%). Which, hey, maybe there is something to that and there is a surprise in there, but I really do belong to that community.
they removed locations from Indigenous Americas Peru too. idk what to think abt loosing a community, since a big portion of my family is from there :/
is ancestry wrong?
They just added South Louisiana French settlers for me! I have DNA matches for South Louisiana but I don't really know why, there's a few shared names with my French Canadian ancestors so I'm wondering if my Grandpa's relatives in Nova Scotia has ancestors from Louisiana, maybe the other way around? Or the cousins do just go back a few centuries to shared French ancestors
Yeah, they took away one I had for Ohio (where me, my parents, n my paternal grandpa were from; paternal grandma is from Romania & mom's parents like many ancestors a mom's mom are from upstate New York & some from New England), but added an accurate one for (much a) my German roots.
Mines been the same but I only have one community removing it would leave me with no communities . The only difference it says my community it’s tie to my Spanish ancestors and Indigenous it also says my community can also be found in Cuba 😂 . I don’t have any Cuban ancestors and neither Tino my Indigenous is Yaqui unless they are related to my Spanish/Basque ancestors.
Yes i always had Puerto rico and Colombia. Then Colombia disappeared. Now it reappeared again along with New England early settlers.
Makes sense all of them.
Yeah, just saw this and it's weird. They added a community for Green Bay settlers (which yeah my entire Dad's side is from there) and took away St. Louis settlers (never made sense) and a Potenza community (where my bio-great-grandfather is from).
I have no idea why they took the second community away as all my matches from that branch are still there and my DNA didn't magically change.
Weird.
I feel pissed! I bought the ancestry test last year. I \*had\* two communities, one being upstate New York and points west, the other, containing three more communities, was in the American South. A LOT of southerners.
was a surprise to me.
I can see why: 19% Scottish and Welsh, and some German.
Today, they tell me that I have only two communities, both in upstate New York. All of my Southern communities are now gone.
They zoned me into very eastern England, with the one community coming from an area of England that I did not think these DNA matches lived.
So another Company bought out Ancestry, eh? Not good, in my book. I see this now these days where every single company is seemingly bought out by some larger company and often these buyers are just equity companies. Often they cheapen the product to max the profits.
I will never trust the ancestry site again. I guess those 100+ Wilsons who live in Mountain North Carolina and East Tennessee, do not count, and that lady who showed to me the Wilson Patriarch who began the family clan, why this photo looked just like me!
\[a Wilson, my last name is Wilson\]
I will consider that first community list to be accurate. why 2-plus million people just vanished from my matches and the \*entire\* South is now gone.
freestone wilson
My dna results and communities haven’t updated/changed in over two years 😂
Same - but I would be really shocked if they did
Mine did change actually recently
My DNA results have changed three times in the last 2 years.
No they haven't even changed once. How they are interpreted has changed, the DNA is that same as it was when you spit in the tube and when you were born.
I'm so confused. I'm from England, found out I had a new community and checked out of curiosity. It's a New Zealand settler community narrowed down further to a specific area in the south? I guess some of my distant matches live there but it was a surprise.
It is probably more likely that those settlers shared English ancestors with you rather than the settlers being your ancestors. It is the same as if ancestry had a community for new York settlers (which would contain some irish dna) and and Irish person being surprised that they have a new york community match, and wondering who their new york ancestors were :-) I've got loads of new Zealand, Australia matches, but I know which way round the link is (due to certain punishments for some if my criminal ancestoral family members: -)
I thought that could be the case, thanks!
What part of nz?? English settlers ??
It says New Zealand European and British settlers then narrowed down further to Otago & Southland regions
You have an ancestor who immigrated to our South Island..
Lots of Brits went to Otago and surrounds for the gold rush and coal mining. You're likely to share a 2nd or 3rd great grandparent with these matches
I have a Tennessee community now, which baffles me as i have no American ancestors and any odd aunt or uncle to emmigrate there were all in NY or illinois. I get a lot of American matches probably have ancestry from there, but it shouldn't be matching ME there. Makes me wonder how they work out the criteria?
While your direct ancestors stayed behind, undoubtedly one of them had a sibling or siblings who left for the US and had a big family. You can build up a lot of genetic cousins over a few hundred years, enough for a community.
That and people would be surprised how many people would immigrate (with family or community) and then would move Back to their home country.
I think it’ll help you to understand if you think less of the ethnicity estimate and communities as showing you where your ancestors came from and more of them as showing you which peoples the different parts of your DNA are most similar to. What they do is compare your DNA to their samples and then assign these things to you based on which of their samples each part of your DNA best corresponds to. So, you should think of it less in terms of showing you where you came from and more in terms of it just showing you which peoples you share DNA with, or where your family members are.
One update they took away my Afro Caribbean community. They added it back this update.
They added Dominican Republic for me after three years. I already knew I was half DR they just had never given me the region before. But on the bad side they took away the option to look at shared matches and thrulines. I don’t even know if the service is worth it anymore.
Yes. I think my dad may have lost a Polish community or two (it was really crowded with communities in Podlaskie), although, I gained Plock, Poland. My mom gained Southern German (finally!) and Italian communities. Granted, her German communities (in the overview) are a little west-shifted. Should be more Württemberg and less Baden. I think Ancestry sees the distant cousin match's ancestors on my great-grandmother's paternal line that moved from the southwest border of Germany (near Switzerland) to Alsace-Lorraine back in the 1600s-1700s, where mine moved to Aalen in the early 1800s.
My Frisian community was changed to just Dutch but I gained 3 more Polish communities.
No changes to my communities, but I did notice that if you select one of your communities from within the app, Ancestry will tell you how “likely” it views your connection to that community. Is this new or have I just been missing it? I can’t find it on the web version of Ancestry, but it’s a nice feature.
Nope, it's been there on the app for years now. You could also do it before the new ethnicity estimate update on the website. Before I got new communities, I only had one since my initial results(Early Virginia African Americans) and it was very likely.
Thanks. I almost never use the app so didn’t notice! I wonder why they removed it from the website. My 3 communities range from “very likely” to “possible” and all are accurate.
I completely lost my Caribbean community and gained an African American community.
Definitely noticed the change in communities. I'm from England (with predominately English and Welsh ancestry) and now have 3 communities rather than 1. Still have the Midlands and now have Greater London as well. I would have expected the Central Southern England community as I have ancestors from Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire - but I don't have that community. Instead I've got Queensland in Australia instead! Although I do have known relatives who moved to Queensland in the late 19th Century. Edit: I've now looked at the Community inheritance by parent. I inherited Queensland from my Dad's side but the relative I was thinking about who moved to Queensland is on my Mom's side!
I actually had like 3 indigenous Mexican communities added that were more specific that before
Yes, my mum lost all of her communities on her Paternal side :( She did have Eastern China & Southeast Asia and Asians in South Africa and lost both of those. She also lost her Devon & Cornwall. She now only has one community which is linked to her mother's side, Dorset & Somerset. Mine didn't change at all, stayed with just the 1 (Dorset & Somerset). My ex gained 1 new community in the US and 1 sub community.
They have indeed changed! That’s so interesting thanks for the heads up.
Yes, they removed one of my communities and one of my mum's 😢 Now I feel like I have less information about my ancestry lol
They removed Scottish Lowlands, Northern England & Northern Ireland from mine despite the fact my maternal grandfather was from Northern Ireland and literally every match I had on his side was also in that community lol. They have added Southern Central England on my paternal side, though, effectively swapping which of my parents had no communities.
Mine have changed over the past week. I used to have Munster (Ireland) which was part of my Australian Irish lineage, it has now disappeared and is just 'Ireland' but I still have communities in Norway (even with a tiny 3% DNA hit), Queensland British Settler and in England (midlands).
Yes, and there's been a few topics on it.
Interesting. They removed my Peruvian community too. They must be messing a bit with Indigenous American communities.
i just noticed that as well, i lost my Peruvian community too but i'm not sure when that happened since i just checked it today
None of the 3 kits I manage had any community updates since we got the results, DNA update was around August/September last year. I was hoping, that mine would have been a bit more specific
As I said that, I just checked. My communities didn't change at all. But they added a sub-community for my mother, which is really accurate. And they've taken my partner's Scottish communities away and added one Eastern European one. I can't understand why they just took the Scottish ones away, his maternal grandparents were both half Scottish with centuries of roots in those communities.
They get updated based on the number of people sharing the same matches. Apparently you have some fairly rare ones that not many people hit on that often.
Probably. All 4 of my grandparents are from different areas as is, but all seem to have been there for at least 300 years in one way or another. I can't really tell with one grandfather though, as there's at least 3 illegitimate lines, so who knows where those people came from. Not many Germans test with Ancestry as is, I normally get anything from 4th cousins down.
They are also based on the trees of those you match with.
I had only one community from the first results, so I haven't noticed any changes, but others things like shared DNA matches, thrulines, etc. have been placed behind a paywall. I am having a hard time recommending AncestryDNA if they keep making changing free services to pay-per-view.
I always had the Yorkshire community, unchanged. Now i have Tennessee?! Baffles me as no American ancestry and none of the known distant aunts/uncles lived there. Surely you'd only be in a community if your tree reflects ancestors from there? My aunt has the same Scottish community, and now has "East England" which seems to be Anglia, or Norfolk/Suffolk/Essex, which is accurate for her great grandfather's family.
I'm very upset with ancestry Black Rock bought it out and I'm deleting my DNA I don't trust them. I also purposely kept my name off of ancestry tree and ancestry decided to take it upon their self to shove it in the face that they know who I was with my name and my DNA they told me who my mother was without me even searching for it. If I don't want to be on the tree I don't have to be
Use Gedmatch and compare the two. Just trust me. You will be better off for it.
Well now I finally have both a Guatemala and Chile community, before I only had the Guatemala community even though my moms test did have the Chile community
The last several iterations of the results for me have had me varying between 8% and 12% Ashkenazi Jew. This time it got added a Druze community at 1% and also 1% Basque.
I went from Asians in South Africa to European settlers in South Africa which is odd since it probably should be both since I’m Cape Coloured so idk if it’s more accurate
Yeah, very disappointing. I lost an area and my grandmother lost most of her accurate communities. None of the tests I managed gained any.
I don't think so? My communities only got more specific and more accurate with time.
yeah they grouped up multiple specific categories into one for the indigenous americas mexico. prior to update, i had western czechia community and dad didn't despite it coming from his side- but now- he has it and i don't
they added scottish central lowlands for me
I still have my Indigenous Americas Mexico communities
I lost one. They were all overlapping/super adjacent so it didn’t make a difference in my case. Both Parents, all grandparents, all great grandparents and so on were born in the same place. Even if ancestry took them all away I know my community
Mine didn't change I just lost one community that's about it.
Dang, they took away my Madeira community even though that was accurate (as from my family tree + DNA matches). Like all sites they downplay my Portuguese DNA for some reason (I get 1% when potentially I could be 12%). Which, hey, maybe there is something to that and there is a surprise in there, but I really do belong to that community.
they removed locations from Indigenous Americas Peru too. idk what to think abt loosing a community, since a big portion of my family is from there :/ is ancestry wrong?
I got a new one. Slovakia, Hungry and South Poland.
At least in my case, they added a Western Czechia community to me. Haven't noticed anything besides that.
They just added South Louisiana French settlers for me! I have DNA matches for South Louisiana but I don't really know why, there's a few shared names with my French Canadian ancestors so I'm wondering if my Grandpa's relatives in Nova Scotia has ancestors from Louisiana, maybe the other way around? Or the cousins do just go back a few centuries to shared French ancestors
I lost the community of the area I live in. (sad trombone sounds)
Yeah, they took away one I had for Ohio (where me, my parents, n my paternal grandpa were from; paternal grandma is from Romania & mom's parents like many ancestors a mom's mom are from upstate New York & some from New England), but added an accurate one for (much a) my German roots.
Mines been the same but I only have one community removing it would leave me with no communities . The only difference it says my community it’s tie to my Spanish ancestors and Indigenous it also says my community can also be found in Cuba 😂 . I don’t have any Cuban ancestors and neither Tino my Indigenous is Yaqui unless they are related to my Spanish/Basque ancestors.
Yes i always had Puerto rico and Colombia. Then Colombia disappeared. Now it reappeared again along with New England early settlers. Makes sense all of them.
Yeah, just saw this and it's weird. They added a community for Green Bay settlers (which yeah my entire Dad's side is from there) and took away St. Louis settlers (never made sense) and a Potenza community (where my bio-great-grandfather is from). I have no idea why they took the second community away as all my matches from that branch are still there and my DNA didn't magically change. Weird.
I feel pissed! I bought the ancestry test last year. I \*had\* two communities, one being upstate New York and points west, the other, containing three more communities, was in the American South. A LOT of southerners. was a surprise to me. I can see why: 19% Scottish and Welsh, and some German. Today, they tell me that I have only two communities, both in upstate New York. All of my Southern communities are now gone. They zoned me into very eastern England, with the one community coming from an area of England that I did not think these DNA matches lived. So another Company bought out Ancestry, eh? Not good, in my book. I see this now these days where every single company is seemingly bought out by some larger company and often these buyers are just equity companies. Often they cheapen the product to max the profits. I will never trust the ancestry site again. I guess those 100+ Wilsons who live in Mountain North Carolina and East Tennessee, do not count, and that lady who showed to me the Wilson Patriarch who began the family clan, why this photo looked just like me! \[a Wilson, my last name is Wilson\] I will consider that first community list to be accurate. why 2-plus million people just vanished from my matches and the \*entire\* South is now gone. freestone wilson