Finding My Roots: Unexpected DNA Results

I talked about my search for Chinese ancestors as one of my maternal lines is believed to be descended upon Chinese immigrants who later established their lineage in the Parian district. I also took an Ancestry DNA test to determine my ethnic breakdown so that I will have definitive proof of whatever racial mix that I have on my DNA. After a very long wait, I managed to access my results (although official results are not yet released) through an apparent URL exploit.

As mentioned in my previous article, I talked about my search for Chinese ancestors as one of my maternal lines is believed to be descended upon Chinese immigrants who later established their lineage in the Parian district. I also took an Ancestry DNA test to determine my ethnic breakdown so that I will have definitive proof of whatever racial mix that I have on my DNA. After a very long wait, I managed to access my results (although official results are not yet released) through an apparent URL exploit.

So when I checked my Ancestry profile, the results have yet to be released later this week.

By the time I will get the full results, a detailed breakdown as to where my roots come from will be determined. Based on the paper trail and documentary evidence, I have general "Filipino" ancestry without the presence of a possible foreign gene pool except for my maternal line. Of course, some people may want to see greater diversity in their DNA. I was expecting at least 10% Chinese and probably about 5% Spanish due to our long connections with these dominant cultures.

Accessing my DNA results before its official release was made possible when I changed the URL from:

this: https://www.ancestry.com/dna/insights/XXXXXXXXXXXX

to this: https://www.ancestry.com/dna/origins/XXXXXXXXXXXX

Please do note that the XXXXXXXXXXXX is your reference number. So when you do the URL exploit on your browser, you will see your ethnicity breakdown. Although, you can't see the breakdown to every ethnicity until Ancestry finally releases your data.

Interestingly, I found out that I'm 97% Filipino plus equal traces of Greek/Balkan, Italian, and Basque ancestry. No Chinese ancestry registered at all! It's not that I'm disappointed, I'm just surprised at the result though. Although I wouldn't mind even if I get 100% Filipino.

As an amateur genealogist and historian by background, I try to understand my connection to these great Mediterranean cultures. Based on my family history research, there is a great concentration of people in my family tree from the Basque region in Spain (not direct relations though). Some people that eventually assume the same surnames that have popped up throughout South America (especially in Brazil and Argentina) are from the south of Italy. These Italian immigrants have eventually moved into the United States as well. Not sure if there is a connection with the Basques of Spain.

It is interesting to note that southern Italy (Kingdom of Two Sicilies) was once ruled by the Bourbon dynasty so perhaps that's their Spanish connection. As a Spanish colony, one of those people from that part of Italy or their mixed Spanish-Italian descendant may have migrated into the Philippines by the 17th-18th century.

As for the Greek? Well, southern Italians have direct connections with the Greeks as this part of Italy was heavily-colonized by Greeks before the Roman Empire became an empire.

So when did I got these foreign strains in my DNA? Well if we're going to compute it, we always get 50% of our DNA from our parents and our parents get 50% from their parents, and so on and so forth. By the time we go back to our 5x great grandparents, we should get 0.78% of their DNA. It means that one of my 128 5x great grandparents is probably of full-blooded Greek, Italian, or Basque and even probably of that mixed ethnicities. Here is how we compute it:

100.00%	you	1
50.00%	parents	2
25.00%	grandparents	4
12.50%	great grandparents	8
6.25%	2x great grandparents	16
3.13%	3x great grandparents	32
1.56%	4x great grandparents	64
0.78%	5x great grandparents	128
0.39%	6x great grandparents	256
0.20%	7x great grandparents	512
0.10%	8x great grandparents	1024
0.05%	9x great grandparents	2048
0.02%	10x great grandparents	4096

Although I did not get the Chinese "gene" from my DNA, my siblings may have got it since siblings don't have the same breakdown of their DNA. Just consider the example below:

It's like a different shuffling of the letters so that one sibling may inherit a particular trait from the ancestors while the other has the other. Just imagine the random shuffling of letters going whenever an offspring is born.