View Full Version : Maronite/Druze FTDNA MyOrigins- problem with identification??

23-03-18, 20:59
I am a quarter Lebanese and have always been confused about the result FTDNA gave me:

British Isles (58%)
Southeast Europe (19%)
Iberia (9%)

West Middle Eastern: (9%)
Asia Minor: (6%)

Trace: South Central Asia

I have no known Iberian or Southeast European ancestors at a time recent enough to have contributed a total 28% percent of my total admixture, unless Charente-Maritime is "Iberian" lol.
I also don't think my one Lebanese grandparent could have contributed the whole Middle Eastern admixture along with all that Mediterranean admixture; it's just too much.

Since I'm pretty solidly convinced these results are totally wrong, I was wondering if the reason why was just that FTDNA doesn't know what to do with the genetic signature of the Druze and Maronite Lebanese, and whether they are known for horribly misinterpreting the admixture of people from this region as they notoriously are with Scandinavians.

24-03-18, 00:15
Hi Mitsu, what's the other 3/4 of your ancestry? Thanks!

24-03-18, 00:35
Generally Northwestern European; Irish, French, North English, Scottish, German from Westphalia, Palatine, and Alsace, some Swiss; nothing to my knowledge that would be Iberian, Italian, or Southeastern European, and certainly not in the last 4 generations.

24-03-18, 01:47
I tested with FTDNA. I'm from central France. They made me 69% British Isles !! Good thing I was not an amnesiac looking for his home address.
You could upload your results to Gencove and/or DNALand. They aren't perfect, but not quite as bad. Also, your really should run your "raw data" through Gedmatch. Each calculator has its own bias, but then you can get a clearer idea by comparing the various results you get from each of them.

24-03-18, 03:09
I tried Gencove, and it is already better:
64% Northern and Central Europe
23% Eastern Mediterranean
7% Northern British Isles
4% Ashkenazi
2% Central Asia

The last bit is a bit strange, as is the fact that they gave me 0% on the component that used Druze as a reference population and on the generic Middle Eastern component, but it is still better than Balkan and Iberian!

I consider the Dodecad V3 results to be the most accurate that I have ever received, but the groups in that test seem to be more ancient than what they test for in the generic commercial models.

24-03-18, 04:31
I'm really shocked you didn't score any Levantine; hate to say but gencove is disastrous. East Med is Greek/Balkan like in this calculator btw. If you have any more results, feel free to post em when you have time on your hands!

24-03-18, 05:51
Yeah, looks like the FTDNA Southeast European is roughly the same as the gencove one. I'm not sure why I assumed one was more Greek, and therefore more believable than the other. Either way, I won't even bother posting the MyHeritage results; they are similar to FTDNA in almost every respect.

But here are the GEDMatch tests (rounded to nearest whole number with no components under 1% shown):

Dodecad V3:

West European: 43%
Mediterranean: 29%
West Asian: 14%
East European: 7%
Southwest Asian: 5%
South Asian: 2%

The explanations of the correlations of these components on this website, like how Mediterranean is related to the Bell beaker culture, make this test a bit different than the other results, but at least it was able to determine that I am in fact part Middle Eastern lol.

Atlantic Mediterranean: 35%
North European: 32%
Caucasus: 15%
Gedrosian: 11%
Southwest Asian: 5%

Not exactly sure what is meant by Caucausus and Gedrosian, but I pretty sure those are Northern Near Eastern components, so that is also accurate.

Eurogenes K=13:

North Atlantic: 43%
East Mediterranean: 14%
Baltic: 14%
West Mediterranean: 13%
West Asian: 11%
South Asian: 2%
Red Sea: 1%

The Baltic component is strange on this one. And depending on their definition of "West Mediterranean", this could be the same problem as the other tests that give me Iberian. It also has a higher level of noise I think because it gave me substantially higher but still <1% results for some groups that I am certainly and totally not, like Oceanian or Native American. Probably doesn't mean much though.

Eurogenes tests really think I am Eastern European; some even break down my "heritage" for me into Baltic, Eastern European, and Volga. Just a strange thing those tests do. Eurogenes' most accurate ones for me are ironically like the K=9 model which was the only one to not call me Eastern European. Eurogenes K12b even thinks I'm 5% Finnish!

The Eurogenes K=36 test is by far the strangest of them all, and I feel compelled to include it because its results make so little sense:

Iberian: 20%
North Sea: 12%
North Atlantic: 15%
Italian: 13%
North Caucasian: 6%
Fennoscandian: 4%
East Mediterranean: 4%
East Balkan: 4%
Central European: 4%
Near Eastern: 4%
French: 3%
East Central European: 3%
West Caucasian: 3%
South Central Asian: 2%
Basque: 1%

I must be really Spanish for a Northern European mix Western Asian.