Need help determining how far back an ancestor was by DNA (find, world)

[mav286]

Is there any way to roughly estimate by the DNA chart shown what generation or how far in the past any ancestors from Wales or England would have been?

[aries63]

No. Do you have any genealogical information about your family?

If you were born in the US, which is substantially made up of descendants of colonists from Britain, but also more recent immigrants, this amount of DNA could be from a recent immigrant or a combination of more remote ancestors, or both.

Also, it may not be accurate when dividing up different Northern European ethnicities. So you can't be sure they got it right. You might not have any British ancestry at all.

[mav286]

Thanks. I have an extensive tree for this person going back to the 1700's with no ancestors from England or Wales. So either Ancestry is wrong or there was some hanky panky somewhere. Just trying to determine when that could have been.

[aries63]

If the person's known ancestry was part German, Dutch, or French, then there is significant genetic overlap with Great Britain, so a test could come back with the results you are seeing without any actual English or Welsh ancestry during the timeframe you know. No hanky-panky required!

It's very common for people to second-guess their known ancestry after taking these tests. You can't take them literally. The only way to confirm the tree is to find links to DNA matches through the known ancestors.

[daliowa]

I see that the DNA result that you posted says "England and NorthWestern Europe."
This 23 and Me page has good info on what Western Europe encompasses.

https://int.customercare.23andme.com...ations-Regions

"Northwestern Europeans are represented by people from as far west as Ireland, as far north as Norway, as far east as Finland, and as far south as France. These countries rim the North and Baltic Seas, and have been connected throughout much of history by those waters.

British & Irish

The British Isles have been continuously occupied by humans for the last 11,000 years, but more recently, the people of the Isles have left their genetic fingerprints around the world, following centuries of nautical exploration, colonization, and immigration. In the early 20th century, the Republic of Ireland won its independence from the United Kingdom, but the people of these nations share a common genetic heritage rooted largely in Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking migrations from northwestern Europe."