DNA Fingerprint Test Changed Face of Genealogy Marketplace
DNA Fingerprint Test Changed Face of Genealogy Marketplace
DNA Fingerprinting and forensic population databases have made it possible to connect modern-day American Indians (right) with specific historical or prehistorical ethnic lines (left: a Euchee Indian from an English map of 1671).
Virginia Indian woman at a powwow. Credit Tony Alter from Newport News, USA, CC BY 2.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Flip-phones, skinny jeans and puffer vests were big that year. The first tweet on Twitter and the final report of the Human Genome Project made the news. And in October of 2006, DNA Consultants (then known as DNA Consulting of Sante Fe, New Mexico) fulfilled its first DNA Fingerprint Report .
The first customer was a member of the puzzling ethnic group known as Melungeons. Her report showed that her DNA profile matched Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and Jewish people. The company founder, Donald N. Yates, would go on to publish, with marketing professor Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman, a Tennessee native and Melungeon descendant herself, the first genetic study of this little-known Appalachian group in 2010.
Since those first faltering steps twenty years ago, DNA Consultants has proceeded to help thousands of people, especially those with American Indian admixture, Jewish ancestors and yes, Melungeon ties. Its Basic American Indian DNA test, introduced in November of 2019, zeros in on about 100 indigenous groups in North and South America out of more than 550 total possible world matches. It sells for under $200.
Euchee and Cherokee descendant Holly McDaniel (left) and an Austronesian/Maori woman.
Included in the American Indian section of the company’s database are reference samples for Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Lumbee, Algonquian and many other present-day tribes, including many Mexican, Central American and South American indigenous peoples. That’s by no means all, but it is an impressive and promising start.
The company added the first genetic data ever assembled for the important, but neglected Euchee Indians in Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma, said to be the earliest continuous inhabitants of what would become the United States. The surprising results, published on the DNA Consultants blog and in a book authored by Yates last year, indicated that they carried strong Polynesian, Austronesian and even Australoid genes. The Euchee did not come across a Bering land-bridge but arrived in the Southeast from tropical and maritime origins from the far side of the Pacific Ocean.
Although the Basic American Indian, like all the company’s tests, is designed for confidential, personal use, not official purposes, and cannot be used as evidence to join a federally recognized tribe, its answers have been prized by customers who have heard all their lives about an indigenous ancestor but who came up empty in their search at other companies.
Strengths, Weaknesses of Forensic Method
DNA Consultants is one of a handful of direct-to-the-consumer DNA companies to use structural and statistical differences between living populations, as recorded in forensic studies, to assess complex lines of national and ethnic admixture inherited from both parents. Most other companies invoke secret algorithms and rely on AI to digest millions of biochemical variations.
DNA Consultants uses public scientific databases and simple probability calculations, pinning its results on the tried-and-true DNA fingerprint standard. If you get a high match to a population named Lumbee, you are likely to have Lumbee Indian ancestry or admixture in your family within the past few generations. That’s how it works.
Perhaps a weakness of forensic ancestry is that the results paint a combined, amalgamated picture. Matches cannot be assigned to one parent or the other or a specific line in your genealogy. But the chart of ethnicities that go together to compose “you” is accurate and comprehensive. It is sometimes uncanny.
George Starr-Bresette, an Anishnabe elder and former student of ours, forwarded this review and link to an intriguing video about Comanche DNA…
An AI-generated video lasting 52 minutes provides newly found DNA-history information before the Comanches ruled most of the Southwest, if we can trust it, but beware! Nevertheless, it is good to know. I am interested in these matters way way before the Europeans and other foreigners spread over North America and way before the Athabaskans (Hoopa, Apache-Navajos, Tanana etc. in Canada) and way before the Uto-Aztecans and way before the Folsom and Clovis peoples. The Comanches were people who conquered and persuaded and assimilated others into their inclusive society, which is why they persisted. “Comanche” is from Ute (Numic) /kɨmánci, kɨmáci/ meaning ‘enemy, foreigner’ OR Ute /kománteia/ ‘one who always wants to fight me’.Artificial intelligence fails at spellings, massively in this video. Here are just a few (as I remembered or misremembered them):Bingia for BeringiaShoshonyi (even Shashany?) for Shoshone, ShoshoniAntelopee for AntelopeNeverland (on map) for NavajolandFasome? for FolsomAebascans for AthabaskansNardine /nah-dine/ for Na-Dene /NAH dih-NAY/, ‘dwelling people + people’ Consider taking an hour of your tight time to watch and listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyvKPgZaNrg (52 min.) Carl Masthay, St. Louis
Recent genetic science suggests that the population we call American Indians, like others, were shaped by wave after wave of incoming foreigners. All left traces in the genetic record. Admixture is inherited in a quantum fashion, not a blended manner. It is never washed away or diluted but continues to influence our appearance, behavior and health.
Even minor admixture from thousands of years ago can randomly crop up like a recessive gene. It only takes a very sensitive test to detect it. And most people find out they are more mixed than they might have believed. Today, Austronesian matches are the talk of the town on American Indian forums.
DNA Consultants and its small staff are proud to offer the genealogy community a product that is simply unavailable anywhere else. During this twentieth anniversary year, we will be introducing a website facelift, new mobile app, test selection wizard and other enhancements—and of course, a growing number of additional populations.
Addendum
A good example of persistent admixture from antiquity, and its relevance today, is Neanderthal heritage. The average modern-day human has about 1-4% Neanderthal DNA in their genome, not counting scattered bits and pieces, even though the last Neanderthal died out many thousands of years ago. According to new research, Neanderthals gave us genes for increased height and a more robust build.
Neanderthal gene makes some modern humans taller and more muscular The ancient genetic variant is most common in people of South and East Asian ancestry. —Mohana Basu
Certain continuing influences could be claimed for Native American heritage, no matter how slight the admixture, as well as for Sub-Saharan African, Scandinavian etc. Customers are justified in wanting to know if they have Native American admixture, even if a very small amount. Analysis of their DNA is not complete without taking into account a large range of minority ancestors.
See also
DNA Consultants’ Forensic DNA Tests Earn High Marks
NEW REPS for their people (from left): Joseph Flynn (Echota Cherokee) for Alabama Native Americans, Joseph William Bass, Sr. for Euchee and Deanna Wood Priddy for the Tsalagiyi Nvdagi (Texas Cherokee).