MyHeritage Update June 2024

[Rober_tce]

Everyone has their own reasons for taking a DNA test. What is clear is that whatever is done it won’t be everyone's liking. Of course, and I still maintain as example, for current Iberians, a test telling you what you already know is meaningless, unless you are an orphan or have a more mixed origin or suspect that there is much more mixing than what you initially know.

For other more mixed regions, it is clear that with a test that goes back 400 years you have plenty, the question is to ask yourself: why did I take a DNA test at the time?

It’s clear that we can’t stop with these results alone, the next steps are deeper analyzes (which the vast majority of people do not know), genetic genealogy, and above all that, traditional genealogy ( which is n’t available to everyone).

And to finish we would have to ask ourselves this:

How far have I progressed in my genealogy? at the level I am at allows me to know my real ancestry? If we stick to our eight great-grandparents and know nothing else, we run the risk of losing details in our ancestry that may be surprising and interesting… or not, depends of each person discover it, if can or have enough capital and time.

[Traveler]

Everyone has their own reasons for taking a DNA test. What is clear is that whatever is done it won’t be everyone's liking. Of course, and I still maintain as example, for current Iberians, a test telling you what you already know is meaningless, unless you are an orphan or have a more mixed origin or suspect that there is much more mixing than what you initially know.

For other more mixed regions, it is clear that with a test that goes back 400 years you have plenty, the question is to ask yourself: why did I take a DNA test at the time?

It’s clear that we can’t stop with these results alone, the next steps are deeper analyzes (which the vast majority of people do not know), genetic genealogy, and above all that, traditional genealogy ( which is n’t available to everyone).

And to finish we would have to ask ourselves this:

How far have I progressed in my genealogy? at the level I am at allows me to know my real ancestry? If we stick to our eight great-grandparents and know nothing else, we run the risk of losing details in our ancestry that may be surprising and interesting… or not, depends of each person discover it, if can or have enough capital and time.

I pretty much agree, with everything you said. IMO, though, it doesn't make much sense for mainstream testing companies to design general ethnicity estimates that cater to people wanting to do really deep dives into their ancestry. Ethnicity estimates are fairly limited tools for genealogy purposes anyway, and for that, people can use other tools. Naturally, to use an example similar to yours, someone who's 100% Spanish in terms of their paper-trail genealogy in the past few centuries might be interested to know if they have, say, an excess of North African or Jewish DNA, and I think that if they have that in autosomally significant amounts beyond the general population (as I believe you do), ideally an ethnicity estimate should be able to indicate that to some degree, and not smooth out those components. 

However, the risk is that if they push too far in terms of breaking a "Spanish" category down into ancestral components that are generally shared to a greater or lesser extent by everyone in that modern population, then they will render not just the "Spanish" category meaningless, but also those categories that overlap with Spanish for historical reasons. It's always a balance and I think the priority for an ethnicity estimate has to be in terms of representing modern populations within the past few centuries, a) because that's really all autosomal DNA tests are reliable for anyway, and b) because companies have to cater to a global public.

[Nguni]

New categories used in MyHeritage 2.0:

Code:

Africa
    Central Africa
        Central African
    East Africa
        Ethiopian and Eritrean
        Sudanese
        Somali
        East African
    West Africa
        West African
        Nigerian
    North Africa
        Tunisian
        Algerian
        Moroccan
    North Africa Jewish
        Algerian Jewish
        Moroccan Jewish
        Tunisian Jewish
        Libyan Jewish
America
    Central America
        Indigenous in South Central America
        Indigenous in North Central America
        Indigenous in Mexico
    South America
        Indigenous in Ecuador
        Indigenous in Peru and Bolivia
        Indigenous in Chile
    Native American
        Inuit
        Indigenous in Southwest US
Asia
    East Asia
        Japanese
        Filipino
        Chinese
    South Asia
        Bengali
        Pakistani and Punjabi
        South Asian
        Pashtun
    Southeast Asia
        Indonesian and Malay
        Mainland South East Asian
    West Asia
        Persian and Kurdish
        Circassian
        Turkish
        Armenian
        Georgian
    Central Asia
        Central Asian
    South Asia Jewish
        Cochin Jewish
        Bene Israel Jewish
    Asia Mizrahi Jewish
        Persian Jewish and Kurdish Jewish
        Caucasus Jewish
        Bukharan Jewish
Europe
    East Europe
        East European
        Baltic
    South Europe
        Balkan
        Greek and Albanian
        North Italian
        South Italian
        Maltese
        Sardinian
    Ashkenazi Jewish
        Ashkenazi Jewish (Germany, France, Netherlands)
        Ashkenazi Jewish (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechia)
        Ashkenazi Jewish (USSR)
    North Europe
        Finnish
        Swedish
        Norwegian
        Danish
    West Europe
        English
        Scottish and Welsh
        Irish
        Germanic
        French
        Breton
        Dutch
    Iberian
        Portuguese
        Spanish, Catalan and Basque
Middle East
    Arabia
        Iraqi
        Peninsular Arab
    Levant
        Egyptian
        Middle Eastern
        Syrian
        Lebanese
    Mizrahi Jewish
        Syrian Jewish
        Iraqi Jewish
        Yemenite Jewish
Oceania
    Oceania
        Eastern Polynesian
        Māori
        Western Polynesian
        Melanesian

Still terrible for Africa.

[Rober_tce]

Everyone has their own reasons for taking a DNA test. What is clear is that whatever is done it won’t be everyone's liking. Of course, and I still maintain as example, for current Iberians, a test telling you what you already know is meaningless, unless you are an orphan or have a more mixed origin or suspect that there is much more mixing than what you initially know.

For other more mixed regions, it is clear that with a test that goes back 400 years you have plenty, the question is to ask yourself: why did I take a DNA test at the time?

It’s clear that we can’t stop with these results alone, the next steps are deeper analyzes (which the vast majority of people do not know), genetic genealogy, and above all that, traditional genealogy ( which is n’t available to everyone).

And to finish we would have to ask ourselves this:

How far have I progressed in my genealogy? at the level I am at allows me to know my real ancestry? If we stick to our eight great-grandparents and know nothing else, we run the risk of losing details in our ancestry that may be surprising and interesting… or not, depends of each person discover it, if can or have enough capital and time.

I pretty much agree, with everything you said. IMO, though, it doesn't make much sense for mainstream testing companies to design general ethnicity estimates that cater to people wanting to do really deep dives into their ancestry. Ethnicity estimates are fairly limited tools for genealogy purposes anyway, and for that, people can use other tools. Naturally, to use an example similar to yours, someone who's 100% Spanish in terms of their paper-trail genealogy in the past few centuries might be interested to know if they have, say, an excess of North African or Jewish DNA, and I think that if they have that in autosomally significant amounts beyond the general population (as I believe you do), ideally an ethnicity estimate should be able to indicate that to some degree, and not smooth out those components. 

However, the risk is that if they push too far in terms of breaking a "Spanish" category down into ancestral components that are generally shared to a greater or lesser extent by everyone in that modern population, then they will render not just the "Spanish" category meaningless, but also those categories that overlap with Spanish for historical reasons. It's always a balance and I think the priority for an ethnicity estimate has to be in terms of representing modern populations within the past few centuries, a) because that's really all autosomal DNA tests are reliable for anyway, and b) because companies have to cater to a global public.

I also agree with you in general terms. Commercial tests must serve a very broad audience and in the end they must try to fit the majority of customers. There will always be cases in which they don't get it right, because as the saying a proverb in Spanish "it doesn't rain to everyone's liking."

In general terms I think the new version is better for much people, and I personally appreciate their customer service, for me even better than that of 23andMe. The ethnic estimation for iberians is relatively poor, but in general lines is right, for example three years ago, the estimation had for us many cathegories, in many cases stranges.

The categories will always be relative, in any case if you read each one of them, they include, as you say, the historical ethnic influences of each region, and the excess that its algorithm detects will put them as a separate category. In my case, with a "moderate" smoothing as in the last update, it is able to break down minority categories, although I maintain that 23andMe is the best current autosomal test.

From my experience, I would recommend that neophytes use genetic testing as a starting point to investigate their genealogy and family history, and not stop at ethnic estimation alone.

[Moeca]

no update on any of my 6 family kits that I control

curious to see what changes for my 70% North East Italian, 15% Balkan and 15% Irish I get

[laberium]

How can I upload my Dante Labs raw data to MyHeritage? Can someone guide me through the process?

[member]

How can I upload my Dante Labs raw data to MyHeritage? Can someone guide me through the process?

Its not easy. You first need to convert from your huge BAM file to Ancestry, 23andMe, or FamilyTreeDNA format (using WGS Extract). Then you can upload it here

[Capsian20]

even yet i still waiting update

[Aroon]

even yet i still waiting update

Still waiting too

[JFWinstone]

Also still waiting. Does anyone know what's happening with this? Have they paused the roll-out? I haven't seen any new update results within the last few weeks.

[albion0209]

MyHeritage updated for me a few weeks back now, and I too am someone that initially uploaded my AncestryDNA results to MyHeritage (never would've paid or used it otherwise).





Vastly improved over the previous iteration... which was something along the lines of 46% English, 44% Irish Scottish and Welsh and 9% East Europe.


My AncestryDNA results are 63% England & Northwestern Europe, 19% Scotland, 6% Sweden & Denmark, 5% Wales, 3% Ireland, 2% Norway, 2% Germanic Europe.