Puzzling Over Living DNA and 23andMe Results

A few weeks ago I checked my Living DNA results again and noticed I finally have one DNA match. I've been checking for matches since matching became available at Living DNA and I kept getting the message to keep fishing. I finally caught one match. Not that good at fishing here. 

I was so excited about catching one match I decided to upload the raw DNA data of an Aunt. That was a couple weeks ago, but her Family Networks' page still says keep fishing. My Aunt and I don't match yet.  

In order to get matches and participate in Family Networks you must opt in. When you do opt in there are a number of terms you must agree to. You have to keep clicking accept until you've agreed to all of their terms of use. That confused me at first because I didn't know I needed to keep clicking. 

I'm now able to see what the chromosome browser will be like when Living DNA makes it available. 

I checked my ethnicity results again at Living DNA just to see if they were any more accurate (they are supposed to roll out changes). They are still the same. They have extremely overestimated my British Isles ancestry because their database is made up of a majority of testers from the UK. You can see how comparing with a population which isn't very diverse skews the results. I couldn't be 68% British Isles because one of my grandparents was Nicaraguan and another grandparent was from Austria. That would give me around 50% non British Isles ancestry, plus I also have German and French Canadian ancestry. 

I checked my 23andMe ethnicity results to see how much British Isles they estimated? 23andMe is most accurate for me because my mother also tested and my ethnicity results have been phased, making them more accurate. They now have me at around 26% British Isles. That could be a little low but closer than Living DNA. Most likely the rest of my British Isles can be located in my 18% Broadly Northwestern European prediction. I'm 61.5% Northwest European according to 23andMe. 

What really blew me away is now they are also predicting I have ancestors from the Greater London area of England. I know for a fact I have Irish and Scottish ancestry, but I've not been able to trace any ancestors to England (by the way one of my great-grandmothers was born in Co. Galway, Ireland so that prediction is right). When I last checked this result I only had a prediction for Ireland. Both of these predictions apparently relate to my father since my mother doesn't share them. 

Here are examples of how the predictions are broken down at 23andMe. A heat map shows areas with a stronger association as dark, and weak association with my family as light. 

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Here are my UK predicted areas of possible ancestry. 

I've been to the Merseyside area. I've been to Liverpool, and really loved that city. I also love London and Edinburgh, which are also on my list. I would rank Yorkshire as one of my favorite places to visit, and I may have some ancestry there too? It's nearly impossible to say where all my pre-Revolutionary War ancestors came from. They left no hints as to where they came from, because they left no immigration records. DNA is the only way to get some idea as to where they may have been from.

I'm headed to the ancestral homeland of Ireland in a couple weeks. Thankfully I know the exact townlands where my family lived for the past several hundred years, at least. I will spend a week in Spain after my trip to Ireland. I wish DNA could confirm approximately where in Spain my family came from? I believe most Central Americans have southern Spanish roots because Latin America was largely populated by people from that region of Spain. Hopefully we can get the Spanish interested in testing? The more diversity in the pool of testers the better. The more matches the better too.