Genetic Genealogy Helps ID Victim of Green River Killer

[Don1]

6. Ethnic composition isn't genetic genealogy

These things are trendy and new and terms get mangled. Genetic genealogy is the intersection of genetics and genealogy, using a vast array of documented records about specific individuals and then their specific relatedness using genetics. I use genetic genealogy to help adopted people discover their birth parents and also specific living individuals to try to figure out their ancestors, 1, 2, or 3 generations ago. It involves looking at highly conserved regions of dna in dna relatives lists of living people and then checking records for how they intersected through marriage or non-paternity events.

Ethnic composition--a different thing--is definitely not 100% reliable and accurate, but most of it is in the right regions most of the time across vendors.

The newest features the corporations are promoting such as making claims like "you had an ancestor come to the US as early as 1925 from the UK" based purely on ethnicity composition is even less reliable because it is one step away and they do not integrate their findings with genealogical records to arrive at the conclusions. I agree that corporations market it as much more accurate than it really is.

But, I wouldn't call that last feature genetic genealogy.