I hunted Fonte (the creator of that blog) down and had him to analyze my African DNA in January.
He gave me props for my impressive GHana score
And he had already guessed a good portion of my DNA was from Angolans. And mentioned that people with roots in the West INdies tend to score these types of results in regard to the strong Central African presence.
The tests are real. And scarily accurate.
I really didn't know how to CONNECT much of what he was saying until now. Honestly when I first read it I was like huh
sdssdsd but now looking with a more educated eye, it makes sense. This is why I never gave up on my research. And THIS is why I am so excited. I've been hard at work trying to understand everything.
Here's my review.
QuoteHi Herbert, these are my thoughts on your results, remember it's just my 2 cents wink. Your Ivory Coast/Ghana proportion is impressive and nearly one half of your African breakdown (36/81=44%). It's twice as high as the average i found for 350 AA's (19,5%) and actually only 13 other AA results i've seen scored higher for this region (proportionally speaking). So this is definitely a region worthy of exploring further to get a better grip on your African background. It's good to keep in mind that besides origins from firstmost Ghana and then Ivory Coast this category could also be suggestive of origins from Liberia and even (southern) Sierra Leone. Judging from the results of actual persons from those countries. (see also African results).
Your Cameroon/Congo score (18%) is also significant but much more in line with what seems to be common among AA's and especially from the Carolina's and Georgia. This region is ambigious as it might point towards origins from both the Bight of Biafra and Central Africa. Given that you also score a fair amount of Southeastern Bantu while your Nigerian contribution is rather small it's tempting to assume your Cameroon/Congo combines with SE Bantu and generally might point towards Central African origins in your case. However other options might still also be valid!
Looking more closely at your SE Bantu score (13%), it's clearly above the average i have found for 350 AA's. It makes up 16% (13/81) of your total African breakdown, while the average would be about 6,5%. It's good to keep in mind though that averages hide a great deal of variation around the mean. I have seen about 35 other AA's score higher SE Bantu proportions than yourself, while about 133 AA's had higher SE Bantu proportions than the average of 6,5%. This region has very wideranging potential implications across southern and eastern parts of Africa. We will have to wait for an update of Ancestry's referencepanel, involving heavier sampling from Angola and Mozambique, to get a clearer picture.
I find this category nonetheless very intriguing, my personal take on any possible interpretation is to go by whatever's been documented on the African origins for whichever nationality the person who's taking the test belongs to. In the case of AA's i therefore believe that a Central African (northern Angola & interior of Congo) explanation seems to be most plausible in a majority of cases (of course there's always individual variation). Because judging from the slave trade records this region supplied about 25% of all captives to the US while the share of Mozambique/Madagascar was no more than 2%. While it's true that the Portuguese were heavily present in this area, starting from the late 1600's they were mostly confined to Angola in the area around the capital Luanda and places to the south of it (Benguela). The captives they brought over to the Americas were destined almost exclusively towards Brazil in the 1700's/1800's while during earlier centuries (1500's/1600's) also other parts of Latin America received many of these captives. Because of incidental pirate attacks on Portuguese slave ships a small number of Angolans also ended up in the US in the late 1600's. Around the river Congo, near northern Angola, it was actually the Dutch, French, English and later on even American based slave traders who were predominant. This place centered around the kingdom of Loango had many interior connections, perhaps reaching as far as Zambia even. So i imagine any Southeastern Bantu scores among AA's and also West Indians (they also can score noticeable SE Bantu scores upto around 20%, even when it's more exceptional), might still be originating from this disembarkation region.
