Shared ancestries of Swedes, Estonians and western Finns

I am back with the mystery of commercial ancestry tests (while still preparing ancient Scandinavian samples), but I promise that this is the last time if don’t see amazing things happening, like FamilyTreeDna correcting their ideology.  I believe it will never happen.  Comparing two tests I have had possibility to check the 23andme's Ancestry Composition and  it is after the last spring’s revision better than what FtDna now can offer.  FtDna's results are so bad for Finns that I can't even make any reasonable review.  

Let's look at some basics.  There are three things which have a great impact to the quality of genetic ancestry analyses, reference sampling, method and authors understanding about history.  Authors must make compromises regarding reference samples, locations and amount of them and, what is even harder, they have to own some reasonable opinion about the timeline which they are looking for the ancestral idea.  Are they searching 500 or 5000 years back.  The big question is how the reference pack of each ethnic group can be connected to the desired time frame. 

In the case of Finnish and Scandinavian reference samples 23andme has not managed quite well.  My opinion is that in both cases they have found a unique sample set, but not an ancestral one.  Any sample set being unique enough can give unambiguous results, but not right ancestry in a desired time frame or in any time frame.  In the case of Ancestry Composition version two it is however possible to make some tricks to estimate real relations between national or ethnic groups by calculating all overlapping groupings and comparing three or more national/ethnic groups.  It is necessary to use comparison of several ethnic groups to form a big view instead of classifications made straight of reference samples.   This is necessary because the original grouping “Finnish” doesn’t mean Finnish in all cases, for example in Sweden, and in the same way “Scandinavian” doesn’t always mean Scandinavian in Finland and Estonia, for example those two cases.   I am going to do a test by using Scandinavian, Estonian and Western Finnish samples.

Sample set definitions

Scandinavians are a selected group of Ancestry Composition results from Southern Sweden, excluding Scandia, to Western Bothnia (Västerbotten).  They have published genealogical ancestries in their 23andme profiles without known Finnish ancestry.

Estonian group includes all for me now available results, excluding close relatives. There are samples from the north to the southeast and also from the west. 

Western Finnish group includes Finns from Finland Proper, Satakunta and Ostrobothnia without genealogically known Swedish ancestry.

Some basic statistics first.

Swedish samples

	Finnish	Scandinavian	British&Irish-French&German	Broadly North-E	East European	Broadly European	East Asian-Natvive Am.
Average	6,66	58,96	7,03	22,81	2,21	2,54	0,06
Median	7,3	55,8	6,25	22,9	1,45	1,65	0,05
Min	1,3	45,2	0,1	12,3	0	0	0
Max	9,9	75,1	16,3	38,5	7,7	9,8	0,2

Estonian samples

	Finnish	Scandinavian	British&Irish-French&German	Broadly North-E	East European	Broadly European	East Asian-Natvive Am.
Average	21,07	4,94	0,31	8,66	60,78	3,91	0,04
Median	19,9	3,8	0,3	8,6	49,7	3,9	0
Min	2,5	1,3	0	2,2	42,6	1,7	0
Max	43,5	10,4	0,9	16,7	90,6	5,9	0,2

Finnish samples

	Finnish	Scandinavian	British&Irish-French&German	Broadly North-E	East European	Broadly European	East Asian-Natvive Am.
Average	81,18	6,11	0,78	8,53	1,89	1,26	0,03
Median	81,4	5,7	0,5	8,3	1,3	0,7	0
Min	60,7	4,1	0	3,3	0	0	0
Max	90,4	9,8	2,4	15,9	4,9	3,8	0,1

Estonian samples look more heterogeneous than Finnish and Swedish samples, but it is only an illusion caused by the fact that they have not own reference pack.   They are split between Finnish and East European groupings.

Results, shared ancestry between Swedes, Estonians  and Western Finns.

Numbers are calculated by comparing individuals, not by ethnic averages.

Shared between Swedes and Finns:

		Finnish		Scandinavian		British&Irish-French&German			Broadly North-E		East European		Broadly European		East Asian-Natvive Am.
Shared ancestry	6,66		6,11		0,70		8,46	0,99		0,83		0,01		23,75

Total shared ancestry between Swedes and Western Finns is 23,75%

Shared between Estonians and Swedes:

Finnish

Scandinavian

British&Irish-French&German

Broadly North-E

East European

Broadly European

East Asian-Natvive Am.

Shared ancestry

5,99

4,94

0,28

8,58

2,21

1,76

0,02

23,79

Total shared ancestry between Swedes and Estonians is 23,79%

Shared between Estonians and Finns:

Finnish

Scandinavian

British&Irish-French&German

Broadly North-E

East European

Broadly European

East Asian-Natvive Am.

Shared ancestry

21,07

3,82

0,22

6,20

1,89

1,21

0,01

34,40

Total shared ancestry between Estonians and Western Finns is 34,40%

Those shared ancestries don't prove that Swedes, Estonians and Finns have just same named ancestors, only that they come from similar European ethnicities to the shared numbers.

 

There is only a small difference in the shared ancestry between Estonians and Swedes compared to the shared ancestry between Swedes and Western Finns, and both shared ancestries show similar figures for Finnish, Scandinavian and British&Irish-French&German ancestries.  It looks plausible that almost the whole shared ancestry with Swedes is inherited from a deeper history than 23andme assumes. 

How did the Finnish population transformed into something but Russian didn't

Ruling now out the strict allele data I am going to make an informal comparison regarding my experience about FamilyTreeDna's new service named myOrigins.

In a big view we already saw how the populational structure follows paternal haplogroups. Look here.  But how autosomal and ydna match overally? I think that considerably well in Western Europe and Southern Europe, but quite poorly in Scandinavia, Russia and Finland.

Let' look closer.  British Isles are the most western country on both ydna and autosomal maps excluding Basques who also belong to the top R1b owners.   In some locations British men are homogeneously R1b.

Some ethnicities in Balkan Peninsula with their high I2 are also easily distinguished.

The third distinguishable group consists of Finno-Ugrian and Finnic people in Russia and Finland.

The centre is populated by Germans, French and generally by Central Europeans being very close each other also by Fst figures.  Another mainline group consists of Southeast European, including also Balkan Peninsula in general.

All those groups show similarity between autosomal and uniparental inheritances as far as I have noticed.

But when we go to the countries populated by R1a, I1 and N1c1 men in Northern Europe the picture starts to look blurry.  Some Ydna statistics first.  All numbers are from Eupedia's Ydna statistics, except Finnish numbers which are from T. Lappalainen et al. 2006.  It is still the newest study about Finnish paternal haplogroups.   I used this study regarding Finns because Eupedia doesn't give the east-west distrubution in Finland.  However I checked that given numbers are in-line at country level.


Regional percents per haplogroup:

After taking notice of the similarities and differences between haplogroups let's look at the autosomal side.  I collected these figures from online forums and the numbers are not absolutely trustworthy, but give us guidelines.  FamilyTreeDna only can give true country averages regarding their service.  Anyway, I am not cheating, this is what cool numbers say.

After those numeric figures let's put things together.

While in Scandinavia the haplogroup I is obviously the backbone of European Northlands (read the preprint of Lazaridis et. al and what it says about ancient genomes in Sweden), it in Finland turns to North Circumpolar, even though Ostrobothnians have more I1 than Scandinavians ( Scandinavia : 34,25%, Ostrobothnia: 47%).   On the other hand in Russia the N1c1 has minimum effect on the autosomal results;  in Russia the N proportion is 23% and in Otrobothnia 29%.  However the autosomal result is very different, North Circumpolar 15,4% in Russia and 80,6% in Western Finland including Ostrobothnia. Russians still share the common genetic history with their western Slavic origin in a great deal.  I can see many explanations for this different genetic transformation in Finland and Russia, as also in case of Finland compared to Scandinavia, but it is hard to see how it could be confirmed by genetic data.  

Just keep in mind that I only make assumptions about how the autosomal and paternal genes are connected, but I am not the only one making this.  In fact most of present-day academic researchers writing studies and amateur researchers making online blogs suppose same and there is good reasons to do it.   In principle there are only three basic ways to deviate from the autosomal ancestry once in our ancestral past bound with uniparental inheritance:  1) mixing which is detected also by changes in uniparental heritage, 2) random mutations and 3) genetic drift.  Genetic drift is connected to locality and time.   The way we can estimate it includes dating of the uniparental heritage.  Without reliable datings it is like witch work, cooking magic soup.

It seems to be very little continuity between Ydna and autosomal in Finland.  But several studies show that either maternal haplogroups in Finland can't be the reason for unexpected results, for contradicting results between uniparental and autosomal inheritances in Northern Europe ought to be other reasons.  Studies prove that mitochondrial inheritance in Finland is partucarly southern and also western and only some specific and uncommon mitochondrial lines found mainly in Northern Finland imply northeastern origin.

Conclusions

My conclusion is that there is no reasonable conclusions that could explain what we see.  

FamilyTreeDna released a new Population Finder, now myOrigins

Meanwhile waiting for those 11 Scandinavian ancient genomes I take an overview about the new Population Finder, now named newly as myOrigins.  This is only  a short view while waiting for more results and comments and I'll do completer review after having more experience.

So Familytreedna has released a new population finder, which is meant to be able to find your ancestry.    Looking at first results it looks like being uncertain and gives obviously false ancestries.  Unfortunately they seem to have fallen into the same mistake which 23andme did in their first effort with Ancestry Composition.  It looks like Ftdna has gone even further regarding the Finnish ancestry.  The overfitting is apparently  reaching a new record.  Finns don't have anymore regular Scandinavian admix, only very infrequently.  They are either 100% Finns (rarely according now available results)  or Finns with significant Slavic, French and British admixture.   I would consider around 10% or more Central European or British ancestry meaningful in Finland.  I collected results now availabe on online forums and first results are here.  But first you can read and learn what they write about new population clusters:

https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/ftdna/myorigins-population-clusters/



Then first Finnish results.   Shortly main clusters and where they peak:

1. North circumpolar - in Northeastern Finland excluding proper Lapland
2. European coastal plain - in Switzerland and France
3. European coastal islands - in UK
4. Transural Peneplain - in East and Central European Slavic region
5. European Northlands - In Southern Norway (inlands)

Finnish result show evident Central European and British origins, which is absolutely new information and doesn't fit with the known history of Swedish migration to Finland, with other ideas and known information about the Finnish history.