Recently, I decided to upgrade my 23andme test after having left it to the wayside for so many years (it was previously on the V2 chip). It is not that I did not care about my results, it just that for so long I focused on adding other family members to my list that I was not focused on my upgrading own results. However, seeing all the recent updates in the African and Indigenous areas of DNA results in 23andme, I decided that I would upgrade soon and so I bought myself a test in late December. I sent off my test in early January and recently got back my results last weekend. I wanted to write a quick post about my results comparing my original results from 2010 (that have had some upgrades along the way) and my recent results from February 2025. I know (and hope) that these numbers will continue to evolve as DNA testing and matching to populations gets better, but is also nice to see that my numbers have not swayed too much over the course of 15 years… while at AncestryDNA, the numbers seem more volatile.
So let’s see what my genetic makeup is like in 2025!
European
My European percentages went up 0.7% which isn’t much. You can see that my top country is Spain and then within that percentage Andalusia was the highest region in both results, which makes sense with the history of Puerto Rico. The rest of my current regions are (2) Galicia, (3) Canary Island, (4) Castile and León, and (5) Basque Country. I would not say that all of them make sense especially since I know I have an ancestor from the Balearic Islands and that was not one of my top 5 regions (or even 10 for that matter), but I also do not know where all of my Spanish ancestors were from.
Sub-Saharan African
Looking at my Sub-Saharan African results they went down by 0.4%. What was interesting was that my Nigerian and Senegambian & Guinean flipped first and second position. I do wonder if I also I upgrade my parents’ results – will these numbers change again for me?
What was super interesting and very exciting was that I was assigned “Senegal” as one of the countries. Though I do not have a specific tribe associated with this part of my DNA, I still think it is cool to see a country assigned to a portion of my DNA that my paper trail does not cover well.
I do have a long piece of Senegambian & Guinean DNA on my 2nd chromosome which I inherited from my father’s side of the family, specifically from my dad’s paternal’s side. I do not know how much further back into history I would need to go to find when this piece of DNA was introduced into my family, but I do have these branches traced back to the 1800s and some branches to the late 1700s and no African ancestor has been found yet.
I am most excited to see how these results change over time and how hopefully they do a better job at identifying modern countries and tribes.
Indigenous American
It’s cool to see that my Indigenous DNA is all labeled as Puerto Rico now, though it did go down 0.3%. Every time I showed other people my DNA results they would ask if I was Japanese given the 0.1% that was randomly there (which honestly, was just DNA noise) but now it’s nice to see that I won’t have to explain this to others anymore.
(WANA) West Asian/
North African
This percentage also went down 0.3% and interestingly enough I have the countries of Algeria and Morocco assigned to me and specifically the regions of Fez-Meknes and Marrakech-Safi. Though I know I do not have any recent ancestors from these countries, it is possible that I am getting a pull from Canary Islander DNA since there was a Berber presence on the islands before the Spanish conquest way back when.
Conclusions
I know this is not a perfect science and that the numbers change over the years; however, it is important to note how fairly stable my numbers remained over the years. Below, you can see my numbers from 2012 – 13 years ago when it underwent some changes with a new design. Again, you can see that though the numbers have changed since then they have hovered around the same percentages. Increasing or decreasing a small percentage here or there and for me, this is fairly reassuring to see.
However, I am excited to see more changes. I know there has been a lot of negative talk in the news about 23andme but I do hope that they continue to remain on the forefront of genetic genealogy when it comes to population matching and autosomal DNA. I do understand the DNA relative is an important feature and many people test with AncestryDNA to find matches, but I have always liked 23andme’s genetic calculations and I hope to see it remain this way.
