What the Numbers Finally Said: Breaking Down My AncestryDNA Results

I’ve been sitting with these results for a while now — turning them over in my mind the way you’d turn over an old photograph, trying to make sense of what you’re looking at.

When most people get their AncestryDNA results, they screenshot the pie chart, share it on Instagram, and move on. But for those of us doing serious genealogical research — especially African Americans trying to reconnect with ancestral identities severed by slavery — the ethnicity estimate is just the beginning of a much longer conversation.

So let’s have that conversation. With receipts.

21 Regions. One Person.

AncestryDNA identified 21 ancestral regions in my DNA. That alone tells you something: I am not a simple story. I am a crossroads.

Here’s the full breakdown, organized by macro-region:

West Africa — 58% total

This is the dominant thread, and rightly so. The West African signal in my DNA breaks down across six distinct regions:

Nigeria at 24% is the single largest contributor in my entire genome. This likely points toward Igbo, Yoruba, or other Nigerian ethnic populations who were heavily trafficked through the transatlantic slave trade — particularly through the Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra, two of the trade’s most active ports. The Mali signal (13%) is consistent with Mande-speaking West African ancestry from the Sahel, while Senegal (10%) likely reflects Wolof, Mandinka, or Fulani heritage. The Benin & Togo signal (9%) carries the ancestral signature of the historic Kingdom of Dahomey — one of the most powerful kingdoms in the region and, grimly, a major supplier of enslaved people to European traders.

Central Africa — 19% total

This is where things get deeply personal for me. My Y-DNA haplogroup — B-F1493/Z65 — points directly to Central Africa, specifically toward Congo Basin and surrounding populations. The Cameroon result (11%) is significant: the Cameroon-Congo corridor is considered one of the ancestral homelands of the Bantu expansion, and Bantu-speaking peoples spread from this region across sub-Saharan Africa over thousands of years. Western Bantu Peoples (8%) reinforces this signal. My direct paternal line almost certainly traces here — through my grandfather Juan B. Anderson Sr., his father, and beyond — into the forests and river cultures of Central Africa.

Celtic & Gaelic — 8% total

The Celtic presence is notable — and expected. Scots-Irish slaveholders were among the most prominent in the antebellum South, particularly in Georgia and South Carolina where my paternal family was rooted. The specificity here is striking: Central Scotland & Northern Ireland at 5%, plus Highland and Island Scottish heritage. This isn’t generic “British.” This is a particular Celtic lineage that made its way to the American South and into my family through the brutal arithmetic of slavery.

England — 6% total

Nordic — 3%

Denmark registers at 3%. This is perhaps the most surprising individual signal in my results — Scandinavian ancestry isn’t typically associated with African American genealogy, but it’s not unheard of, particularly through British or Scots-Irish lines that themselves carry Norse heritage from Viking-era settlement of the British Isles.

Southern Africa — 2%

Southern Bantu Peoples at 2% is another fascinating thread. Southern Bantu populations — ancestors of modern Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, and related groups — were occasionally trafficked to North America, particularly through Portuguese trade networks. More likely, this signal reflects the deep genetic connections between Bantu-speaking Central and Southern African populations.

Smaller Signals

• Indigenous Americas (Canada & United States): 1% — This is almost certainly my Nanticoke heritage breaking through, though as I’ve written before, Indigenous ancestry is systematically underestimated in commercial DNA tests due to reference panel gaps.
• North Africa: 1%
• Southwestern Balkans: 1%
• Northwestern Germany: 1%

The Chromosome Painting: Seeing It All at Once

One of AncestryDNA’s most powerful features is the chromosome browser — a visual map of which ancestral regions appear on each of your 22 chromosomes. Mine is a vivid tapestry.

Looking across all 22 chromosomes, you can see Nigeria (green), Mali (blue), Cameroon (orange-red), and Senegal (pink) repeating as dominant colors from the large chromosomes down to the smallest. The Celtic and English signals (shades of blue and teal) appear as distinct segments — inherited blocks from specific ancestors — rather than diffuse background noise. This tells me those European ancestors were probably not too distant. A few generations back, not twenty.

The Indigenous Americas signal appears as tiny segments on a handful of chromosomes — consistent with a genuine but small contribution, and consistent with my documented Nanticoke lineage through Aminadab Handsor.

What you’re looking at in that chromosome map is not a metaphor. Those are literal segments of ancient human DNA, passed down through specific people, through specific places, across specific oceans. Every colored block represents a life.

The Ancestral Journeys: Where My DNA Matches Lived in America

Beyond the African and European origins, AncestryDNA’s Ancestral Journeys feature maps my DNA matches to specific African American communities in the United States. Four major journey groups emerged:

Delmarva Peninsula & Chesapeake Bay African Americans — with sub-communities in Delmarva Peninsula, Maryland Central Eastern Shore, and Delaware. This is deeply significant. The Delmarva Peninsula is the historical homeland of the Nanticoke people — and it’s where my documented maternal line begins. That my DNA matches cluster here is no coincidence.

Early Alabama & Georgia African Americans — specifically the Alabama & Georgia Piedmont subcommunity. This confirms what the paper trail already showed: my paternal family has roots in Georgia, where surnames like Anderson, Bush, and Davis appear in antebellum records.

Early Delmarva Peninsula African Americans — a separate and earlier cluster, encompassing Philadelphia to Central Delmarva and Maryland Southern Eastern Shore. The Philadelphia connection is intriguing and warrants further research.

Early Southern U.S. African Americans — with matches in Virginia, Maryland & Lower Mississippi River communities and Central Southern U.S. communities. This broad Southern cluster likely represents the enslaved ancestors who were sold, traded, and moved across the cotton belt over generations.

The Fan Chart: Putting Faces (and Names) to the Percentages

Perhaps what strikes me most when I look at all of this data together is how it maps — imperfectly but powerfully — onto the family tree I’ve been building through years of documentary research.

My family fan chart shows five generations of ancestors radiating outward from me at the center. On the paternal side, you can see Juan B. Anderson, Madgie Bush (1883–1973), George W. Bush (1836–1929), Harriett Bush (1846–1917) — the South Carolina branch that still holds research gaps I’m working to close. On the maternal side, the Brummell, Hammond, Davis, Thompson, Morris, and Carmean families spread out in their salmon-colored arc, deep into the 1800s.

The DNA doesn’t know their names. But it confirms they were real. Nigeria, Mali, Cameroon, Senegal — those aren’t abstract percentages. They are the homelands of the people whose descendants eventually became the Andersons of Georgia, the Davises of the Chesapeake, the Bushes of South Carolina. People whose names were taken but whose genomes survived.

What These Results Are, and What They Aren’t

An ethnicity estimate from AncestryDNA is a probability statement, not a census record. The algorithm compares your DNA to reference panels of people with documented ancestry from specific regions. Those panels are still imperfect — African populations in particular remain underrepresented — which is why I cross-reference with GEDmatch calculators (Africa9 and MDLP K23b), Y-DNA and mtDNA haplogroup analysis, chromosome triangulation among DNA matches, and always, documentary genealogical research.

The 24% Nigeria doesn’t tell me which ethnic group. The 11% Cameroon doesn’t tell me which village. But it tells me where to look. And every ancestral journey cluster, every chromosome segment, every shared centimorgan with a DNA cousin is another data point narrowing the search.

The DNA confirms. The records explain. Together, they begin to tell a story that was never supposed to survive.

The Larger Project

Every percentage on that results page represents living people who walked specific ground, spoke specific languages, worshipped in specific ways — before the Middle Passage stripped those identities away and replaced them with the word “slave.”

Reclaiming that is the work. Not just for me, but for every African American who has looked at an ethnicity estimate and wondered: who, exactly, were these people?

That’s what Written In The Genome is about. And we’re just getting started.

Have you analyzed your AncestryDNA results in depth? What haplogroups or regional breakdowns surprised you? Leave a comment below or join the conversation in my DNA Facebook Group.

Dig deeper: Explore my paternal Haplogroup B deep dive, or see what happened when I compared my raw DNA to my daughter’s. For the Native American question, read “My Grandma Was an Indian.”

✉️

Join the Journey

Subscribe to receive occasional updates about DNA, history, and ancestry.

Email Address*

FIRSTNAME

LASTNAME