Introduction
For African-descended families searching for their roots, DNA testing can be both a blessing and a source of frustration. While direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies promise to reveal ancestral origins, the science is often oversimplified. One key concept often missing from these conversations is ethnogenesis—the process by which new identities form through migration, cultural blending, and historical change. Understanding ethnogenesis is essential for anyone navigating DNA results and family history.
The Problem with African Ancestry DNA Tests
African Ancestry is a company that promises to tell customers the ethnic groups their ancestors came from. The problem? The test relies heavily on HVRI-only mitochondrial DNA analysis—a very limited set of markers. This approach cannot distinguish between closely related haplogroups, leading to serious misclassifications. For more than a decade, African Ancestry has told some people with Malagasy ancestry that their ancestors were Native American. This misstep has had real consequences, giving families inaccurate narratives of their heritage.
Genealogist Shannon Christmas raised these issues years ago, critiquing the company for overstating the precision of its methods. My own research as co-administrator, along with CeCe Moore, of the Malagasy Roots Project, confirms this: HVRI-only testing collapses complex histories into simplistic, and often misleading, categories. This FTDNA project, as the name applies, is for people who have only taken FTDNA tests.
What Scholars Say: DNA, Identity, and Ethnogenesis
Scholars such as Alondra Nelson, Kim TallBear, and Sarah Abel have written extensively about how DNA is used—and misused—in shaping ideas of race, identity, and belonging. Their work provides important context for understanding the limitations of DTC ancestry testing.
Alondra Nelson’s The Social Life of DNA (2016) explores how African American communities use DNA testing as a tool for cultural and political claims, including reparations and heritage tourism. She shows that DNA testing provides a kind of social capital, even when the science behind it is uncertain or incomplete.
Kim TallBear’s Native American DNA (2013) critiques how genetic testing reduces Indigenous identity to biological data, undermining community-based definitions of belonging. Her work highlights how DNA testing can reproduce colonial logics by privileging genetic categories over lived cultural practices.
Sarah Abel’s Permanent Markers (2022) interrogates how DNA is treated as a permanent and biological truth of identity. She argues that these tests risk naturalizing race, even though genetic science is always provisional and shaped by social context.
Together, these works remind us that DNA testing must be read critically. Ancestry is not simply about markers or percentages—it is about histories, cultures, and the ongoing processes of ethnogenesis.
A Better Approach: FTDNA and The Malagasy Roots Project
FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) offers a much more robust alternative with Full Sequence mitochondrial DNA testing and Y-DNA testing. FTDNA provides the resolution needed to trace specific lineages and gives you your DNA cousin matches associated with those specific haplogroups. FTDNA’s data show clear links between African American families and Malagasy communities, something African Ancestry’s methods missed. We also use autosomal DNA testing from all DTC companies (i.e., FTDNA, AncestryDNA, 23andme, MyHeritage, and Living DNA. Through the Malagasy Roots Project, we have connected families across continents, revealing how Malagasy lineages have survived and adapted.
For a comparison of autosomal DNA testing companies, pleas refer to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy’s Wiki page here . I also have a Genetic Genealogy and DNA Testing Information page on my blog.
Case Study: Malagasy Haplogroups in the Americas
Two key haplogroups—B4a1a1b and M23—tell the story of Malagasy women who were brought to Virginia and the Northeast in the 1600s. These maternal lineages still appear today among African Americans and Native communities such as the Ramapough Lenape, Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, Powhatan Renape as well as other Eastern seaboard tribes. Their presence shows how Malagasy ancestry became woven into the fabric of American ethnogenesis, reshaping both African American and Native histories.
Beyond haplogroups, the personal micro-histories of Malagasy Roots Project members breathe life into the data. Over the years, participants have shared stories of how their DNA results connected them to unexpected kin across continents. Some discovered maternal lines that tie them directly to villages in Madagascar where families still know their origins. Others found paternal haplogroups that placed them in the middle of Indian Ocean trade routes, linking East Africa, Arabia, and Southeast Asia. For African American participants, these connections are often transformative—turning abstract haplogroup designations like B4a1a1b or M23 into living, breathing family histories. These micro-histories show that DNA is not just about science—it’s about community, healing, and reclaiming voices lost in the silences of the archive.
Supplementary Tools for Mapping Indian Ocean Forced Migration
Understanding the spread of Malagasy ancestry requires not only DNA testing but also supplementary tools that help trace forced migrations. Genealogical and historical resources such as GEDmatch, SlaveVoyages.org, and Exploring the Slave Trade in Asia provide ways to contextualize genetic evidence. DNA Painter’s Shared cM Project further assists in determining genealogical relationships between distant cousins, making it possible to connect lineages separated by the transoceanic slave trade.
Fonte Felpe (Peter Tjong Verissimo), creator of the Tracing African Roots blog, has played a pivotal role in visualizing this history. He produced the pie charts used in this post, which illustrate the complexity of Malagasy genetic contributions in the diaspora. His work reminds us that combining genetic, genealogical, and historical approaches offers the most accurate reconstructions of the past.
The importance of such supplementary tools is reinforced by recent scholarship, including the Harvard Gazette article Pure bloodlines? Ancestral homelands? DNA science says no. This piece emphasizes that human identities cannot be reduced to ‘pure’ genetic categories. It specifically highlights the Bantu migration as an example of how centuries of movement, mixing, and adaptation have shaped populations across Africa. For Malagasy ancestry, this means recognizing how African, Asian, and Eurasian lineages converged through Indian Ocean and Atlantic histories of migration and enslavement.
Challenges in Reconstructing Malagasy Diasporic Histories
Even with the availability of powerful supplementary tools, significant obstacles remain. Understanding these challenges is crucial for interpreting Malagasy ancestry with accuracy and care: As Abu El-Haj (2007) reminds us, such challenges are not merely technical but stem from how genetic science itself reproduces racial categories. Massie (2022) underscores that kinship and ancestry within African diasporic communities cannot be reduced to genomic markers alone, pointing to the need for historical, cultural, and lived accounts alongside genetic testing.
Despite advances in genetic testing and access to historical databases, reconstructing Malagasy diasporic histories remains difficult for the following reasons:
• Fragmentary Archives: Enslaved Malagasy often arrived in the Atlantic world without documentation, or their identities were erased in shipping logs and sale records.
• Misclassification of DNA: For over a decade, companies like African Ancestry misidentified Malagasy haplogroups as Native American, creating confusion that still echoes in genealogical communities today.
• Overlapping Genetic Signals: Madagascar’s unique blend of African and Asian ancestry means some haplogroups resemble those found in other regions, complicating interpretation.
• Community Knowledge Gaps: Oral traditions that might have preserved details of Malagasy origins were frequently disrupted by displacement and generational trauma.
These challenges remind us that while DNA is a powerful tool, it must be paired with oral history, archival research, and cultural memory. The work of ethnogenesis—recovering how identities are created and re-created—requires patience, persistence, and a willingness to embrace complexity rather than seek simple answers.
In addition to these difficulties, critiques have also emerged from leading population geneticists. Dr. Claudio Bravi, a senior researcher at the Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Celular (IMBICE) in La Plata, Argentina, has studied Malagasy mtDNA lineages in South America and globally. He also runs an independent Malagasy mtDNA project and serves as an advisor to The Malagasy Roots Project. In personal communications with me, Dr. Bravi critiqued two studies often cited by Rick Kittles and Gina Paige of African Ancestry, Inc. to justify classifying Malagasy haplogroups as Native American. He emphasized that these studies were deeply flawed because they relied on skulls bought and sold in the nineteenth century. [For a historiography on the use of Botocudo skulls in the field of physical anthropology, refer to Ventura Santos and Brown’s 2020 article here.] Subsequent testing revealed that the so-called ‘Botocudo’ remains from Brazil—used as evidence in those studies—were actually 100% Polynesian, with no Native American ancestry. This underscores the dangers of using mislabeled or uncontextualized skeletal collections as the basis for ancestry claims. Bravi’s critique reinforces the importance of full mitochondrial genome sequencing over HVRI-only testing, which African Ancestry relies on. While some Malagasy Roots Project members have successfully convinced African Ancestry’s founders, Rick Kittles and Gina Paige, to correct their haplogroup designations, others continue to be told their lineages are Native American despite full-sequence evidence.
If someone has known Native American ancestry, but does not have a Native American haplogroup, then their Native American ancestry is coming from one of their other family lines OR they may not have inherited any Native admixture for a variety of reasons (e.g., DNA is inherited randomly and people of African and European descent were adopted by Native peoples). Again, refer to Kim TallBear’s book and my blog posts Repairing Erasure: Indigenous Identity and Paper Genocide, Just Sayin’: Some M Subclades are NOT New Native American Mitochondrial Haplogroups Either, and Listening to Our Ancestors This Time: M23 is NOT a Native American Mitochondrial Haplogroups for a discussion of Indigenous identity.
Visual Evidence
The following charts, created by Fonte Felpe (Peter Tjong Verissimo) from The Malagasy Roots Project data as of April 20205, show the complexity of Malagasy-descended DNA lineages.
Figure 1. mtDNA lineages according to continental origin (n=113). Asian haplogroups (49%) include B4a1a1b and M23, central to Malagasy maternal ancestry. African haplogroups account for 44%, while 7% are Eurasian, showing centuries of admixture.
Figure 2. Y-DNA lineages according to continental origin (n=65). African haplogroups dominate (57%), but Asian (15%) and Eurasian (28%) haplogroups are also present, reflecting the Indian Ocean world’s history of migration and integration.
For readers interested in the raw data behind the visual evidence presented in this blog, the following FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) project reports are available:
Figure 3. FTDNA – mtDNA – Haplogroup Origins
Figure 4. FTDNA B4a1a1b –mtDNA – Mutations HVR1 vs Full Sequence RSRS
Why This Matters for Ethnogenesis
Ethnogenesis reminds us that identities are not fixed or biologically permanent. They emerge from historical processes: slavery, forced migration, cultural exchange, and survival. Companies like African Ancestry risk misleading consumers when they present ethnic origins as static categories tied to modern-day groups. In contrast, a fuller approach—combining DNA evidence, archival research, and oral traditions—shows the resilience and adaptability of Malagasy-descended families across centuries.
Conclusion
African Ancestry’s reliance on HVRI-only data has caused generations of families to receive inaccurate results. But with tools like FTDNA’s Full Sequence testing, the supplementary resources available online, and the collaborative work of The Malagasy Roots Project, we can move toward a richer, more accurate understanding of ancestry. This is not just about genetics—it’s about history, culture, and the ongoing story of ethnogenesis.
Madagascar DNA Studies References and Blog Posts
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/11/1704906114
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2009/06/17/molbev.msp120.short?rss=1
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/03/15/rspb.2012.0012
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0080932
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v21/n12/full/ejhg201351a.html
http://www.nature.com/jhg/journal/v53/n2/full/jhg2008213a.html
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/10/605
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1199379/#!po=34.0909
http://massey.genomicus.com/publications/Razafindrazaka_2010_EurJHumGenet_v18_p575.pdf
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v18/n5/fig_tab/ejhg2009222t1.html
Part I: DNA Trail From Madagascar to Manhattan
Part II: DNA Trail from Madagascar to Manhattan & Our Family’s Malagasy Roots
Part III: The DNA Trail from Madagascar to Virginia
References
Nelson, Alondra. The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome. Boston: Beacon Press, 2016.
TallBear, Kim. Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
Abel, Sarah. Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body after the Genome. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022.
Christmas, Shannon. “Just Say No: African Ancestry’s DNA Tests.” Through the Trees Blog, February 2019.
Harvard Gazette. “Pure Bloodlines? Ancestral Homelands? DNA Science Says No.” Harvard Gazette, September 18, 2025
Massie, Victoria M. “Spillers’ Baby, Anthropology’s Maybe: A Postgenomic Reckoning.” Feminist Anthropology 3, no. 1 (2022): 137–150.
Abu El-Haj, Nadia. “The Genetic Reinscription of Race.” Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (2007): 283–300.
Ventura Santos, Ricardo and Bronwen Douglas. “‘Polynesians’ in the Brazilian Hinterland? Sociohistorical Perspectives on Skulls, Genomics, Identity, and Nationhood.” History of Human Sciences, January 2020, 33 (105): 1-36.
