Ancestral DNA. Has anyone had theirs done?

Oddly enough, I'm not interested in meeting or communicating with any long lost family, for me it's an entirely academic exercise. I guess that reflects me being autistic, the idea of having to talk to strangers that I have some kind of blood relationship with is horrifying.

Yes, I have had mine done as well out of curiosity! 

I spent many yrs tracing my ancestry & building a tree online (I am on a continuous path to finding out who I am)!

I seem to be made up of mainly Scottish, Irish & English with a much smaller amount of Scandinavian

I have found family I never knew I had & also dug up a few skeleton!

The Spanish national airline is called 'Iberia'. The Iberians lived along the eastern coast, the east of the central plateau was home to the Celtiberi (mixed population of Celts and Iberians) The southern coast had the Tartessians, the north and west was mostly Celts, except for the Lusitani in central Portugal and Estremadura (no one knows if they were Celts or not) and there were proto-Basques in the far central-north.

I think most non Africans have between 1 and 4% Neanderthal DNA.

It's very regional too, in France you dont' seem to be allowed to have an ancestral DNA test, DNA tests seem to have to be mandated by a court. It seems that the French see ancestral DNA tesing as divisive, I think it's part of their cultural thing about the meaning of being French. I think the Chinese are the same, wanting to show homogenity as opposed to difference, so for some people finding out their ancestry is really difficult. Many peoples fear ancestral DNA testing as they've been historically ill treated by the medical preofession and dont' trust it.

I did read a book, that appeared to say that white people looking for their ancestors were being inherently racist and white supremacist, which I thought was a load testicles, people take these sort of tests for all sorts of reasons, I think proving some sort of supremacy must be a miniscule reason out of the thousands of people wo are tested around the world.

People in Spain think of them as ancient people whose ruins I have, also visited. Interesting shift. 

A friend of mine had over 3% neanderthal.  I called her my cave woman.

The random factor in chiasma makes it difficult to predict. I suspect a 18th century origin for my 0.2% Keralan DNA but it is impossible to be certain. 

Just the Viking index. My skin is purely Irish, very pale with no real tanning, I just go an unpleasant brick-red, though I tend to avoid the sun as I have solar urticaria.

Here's a chart I found.

So, is my 20% German + French likely to be from a grandparent?

Or 2 great-grandparents?

Alienatedhuman said:

a bit German

You have an interesting heritage.

I had no idea about my 20% German/French but sadly no one to ask about it ..

Ahh great Martin, thanks for explaining all this, as far as I can tell going back in my family trees theres no Iberian, this test said that Iberian meant as far east as the Levant, but I was dubious about that. I expected to find more foreign DNA than English as one side of my family grew up on the south coast near the main ports, I supose the other route, for the Iberian DNA is ilegitimacy?

I was fascinated to find how DNA had recombined in me campared to my Mum, we can't do my Dad's as he's dead, but all the southern English has come down strongly with only tiny amounts from elsewhere, except the rogue Iberian. My Mum's is a real mixture, Scandinavian, Irish, Welsh and southern English.

When young I had deep red/brown hair, a colour that cost a fortune to have done at the hairdressers, other hairdressers used to compliment my hairdresser on what a wonderful set of lowlights they'd done, everyone was amazed that this was my natural colour. Both parents had black hair. My eyes are hazel like my Dads, I have very white skin with a blue undertone, as did both parents, my son's so white he almost glows in the dark and really freaks out his Indian wifes family. But like my Dad I tan quite easily, the sun bounces off my Mum, she's one of the whitest white people I've ever seen

Have you had your deep ancestry done?

NC

I’m pale white but my hair resembles Afro, my brother and sister inherited the darker complexion and they get asked if they are Arabs. My sister was in Dubai and the Arabs talked to her in Arabic. All of us hear that we don’t look like natives in our country (located in Central Europe) 

Strangely, I am basically a mix of English and Irish, when I have been in mixed groups of Brits and Greeks (my workplace had lots of Greek students), Greeks have automatically spoken to me in Greek, assuming that I was Greek. A Turkish friend once told me that I look Turkish. On holiday in Paris I have been asked for directions, twice, in French by native French people. All I can take from this, is that I do not look like a typical inhabitant of the British Isles.

Good to have your input here then.

Yes, molecular biology, but of pathogens, not humans.

Am I correct that your profession was in genetics Martin?

In answer to your Iberian query, there are a number of ways that you could have inherited 8% Iberian DNA, One is a single recent ancestor, or, alternatively, through multiple more distant ancestors in separate ancestral lines. A single gt.gt. grandparent could give you around 8% DNA, but so could 2 gt.gt.gt. grandparents. The problem is that although you get very close to 50% DNA from each parent, because of random sorting on chromosomal chiasma (crossing over between paired chromosomes during the production of sperm and ova) this arithmetical progression soon breaks down the further back you go in generations. In practice, you could easily  get twice as much DNA from one gt.gt. grandparent as you get from another.

In your cells you have paired chromosomes (except XY in males), one chromosome from each parent, But in sex cells, spermatozoa and ova, there is only a single copy of each pair, but this copy is a composite between the paternal and maternal chromosomes you inherited, due to random sections of DNA of these chromosomes switching between them - chiasma - during meiosis leading to sperm and egg production.

I’ve never done ancestral DNA test, but I know that I’m a mix of polish, Ukrainian, a bit German and I also have some non European (west Asian) ancestor. Often people ask me if I’m Russian or Russians talk to me in their language straight away without asking if I speak Russian (I do)

People from Spain and Portugal, the 'Iberian Peninsula'.