I've been bugged the last few months by seeing a commercial from Ancestry.com on the television. Apparently, a person can send a DNA sample and they will tell what your ancestry is.

What bugs me is that they tell viewers that Italian and German DNA is different? Russian and Swiss DNA is different? I'm no expert and maybe I'm "thinking out my ass", but I thought DNA indicated race, not locale. Does Italian DNA have traces of garlic or German traces of sauer kraut in it? How does DNA differentiate where someone's ancestors were?

Anyway, if I'm on board the crazy train, I'm sure others more knowledgeable than I will let me know

my ancestry is dominican and my parents came here in the 70's or 80's so I doubt I have much records of my lineage in america. By I too saw the commercial for the dna test and I'm interested in knowing what I'm allergic to..if anything at all or any of the other things that test can tell me.

Even within a "race" there are genetic markers that corilate to a people's region. Im not 100% sure how it works with white European races but apparently there are markers to tell a nord from a scott.

They will be anolyzing haplogroups.

Basically, it would be difficult to narrow heritage down to a specific country via DNA, but they determine a vague region.

Exactly. They can see the markers, and with those percentages determine what regions your ancestors came from.

When you say region, how big are we talking? Is it West European, or Nordic? etc etc

Oh man, I can see some conspiracy nut going crazy with this lol.

Google search haplogroups, but yes it's like West European, Scandinavian, Caucasian, Turkmen, Balkan, etc.

THE GOVERNMENTS !!!

"They are just storing your blood so they can make a clone of you and replace you with it, man! Then they are going to take over the world with their army of subservient clones man!"

I know nothing about this. But I recall seeing a documentary awhile back where geneticists tested the DNA of Brits who lived in areas that were occupied by Vikings. The people in these areas had significantly higher Danish and Swedish DNA than areas where Vikings had not settled. Whether these finding were scientifically valid I don't know, but I found it very interesting.

That makes sense. Kind of like Scandinavians have a tendency to lighter hair and eye color than Spaniards or Italians. Those are in the DNA.

So right!

Awesome! I did and found this right off of the bat:

"A haplogroup is a genetic population group of people who share a common ancestor on the patrilineal or matrilineal line. Haplogroups are assigned letters of the alphabet, and refinements consist of additional number and letter combinations."

Thanks for that tip

That sounds intriguing! Do you recall if that was a PBS production? If so, I can look at their website and find it

Well my DNA markers will be all over the [censored] place.

Sounds like it could have been a BBC series, maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLV63ip7pdI&list=PL-vRsHsClLJ6-T785W1SdmEldmj25LFDB presented by Neil Oliver or the older Blood of the Vikings presented by Julian Richards.

My father has a condition where one of his fingers won't straighten and is constantly curled into his palm. There's an operation to fix it but he's too old to put himself through it. Apparently this particular condition is a very good sign of having at least some Scandinavian ancestry.

I've heard of that! I think there's a legend for it too but my memory of it evades me.


I've always been told I have Irish and Cherokee from my dad and english, irish, African American and Choctaw from my mom. Would be interesting to see how true it is.

That is a very very cool and interesting mix.

I am only western European (British, Irish and German mainly) but apparently have French and Nordic further back. So if it works, it would be cool to see if i really do have Scandinavian in me; and even more exciting if i have any dna from outside of western Europe.

DNA is said to prove that there is no difference between the English,Irish,Scots and the Welsh. It also tells us there was never a Celtic

invasion of the British Isles, the original inhabitants being mainly from North Africa via the Iberian Peninsular.

Apparently the Germans have got upset over how much DNA they share with the English.

Differences in DNA are very small indeed.

The variations in worldwide DNA are smaller than one would expect for a population of 7.3 billion.

DNA can be a bit la-la land. Results are dependent on which test is used and how good the people

who anolyse them are.

I have never really seen the point in a test for genealogical purposes.

I use Ancestry, my sister uses it more. I also use Findmypast, which I prefer because it has a large newspaper archive.

Likewise with me. I might be classified as a mutt or maybe as a Mog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ffk0Z4xMRI

Well it would kind of make sense that areas where Danes lived have Danish blood. Bits of the language still remain in some dialects.

I just pictured someone looking around your house with a black-light with a horrified expression on their face...

I think the Southern half of Africa might be the only place in the world where people wouldn't share any DNA with me and even then it's still a possibility.

I know for a fact I've got Scot/Irish and English blood swimming around in there. Rumor has it someone down the line was Native American (either Choctaw or Seminole, not sure which they were supposed to have been), but I haven't been able to confirm that.

Thing is though if you go far enough back in genetics we all share the same ancestors. Not saying there were a small literal handful of people but a low enough population where we were at a literal genetic bottleneck.