DNA tests reliability - Italian guy

[Starman]

So I've been waiting for several years after having informed on how ancestry tests work. Now, what test would you suggest me as most reliable?

Please note that I'm fully italian - as far as I know - from southern Italy, but when I'm tanned I look MENA (without any sub-saharian appearance). My mother and maternal grandad were even darker than me when they were young, but now they've lost a lot of melanine, and are typically mediterranean. Other members of my close family (dad, uncles, paternal grandparents) are blonde or with light eyes.

[vader]

Hi Starman,

I recommend taking 23andMe. It's still the best test by far for us southern europeans.

The whole bs you wrote of when you tan you look "MENA" is irrelevant to your actual dna. We southern europeans have elevated ancient farmer DNA straight from anatolia and the levant. There is no surprise we sometimes can take after the look found in those areas. The rest of our DNA comes from the ancient hunter gatherers, who were also quite dark pigmentation wise and had blue eyes, and then an even larger segment of steppe DNA. The point is a lot of ancient dna is full of people of a variety of skin melanin already, so it's not a surprise to me when we see native europeans, especially southerners (with more of this farmer dna) having darker skin at times. Usually the average of a population will have intermediate, to lighter skin in south europe, but when there is people with darker skin it doesn't make your DNA any more exotic. It does annoy me when I hear people creating these stupid agendas postulating a straight correlation between physical looks and genetics... I laugh. It's just a pathetic, uneducated attempt to put you in a lower category to themselves, who are probably nordicist, or have these attitudes. I myself have naturally tanned skin and am perfectly southern european genetically, and also have people in my family with lighter features. This is found from Portugal to Greece, and further into non-european zones.

Anyway, cheers.

[gixajo]

Yeah, 23andMe is a decent option. You will get also your mtdna and Ydna and Regions of origin inside a country.

If you want to get a better raw data, among commercial tets AncestryDNA seems to be te best option, but I cannot opine about how reliable or accurate are its "ethnicity composition" results for South European people, but with NW Europeans seems to work well.