Inconsistent MENA Admixture, 1/16 Italian and 1/8 Croat

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My father's side is British, primarily Scots/Irish, and my mother's is what you might call "Ellis Island Euromutt," primarily Irish (2/16) and German (3/16) with a notable amount of Southern Italian (Basilicata, 1/16) and Western Croatian (Losinj, 2/16). Every test I've done shows that this trace MENA is from my mother's side, and given her fairly mixed ancestry, I've no reason to disbelieve it's existence per se. That said, though, we have fairly complete records of her ancestors (dating to around 1750), and no MENA at all shows up in any of my (many) maternal relatives also tested, nor in my general matches. Further, when playing around with G25, IllustrativeDNA, etc., it often disappears entirely (e.g. when looking at Steppe/Hunter-Gatherer, where only about 1/4 of the time a 0.2% Mahgreb or something pops up alongside the 'classical' European stuff).

Would y'all chalk this MENA trace to the general admixture of the Italian and/or Croat populations, a sort of false positive "Mediterranean Noise," some forgotten ancestor from a few hundreds years ago, or just the particular 'flavor' of my genes in particular?

If it were more consistent I wouldn't care at all -- it's the 'flightiness' of it that gets me.

If you're 1/16 South Italian, then you could be around 1% MENA , it's plausible.

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Originally Posted by userNa

If you're 1/16 South Italian, then you could be around 1% MENA , it's plausible.

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More than plausible, really, I just find it odd I'm the only one it shows up in. Maybe dad's side churned something up, I dunno.

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Originally Posted by HHHHHH

More than plausible, really, I just find it odd I'm the only one it shows up in. Maybe dad's side churned something up, I dunno.

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Are you more Northern European-admixed than your mothers' relatives? If it's the case, the algorithm could just be trying to assign the traces of MENA it finds here and there. If a person's like 100% South Italian (or 50% Croat and 50% South Italian), then the MENA can be lumped into South Italian, the West Asian into either South Italian or Croatian etc, but if someone like yourself is only 1/16th and 1/8th respectively, then there isn't a lot of space to lump it into, so it might be that the easiest thing for the algorithm to do would be to simply assign it to MENA. Then you get 1% MENA.

Another possibility is MENA ancestry on your father's side. Like Roman Britain type traces of MENA. Or an unknown Southern European or MENA ancestor.

I occasionally get some MENA in various tools myself. I can even model myself with Near East groups in qpAdm:

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And in G25:

Target: Gannicus_MergedFile_officialDavidski_scaled
Distance: 0.0187% / 0.01874206
81.5 Ireland_Midlands
13.3 Iberia_Basque
3.6 Arabian_Gulf
1.4 Italy_Sardinia
0.2 Native_America

In my case I think it's from undocumented southern Euro ancestry from times before documentation existed >400-500 years ago. This southern Euro input likely comes from Mediterranean movement up into northwest Europe from Roman times and even into medieval/post-medieval period. On IllustrativeDNA, there were some new samples added. A few were southern Italians buried in a cemetary in Belgium:

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With the southern Euro package came some MENA. For instance in the Roman period there is known MENA movement into Italy. It shows up in the Roman Imperial individuals, which is a change from the Republic.

Another piece of this are the Anatolian Neolithic farmers. They are big piece of European's ancestry. They have about 10-15% Natufian admixture. Even before that the Anatolian Hunter-Gatherers had a bit of a link with the Levant and the rest of the near east.

In your case I think it's from your 1/16th Italian + additional Mediterranean geneflow up into northwest Europe.