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The fallacy of DNA when used to identify someone's ethnicity
Some months ago, I've decided to do an ancestry.com DNA test to see what I'm made of. As far as I know, half of my ancestors were German speakers, while the other half were Romanian speakers. However, among my German speaking forebears some had Slovak surnames, while among Romanian forebears some had Hungarian or Greek surnames and one looked Gypsy admixed.
So in January I've finally ordered an Ancestry DNA test and now results have arrived.
AncestryDNA results:
Europe East: 41% (they pinpoint Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland & Lithuania)
Great Britain: 22% (WTF!!!)
Europe South: 15%
Caucasus: 5%
European Jewish: 5%
Iberian Peninsula: 5%
Europe West: 4%
Finland/Northwest Russia: < 1%
Middle East: < 1%
Asia South: < 1%
Finding results pretty absurd, I've decided to download my DNA and upload it to other sites for a second guess.
MyHeritage results:
Eastern European: 69,0%
- Balkans: 57,9%
- Broadly Eastern European: 11,1%
Southern European: 12,4%
- Iberian: 12,4% (!!!)
Northern and Western Europe: 7,3%
- Scandinavian: 7,3%
British Isles: 0%
Ashkenazi Jewish: 2,1%
West Asian: 8,2%
East Asian: 1,0%
Then continued to GEDMATCH and got similar wildly different or plain absurd results. To me all of this sure looks like reading the horoscope (pretentious pseudo science in its purity). Therefore, I'll stick to racial anthropology which provides FAR more reliable results and proved itself to be a science (only not an exact one). Based on racial anthropology:
- my father (3/4 German, 1/4 Romanian) looks typical German: Nordo-Faelid mixed with some Alpine-Med
- my mother (1/4 German, 3/4 Romanian) looks typical Romanian: Nordo-Baltid mixed with strong Alpine-Med
If you look at them, or at their parents, their looks reflect their ethnicity. This is science!
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Originally Posted by aherne
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