I decided to spend some big bucks and get my DNA traced by Ancestry.com. It works by comparing your DNA to the DNA of people who are native to various region. Here’s how they do the maternal lineage testing, and here’s how they do the paternal lineage testing.
I’ve waited anxiously for six weeks for the results. And here they are:
100% Western European.
Yup. I am whiter than white. Whiiiiiiite. Super Celtic. Practically Neanderthal. How disappointing. I wanted to be American Indian!
Sigh.
The specifics:
Ireland/Scotland: 29%
Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, though also found in Great Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, the Baltic States, Finland): 22%
Europe West (Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein): 18%
Great Britain (England): 16%
Italy/Greece: 14%
Iberian Peninsula (Spain & Portugal): 1%
The Celts were early, dominate tribes of what is now Ireland/Scotland and North Western Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula. So, that’s my dominate ancestry, though I’ve got quite a lot of Germanic / Teutonic stuff going on as well.
The Italy/Greece thing is a stunner. That particular gene line is also found in France, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, Croatia, Bosnia, Romania, Turkey, Slovenia, Algeria, Tunisia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo. No way to know what tribe I’m related to: Achaean/Arcadian, Dorian, Aeolian and/or Ionian. I guess a couple of our ancestors moved from one of these countries and married up with other ancestors in France or the Iberian peninsula way back long long before Columbus sailed the Ocean blue.
So, fetch me my kilt and my bagpipes.
Leave a Reply