Ancestral DNA tests are becoming quite popular lately and I think its been quite the eye opener for many. I've been watching videos of people opening their results and it's surprising how many don't see what they expect to see. Some are even quite upset at just how little they have of their expected DNA. Usually those that aren't obviously of mixed race in their recent history.
photo courtesy of @izzydawnFor me it's just confirmation of the historical migration of people that has happened for thousands of years. If there was one thing I learnt from the bit of tracing of our recent family tree, it's that people are incredibly migratory. My father often told me that we had Irish and Scottish ancestors, but it would be more accurate to say that our ancestors lived or moved to these places in the past. The chances are that our DNA would not show up as having developed there in any way. In fact, it would be very unlikely that modern Europeans would be able to claim genetic purity to any one European country.
Some American born Ethiopians were shocked to find that their genetics had much larger portions of Asian than African and one even admitted they'd taken offense when others had pointed out that their features were much narrower like the Arabic people. One had parents and grandparents who were born in Ethiopia, but discovered that none of their genetics actually came from there. I suppose it shouldn't be too much of a surprise as the north east of Africa almost touches Asia, so the mixing of races via invasion or trade was bound to happen.
Physical appearance can often lead to categorisation as a certain ethnicity, but we might do well to remember that certain physical genetic features carry through generations strongly compared others. A British, Arabic looking woman was amazed to discover that she was over 70% European. She’d felt sure that her ancestry was mostly Asian.
Something else to be taken into consideration is that DNA tests will vary from company to company, depending on the database they use. We should also realise that the DNA that is in the database isn't going to be from centuries old sources, but from fairly modern sources and this gives us something of a paradox, because we already know how mixed this modern world is.
One video I watched was a girl who had her hopes set on finding her tribal roots on African Ancestry. Unfortunately, she can only use a matriclan DNA kit which traces back on the female DNA and hers led to European roots. She was quite upset and I don't think it was necessarily because she discovered white ancestry (despite what some of the comments on the video seemed to think), so much as her hopes had been dashed on finding out about the exact African tribes she is descended from, which other ancestry companies aren't geared up to tracing in the same way. The only way to trace back on the patriclan kit for the male DNA side would be for her to do so via a male relative because, it seems females don't retain the male DNA markers.
It makes me wonder if we sometimes put too much of our identity onto our ethnicity or nationality. While we might instinctually gravitate towards our colony or people on the way we look in this mixed world and want to give ourselves an identity to feel like we fit somewhere, in this melting pot that we are moving towards, perhaps we would do better to find our tribe by other means and other things we have in common. For a long time now, “whites” have come in a multitude of skin tones, hair colours, hair textures and eye colours. It's one of the reasons I could never fathom why we would judge another with even darker skin. We accept all those other variations without question, so why not accept ourselves.