With what ancient ethnicity do you most identify, and what has DNA told you ?

Yes, but how do you see it for people in the Friends section ? Or do you mean that the default Icelander is your best match among the 200+ individuals available for comparison as "public friends" ?



What is strange is that you are closer to this/these Icelander(s) than most Scandinavians would be. Two unrelated individuals from a same country would get about 19 or 20% of similarity at 1MB, not 21.7%. How can you be closer to Icelanders than other Scandinavians or perhaps even some Icelanders themselves ?

Even weirder is that you should have a high similarity with a Finn too. Finns are very different genetically from Scandinavians due to their partial Siberian ancestry and very limited Indo-European admixture (R1a and R1b). All my close matches are Scandinavians or Dutch, but none are Finns. I am closer to Italians and Spaniards than to Finns.


AFAIK the global similarity compares you to all reference populations at the 1Kb level. This does not include any friends or public friends. So the my No. 1 ranking with Iceland would be a comparison with the whole reference population.

My Finnish match is actually a known predicted cousin from 23andme. I have looked into this and spoken to her at length via email. We have concluded that it is a distant relationship 1630's possibly during the "Thirty Years War" in Europe where Finnish troops were deployed in battle with mainland European Catholics.

I really don't know why I match Scandinavians closer than they match themselves. I have posted my results in at number of forums including DNA forums and no one seems to have a clue except for the standard remark
"are you sure you are pure Croatian?" I have very high Runs of Homozygosity (ROHs) 68.616% which is higher then most Finns. This tells you that you may be from a bottle-necked population. Coastal Croatia is very mountainous and protected. Perhaps there are pockets where ancient peoples were bottle-necked and interbred extensively. These original people could have been similar genetically to Scandinavians? Or the only other way to explain my high match with Icelanders would be to theorize that there were "recent" (500-1000 years) visits by Viking traders and that they interbred with the locals?

You need to interpret the results carefully as well. If you look at the chromosome map some of the bands are in ancient regions that are common to a lot of Europeans. However even when all of this is subtracted I still end up matching Icelanders better than any other population.
 
Something is missing here. Are you sure your whole ancestry is Croatian ?
 
AFAIK the global similarity compares you to all reference populations at the 1Kb level. This does not include any friends or public friends. So the my No. 1 ranking with Iceland would be a comparison with the whole reference population.

Where did you read that there were more than one individual used per reference population ? How would they even out differences in alleles ?


We have concluded that it is a distant relationship 1630's possibly during the "Thirty Years War" in Europe where Finnish troops were deployed in battle with mainland European Catholics.

I am very sceptical about that kind of explanation. Even if a Finnish soldier did have a child in Croatia and you descend from this person, there would be almost no genetic impact on you after so many generations. After 12 generations he would be just 1 out of 4096 ancestors from that generation. I know someone who is 1/8 Chinese and 7/8 European and doesn't look Asian at all. What's 1/4096 or 1/8192 ?

I have very high Runs of Homozygosity (ROHs) 68.616% which is higher then most Finns. This tells you that you may be from a bottle-necked population. Coastal Croatia is very mountainous and protected. Perhaps there are pockets where ancient peoples were bottle-necked and interbred extensively. These original people could have been similar genetically to Scandinavians? Or the only other way to explain my high match with Icelanders would be to theorize that there were "recent" (500-1000 years) visits by Viking traders and that they interbred with the locals?

Croatia is an interesting country for geneticists indeed. In terms of Y-DNA and mtDNA there are big differences between the various parts of Croatia, and sometimes islands that are completely different from the next island.

In south-west Croatia, close to Slovenia, there is a lot of R1a and R1b, in addition to the more widespread I2a2. MtDNA indicates a major migration of Indo-European people to the region, notably on the islands of Cres and Krk. Overall, Krk has about 50% of Indo-European Y-DNA (R1a, R1b) and 25% of Indo-European mtDNA (I, W, U2, U3, U4). The rest being mostly Paleolithic European haplogroups it is not dissimilar to the pattern found in Scandinavia of R1a + R1b + I1. You just need to replace I1 by I2a2. The Indo-European element date from the same period and probably have the same source. If all hg I people were genetically close then it would explain the closeness between south-west Croatians and Scandinavians.
 
Where did you read that there were more than one individual used per reference population ? How would they even out differences in alleles ?

This was discussed in DNA forums and on the community threads on the Decodeme web site. The staff at Decodeme confirm that it is a comparison against the entire reference population.


I am very sceptical about that kind of explanation. Even if a Finnish soldier did have a child in Croatia and you descend from this person, there would be almost no genetic impact on you after so many generations. After 12 generations he would be just 1 out of 4096 ancestors from that generation. I know someone who is 1/8 Chinese and 7/8 European and doesn't look Asian at all. What's 1/4096 or 1/8192 ?

Not quite true. This was based on a low recombination region on a chromosome. Even after twelve generations there will be some HIRs (half identical regions) along chromosomes that get passed down. My HIR with this Finnish lady is almost 6cM and involves 1326 SNPs. Too big to be ancient.


Croatia is an interesting country for geneticists indeed. In terms of Y-DNA and mtDNA there are big differences between the various parts of Croatia, and sometimes islands that are completely different from the next island.

In south-west Croatia, close to Slovenia, there is a lot of R1a and R1b, in addition to the more widespread I2a2. MtDNA indicates a major migration of Indo-European people to the region, notably on the islands of Cres and Krk. Overall, Krk has about 50% of Indo-European Y-DNA (R1a, R1b) and 25% of Indo-European mtDNA (I, W, U2, U3, U4). The rest being mostly Paleolithic European haplogroups it is not dissimilar to the pattern found in Scandinavia of R1a + R1b + I1. You just need to replace I1 by I2a2. The Indo-European element date from the same period and probably have the same source. If all hg I people were genetically close then it would explain the closeness between south-west Croatians and Scandinavians.

Yes I agree. I2a2 is a very young subclade 2,500 years by some estimates. I don't think haplogroups have anything to do with my result with Icelanders. It could be something very regional ie. other Croats might be entirely different to me. I have a friend who is half Croatian (mother's side) and half Swedish (father's side). He hails from a town in Croatia that is very close to where my ancestors come from. He recently told me that on his mothers side of the family there are last names that look Icelandic in origin from hundreds of years ago. I am not sure weather to take this with a grain of salt?
 
Where did you read that there were more than one individual used per reference population ? How would they even out differences in alleles ?




I am very sceptical about that kind of explanation. Even if a Finnish soldier did have a child in Croatia and you descend from this person, there would be almost no genetic impact on you after so many generations. After 12 generations he would be just 1 out of 4096 ancestors from that generation. I know someone who is 1/8 Chinese and 7/8 European and doesn't look Asian at all. What's 1/4096 or 1/8192 ?



Croatia is an interesting country for geneticists indeed. In terms of Y-DNA and mtDNA there are big differences between the various parts of Croatia, and sometimes islands that are completely different from the next island.

In south-west Croatia, close to Slovenia, there is a lot of R1a and R1b, in addition to the more widespread I2a2. MtDNA indicates a major migration of Indo-European people to the region, notably on the islands of Cres and Krk. Overall, Krk has about 50% of Indo-European Y-DNA (R1a, R1b) and 25% of Indo-European mtDNA (I, W, U2, U3, U4). The rest being mostly Paleolithic European haplogroups it is not dissimilar to the pattern found in Scandinavia of R1a + R1b + I1. You just need to replace I1 by I2a2. The Indo-European element date from the same period and probably have the same source. If all hg I people were genetically close then it would explain the closeness between south-west Croatians and Scandinavians.

Actually, on Krk there is probably ~15% of I1.
 
As Segia well said people in my country tend to identify themselves as "roman/latin" due to our predominatly linguistic heritage from latin and the fact that most of them aren't aware of the scientific researches on our genetic pool.

Personally, I don't tend to identify myself with ethnicities but with nationalities: Portugueses, italians, frenchs, andorrans...

Greetings.
 
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My paternal DNA results were surprising. My 6th grandfather of my surname reportedly came from Limerick, Ireland to the US in the early 19th century. I expected my DNA results to be typical Irish/ celtic then - R1b plus. Instead my results were Y-DNA I2a which I guess is a rare haplo to have, found largely in eastern Europe.
I believe at one time Ireland was a haven for Norse raiders so perhaps one of your distant ancestors was the product of one of the Norse from Kiev and picked up the I2a from there?
 
I identify as Norwegian but I most likely have some Scottish, German, Saami and Finnish ancestry.
In 1702 about 40% of Trondheim's population were German and some 100,000 east Norwegians have Forest Finn ancestry and large groups of Scots immigrated to western Norway in the 16th to the 18th century, so many people in Norway is bound to have some non-Norwegian ancestry one way or another.


At 23andMe the DNA company I had myself tested, they now include a tool 'Ancestry finder', here is my results with 4 grandparents from the same country at 5cm.

Norway 2.7%
United Kingdom 0.5%
Sweden 0.4%
Switzerland 0.2%
Russia 0.2%
Germany 0.2%
Finland 0.2%
Denmark 0.2%
Bulgaria 0.2%
Netherlands 0.1%
Italy 0.1%
 
I used to think of myself as mostly of Germanic heritage, since I paternal g-g-g-grandfather immigrated from there, and for several generations married women of Germanic heritage. One set of my maternal g-grandparents were German speakers from what is now the Czech Republic.
However after researching my genealogy I discovered that about half of my ancestors were of Anglo/Norman and Anglo/Celtic origin with a fairly large Scots representation.
I still haven't received the results of deep clade testing from FTDNA or my MTDAN so all I can say is my Y-DNA is R1b1b2 M-269, which could be pretty much any place in Western Europe.
 
Hi, again, this is my first post, so I will say hello to everyone.

I realized genetic testing and my results were due to DNA and Hamit, meditate Canaanite (Phoenician) and mitochondrial DNA Celta (Europe)
 
^^


Before genetic testing me I had always identified with the Tartessos. Although it is true that he felt a part of me was from some distant place, I even went through the mind a remote black ancestor, I also had the familiar feeling as finding the time and area in which Jesus lived.

Once I test I discover with surprise that DNA Y mitochondrial DNA Phoenician and Celtic. I have an ancestor on his mother's Portuguese who arrived in Spain on the 1860 or so, so I have their mitochondrial DNA, their surnames were Figueira Ardila, a Portuguese in another forum told me that it is likely that these names belonged to the Portuguese Alentejo.
 
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^^

Yes, yes, yes
 
I identify with the Gallaecian Celts, specifically.
 
Europe is an ethnic melting pot. Well, let's not exaggerate. Europeans are genetically among the most homogeneous racial group. Indians, South-East Asians, Middle-Easterners, Central Asians and Africans all have greater genetic diversity than Europeans. But we were taught at school that Europe had a long history of invasions, wars, conquests and migrations. And it is true. What I am interested in here is how do Europeans see themselves. To put it differently, when you read a history book, who do you identify as your ancestors ?

The question also depends a bit on what is meant by ancient. In European context I found one definition which defines "ancient" as being before the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 ad. My people (the Serbs) are one of the oldest ethnicities in Europe. Our name safely exists as an ethnonym from about the 7th century though there are theories which point to it existing earlier such as the name of a Sarmatian tribe mentioned in the 1st century by Pliny the Elder. In any case I feel that my people are definitely one of the oldest continuous ethnicities in Europe so I feel we are in some way ancient as it is. Our ethnogenisis is comprised of a mix of slavic peoples and autochthonous Balkan peoples such as the Illyrians and Thracians. As it stands, it's really a debate of how much of each (slavic or Balkan) contributes to our ethnogenesis. In any case I personally feel highly connected to all slavic peoples but also to those of antiquity since culturally it's pretty well established that some Serbian customs descend from slavic Pagan beliefs... so I definitely feel most highly connected to early slavic peoples rather than Balkan peoples past or present. There even exists a theory that teh Serbian ethnonym was the original name for slavs and I think there is some merit to it.
 
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I identify myself with Etruscans and ancient Romans.
As far as genetic researches Tuscans are placed between Northern Italians and Southern Italians, they are considered "mediterranean" south europeans.

a genetic reaserach shows that Tuscans areabout 1/3 of asiaminor/neolithic mediterranean derivation; for two 2/3 they share genes with other europeans
 
I identify myself with Etruscans and ancient Romans.
As far as genetic researches Tuscans are placed between Northern Italians and Southern Italians, they are considered "mediterranean" south europeans.

a genetic reaserach shows that Tuscans areabout 1/3 of asiaminor/neolithic mediterranean derivation; for two 2/3 they share genes with other europeans
That's strange. In all the Tuscan studies they are far more than 2/3 european:

structurescience.jpg
 

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