Angela
Elite member
- Messages
- 21,823
- Reaction score
- 12,329
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
You might want to take a look at the FTDNA tutorial which explains how to interpret the scores. I don't want to burst any genealogical bubbles or anything, but to be literally 16% Scandinavian you would have to have something like one Scandinavian great-grandparent. A few ancestors from Scandinavia in the Middle Ages would leave barely a trace.
The "Scandinavian" in the scores is just a stand in for broadly northern, north/central European genes within your genome. It's just that FTDNA paints with a very broad and poorly labeled brush, not to mention that their assignment of reference samples to different clusters...well, I'll be polite and say it stinks, shall we say.
These kinds of tests are very broad and very unhelpful for genealogical purposes. Well, unless one is part Ashkenazi and one took the 23andme test, of course.
The total Northern European percentages in 23andme would be the equivalent. I happen to share with someone from western Liguria/Piemonte who has precisely 16% Northern European on 23andme, and close to that in "Scandinavian" on FTDNA, so it seems your scores are rather typical for someone from your area, although it wouldn't surprise me to see scores like that for someone who is a mix of far northern Italian (Bergamo/Brescia perhaps?) and central Italian (Umbria maybe?).
As to going off topic,genetic genealogy necessarily involves an understanding of the genetics (and archaeology) of particular parts of the world. If someone, in the context of asking for comments about his genetic make-up, makes a statement like, "J2 and G2 should be "relics" of the neolithic Italy. They should be much more frequent in the south, where they were brought by greek colonists, too, than in the central-northern part of the peninsula, which was completely taken over by indoeuropeans from the La Thene culture (including my ancestor, I guess." , statements which are at least highly questionable, if not incorrect, then of course it's going to generate a response. We wouldn't want you to keep laboring under the misapprehension that you're genetically a total product of invading Indo-Europeans, when that's highly unlikely. That would be very unhelpful of us.
The "Scandinavian" in the scores is just a stand in for broadly northern, north/central European genes within your genome. It's just that FTDNA paints with a very broad and poorly labeled brush, not to mention that their assignment of reference samples to different clusters...well, I'll be polite and say it stinks, shall we say.
These kinds of tests are very broad and very unhelpful for genealogical purposes. Well, unless one is part Ashkenazi and one took the 23andme test, of course.The total Northern European percentages in 23andme would be the equivalent. I happen to share with someone from western Liguria/Piemonte who has precisely 16% Northern European on 23andme, and close to that in "Scandinavian" on FTDNA, so it seems your scores are rather typical for someone from your area, although it wouldn't surprise me to see scores like that for someone who is a mix of far northern Italian (Bergamo/Brescia perhaps?) and central Italian (Umbria maybe?).
As to going off topic,genetic genealogy necessarily involves an understanding of the genetics (and archaeology) of particular parts of the world. If someone, in the context of asking for comments about his genetic make-up, makes a statement like, "J2 and G2 should be "relics" of the neolithic Italy. They should be much more frequent in the south, where they were brought by greek colonists, too, than in the central-northern part of the peninsula, which was completely taken over by indoeuropeans from the La Thene culture (including my ancestor, I guess." , statements which are at least highly questionable, if not incorrect, then of course it's going to generate a response. We wouldn't want you to keep laboring under the misapprehension that you're genetically a total product of invading Indo-Europeans, when that's highly unlikely. That would be very unhelpful of us.
