I’m African American. Hypothetically, a thousand or so years ago, say my ancestor was an Asian (For example) who married a Black person. Naturally, their child was 1/2 Black and 1/2 Asian. That child went on to marry a Black person. The ancestry continues on and on for many years until we’re in 2022.
Coincidentally, none of the children ever married an Asian and all of the people they married had no trace of Asian blood in their lineage, making that one ancestor the only trace of Asian in me.
But do I still have Asian in me? What fraction would that even look like? Or at some point does it get “erased” as a result of being reduced by the other races, bloodlines, etc. over the course of 1000+ years?
I hope the example I gave makes sense. I guess I’m basically asking if, at some point, race/lineage gets erased from your cells/DNA if that race hasn’t been present at all in your family for several centuries.
In: 4
Basically no. There are billions of bits of data in your genome. Even after 50 generations there will still be some pieces of your DNA you could trace back to that one ancestor. Now that tiny piece of information might not encode anything you notice but it will still be there directly because of them.
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