For example, my test came back Sicilian, and British. But both places have had various other countries occupy them in the past.
In: Biology
Most occupations throughout history had very little genetic imprint. The overlords vary rarely bred enough with the locals to make an impact. Britain, for instance, has been invaded and conquered several times in the past 2,000 years. Romans, Danish, Anglos, Saxons, Jutes, Normans. However, their contribution to Britain’s genetic code is fairly negligible.
But more specifically, DNA placing where people are from is usually mitochondrial. That’s a strand of DNA passed from your mother. Invading empires usually consist of men invading places and taking local wives. So the mitochondrial DNA doesn’t change.
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All the DNA tests say is that in a certain location there’s more people with genetic markers they test that are similar to yours, compared to the frequency of those genetic markers in other places. It doesn’t say you are from anywhere. It just says that your specific couple of markers are common in Sicily. It doesn’t mean that people with those markers don’t exist elsewhere. That being said, who occupied Sicily is irrelevant, they are comparing your DNA of today with the people who gave samples today (or over the past couple of years that commercial DNA testing became popular and available).
Huh? Why do you think who controls a particular piece of territory has anything to do with the DNA of the people who live there? Do you think the DNA of all the people who lived in India suddenly changed when India gained independence from the UK?
You’re kind of right in that it’s kind of arbitrary. But if a set of genes are historically found in a specific region, it’s easy to bundle them together and give them an easy name. Like of course there’s Angles and Saxons and Celtic and whatever else combined to make “British”, we just call this whole combination British since it’s a famous and notable distinction.
If you want to look into it more granularly, you can probably break down what older groups you’re descended from (ie Celtic/Saxon, or Corded Ware, or what percentage Neanderthal you are) but this isn’t interesting or useful to many of their clients
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