• Ziggurat@jlai.lu
    71·
    4 hours ago

    What the hell are these map? Ancestry dna is not more scientific than astrology

    Do you speak French? Do you visit family in France? A story about a famous French ancestor? If not why would it be relevant?

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
    8·
    8 hours ago

    Most likely you have ancestors who lived in what is now France. Either that, or you have ancestors whose descendants moved around, and some of them settled in what is now France.

    This could have happened before or after France became a nation.

    Then again, it’s pretty likely that you have ancestors who lived in Africa.

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
    13·
    11 hours ago

    Yes, I can see your future. The good news is you become a starship captain. The bad news is you lose your hair.

  • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.websiteEnglish
    91·
    9 hours ago

    The movements of people since time immemorial does not adhere to the arbitrary political lines we’ve drawn between nations today. Both France and England have seen large scale immigration by the Romans, various old Germanic people, then the Vikings. All these people have killed and fucked each other. Attributing DNA to an area is partially a statistical likelihood, so there’s a margin for error. Except in geographically and/or historically isolated areas, we’re all more blended than anything else. That makes the race theory of the late 19th century seem so utterly ludicrous today but we can’t quite completely get it out of our heads either.

      • cecilkorik@lemmy.caEnglish
        6·
        8 hours ago

        You’d be better off doing actual genealogy, which involves research, reaching out to family members, combing through dusty family heirlooms, following up on leads and stories, gaining access to historical documents and records, and more and more and more research. It’s not so much a conclusion you’ll come to as a process of discovery you’ll go through and a story you’ll piece together, potentially over a lifetime. If you’re lucky the pieces will be very solid and well supported, but more likely they’ll be hazy and questionable and quite possibly completely false. It will often lead you in directions you never would’ve suspected, and you may discover serious surprises, some of which you might wish you hadn’t discovered. But that’s the risk you take.

        DNA can sometimes play a part in that process, but it’s no substitute for it, and it’s often way overblown in significance by the companies making money selling it to you. Especially it can help connect you with distant or not-so-distant relatives who may be able to fill in huge pieces of the family puzzle, or may be no help at all, but maybe it will not be about the answers you get as much as the friends you meet along the way. Trite but true.

        • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
          2·
          7 hours ago

          Yea, a sibling did a DNA analysis and it doesn’t match what we know (our family history is well understood due to people tracking it since the 1700’s.) meaning the genes are from all over, while we know the origin countries of forbears.

          Most people in the US with my surname come from a very small set of immigrants (3 or 4) from about 1700-1800.

          The thing is, my genetics are heavily influenced by who each generation married. Easy to see just on the US tree how quickly genetics mix, and it’s not like those immigrants were purely anything either.

      • actionjbone@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        6 hours ago

        In that case, you could be from france, you could be the descendant of people who had emigrated away from france, or you could be related to people who have never had anything to do with france but possess similar genetic markers to people who come from parts of France. Or, none of the above! That’s the fun part about genetics, it by itself is only a small piece of the puzzle.