Recently my wife did the DNA test available through Ancestry.com ($99). The result is very interesting and I plan on getting one done for myself. The report includes a map of dna hits, generic sample below:
However a disclaimer is that the report is probably much more beneficial if you've paid for their membership and can research member hits. My wife's report includes 7 pages of people she is related to who I assume are registered at Ancestry.com, primarily 3rd and 4th cousins. I'm not familiar with other DNA testing available and the comparative scope of such reports.
One thing that puzzled me is that I expected classifications to be racial, but instead were labels designating locations such as Western Europe, Northern Africa, Iberian Peninsula, etc. I was surprised that they don't focus on race at all. The report included one designator, American Indian which identifies a location and I assumed would include a Mongoloid/Asian designator, but it does not. Just like I thought Western Europe would also include Caucasian, but it does not.
This Ancestry.com article describes how they (Ancestry.com) determine "genetic ethnicity.
Of possible interest to some of you is this article: How Many Major Races Are There?.
Depending on the source, there are 3 or 4 races, however based on DNA, classifications based on traditional racial appearance seem to be less meaningful then originally thought.
The article continues with a very interesting debunking of the theory that race is biologically based.
However:
So I think I now understand why the DNA tests are focused on genetic ethnicity instead of race identifiers.
However a disclaimer is that the report is probably much more beneficial if you've paid for their membership and can research member hits. My wife's report includes 7 pages of people she is related to who I assume are registered at Ancestry.com, primarily 3rd and 4th cousins. I'm not familiar with other DNA testing available and the comparative scope of such reports.
One thing that puzzled me is that I expected classifications to be racial, but instead were labels designating locations such as Western Europe, Northern Africa, Iberian Peninsula, etc. I was surprised that they don't focus on race at all. The report included one designator, American Indian which identifies a location and I assumed would include a Mongoloid/Asian designator, but it does not. Just like I thought Western Europe would also include Caucasian, but it does not.
This Ancestry.com article describes how they (Ancestry.com) determine "genetic ethnicity.
Of possible interest to some of you is this article: How Many Major Races Are There?.
Depending on the source, there are 3 or 4 races, however based on DNA, classifications based on traditional racial appearance seem to be less meaningful then originally thought.
All men of whatever race are currently classified by the anthropologist or biologist as belonging to the one species, Homo sapiens.This is another way of saying that the differences between human races are not great, even though they may appear so, i.e. black vs white skin. All races of mankind in the world can interbreed because they have so much in common. All races share 99.99+% of the same genetic materials which means that division of race is largely subjective, and that the original 3-5 races were also probably just subjective descriptions as well.
The article continues with a very interesting debunking of the theory that race is biologically based.
By . . .”biological race,” I mean the view of race espoused by Judge Tucker, and still popular today, that there exist natural, physical divisions among humans that are hereditary, reflected in morphology, and roughly but correctly captured by terms like Black, White, and Asian (or Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid).
However:
There are no genetic characteristics possessed by all Blacks but not by non- Blacks; similarly, there is no gene or cluster of genes common to all Whites but not to non-Whites. One’s race is not determined by a single gene or gene cluster, as is, for example, sickle cell anemia. Nor are races marked by important differences in gene frequencies, the rates of appearance of certain gene types. The data compiled by various scientists demonstrates, contrary to popular opinion, that intra-group differences exceed inter-group differences. That is, greater genetic variation exists within the populations typically labeled Black and White than between these populations. This finding refutes the supposition that racial divisions reflect fundamental genetic differences.
So I think I now understand why the DNA tests are focused on genetic ethnicity instead of race identifiers.
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