DNA strikes again!
So this evening, I discovered a site called GEDmatch, which is considered quite prestigious and it’s even used by law enforcement agencies. This might seem quite invasive to some people but I like the idea that it’s easier to identify me because I uploaded my DNA somewhere.
It’s a really confusing tool because it’s mainly meant for professional use. As a result the website is also a bit clunky, you have to manually go back to the homepage every time because the back button gives you a form resubmission error, so on and so forth.
After a bit of Googling I found this helpful guide to the different tests you can run your raw DNA file through.
The website itself is very unhelpful in telling you what you are selecting.
There doesn’t seem to be a catch-all test, you can run your sample for a number of different ethnicities at once, but not every single one at once.
A general Eurogenes test shows me as
North Atlantic (presumably including Scandinavia along with England)
Baltic
West Mediterranean
West Asian
South Asian
Northeast African
South Asian is a surprise, but it’s good to see that West Asia has turned up. I’m guessing that this and West Med is where most of my Jewishness is buried.
Another that I did, showing chromosomes, included the above but added:
East Mediterranean
Red Sea (?)
East Asian
Siberian!
Amerindian
Oceanian
Sub-Saharan
So, I literally am a little bit from everywhere. I’m glad the East Asian finally showed up, that’s probably where the Japan part of me went, very dilute by now but I suppose that’s obvious since I came out as a very light-skinned redhead.
I have no idea how stuff like Amerindian and Oceanian got in there, but I suppose that’s a mystery of human history. Might explain why I matched with some Polynesians on MyHeritage though.
As I said, it’s very hard to get a complete picture, and I’m sure I’ll discover something else after posting this. Using the site’s HarappaWorld test, for example, shows that I am also South Indian and Baloch, something that is complete and utter news to me! Balochistan has a super cool flag with a camel as well.
Thinking about the history of the world reminds me of this old video from 2009. (You might do a cry if you love animals/nature.)
