Is it possible to be 100 percent european on a DNA test?

[LemonFatball]

Because I recently got my DNA test results and it came back as 100 percent european with my ancestory being irish and english. Is this possible?

"Indigenous" means the original inhabitants of a region. So yes, there is.

Oh man, OP, this is why human geography is such an important topical area in school. 🙈

That's for matches. The Ancestral Regions goes back about 500-1,000 years

Blink of an eye really.

Yes, both mine and my husband’s are 100% European.

I'm mostly Southern England, a bit Irish, a bit French, a bit from Normandy, a bit South Germany and oddly enough I'm related to Germans in Russia.
My adult children are much more diverse but it's still 100%. European.

I think 100% European is super easy frankly.I'm surprised you're surprised. The reality is that yes, while there has always been movement of people, it's not like modern DNA tests tell us every single ancestor ever. If I look at my family tree, which we've gone back quite a few generations, it's all English. Yes, theres a bit of random other DNA in there (and it's amusing how often those "extras" come from countries on coasts that you have to assume meant seafarers.... Netherlands, Scandanvaia, France....)

I grew up in South Africa so it is true that a LOT of my white South African friends, if there families have been in SA for a few generations, do have black African, Koi or even Asian DNA. Which makes sense. I think th equivalent in England would be that Scandinavian/French/etc DNA or the Scottish/Irish/Welsh etc.

DNA ethnicity changed often, if you use ancestry. But yes, perfectly possible with current methods of estimating ethnicity, which dont go back long enough to pick up African links. We all descend from people in Africa, the difference being when and where they migrated.

I don't know why this wouldn't be possible?

I'm 100% European, but more than that 98% of my DNA can be traced to The Potteries. Very precise, and having traced my family tree back several hundred years not surprising at all.

Stoke-on-Trent is a bit like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory: nobody ever goes in and nobody ever comes out.

These tests are the DNA equivalent of the 'psychological' tests you used to get in Mizz magazine (one for the young 'uns there)

Dont take it so seriously

Not for the British Isles, no. The last ice age put paid to that.

What we call 'native', 'indigenous', or 'first people' are, in general, people who lived in lands that were later colonised by Europeans (people from eastern and western Europe).

We are all descended from the same original ancestors, whose identity is lost to time. Many of us whose ancestry is mainly European even have a certain percentage of Neanderthal ancestry. The Neanderthals also share our very distant ancestry, but they developed separately for a long time. In a way, they were the ''native' people of Europe, living in the region long before it was colonised by our later ancestors. The time scale here is 400,000 years ago, not recent. The people we call 'native/ indigenous/ first peoples' share our distant ancestors too.

All of our distant ancestors migrated over hundreds of thousands of years into lands they could survive in. For me, most of my distant and completely unknown (and at the moment unknowable) ancestors migrated to Europe.

My mitochondrial DNA (mother's lineage) shows a very early female ancestral origin in the area around the Caspian Sea. There is absolutely no way to determine precisely who this far off female ancestor was. She was the maternal ancestor of many millions of people.

This.

If you're European is means you'll have a bit of Neanderthal in there too 😉

Back to the point though. The classifications these databases use seem much more based on the choices and (American) outlook of the people who market them. Every country has had waves of migration over time so there isn't anything interesting to discover from them about your ethnicity. DW and I are both from colonial families. Mine has all been traced but DW's hasn't and there are mysteries of the sort triffid1 describes. I'd love her to do a test.

These DNA tests work by matching your DNA with that of people who currently live in those areas. It mean you don’t share DNA with anyone currently living in central Africa, not that we didn’t evolve from humans originally from there.

I’m 97.7% Irish, 1.4% Eastern European and 0.9% Iberian peninsula. I’m from the west of Ireland.

ALL humans migrated from Africa. Every single one of us is descended from African ancestors. If you go back that far in evolutionary time there’d be no point doing DNA tests, as they’d all say ‘congratulations, you’re descended from mitochondrial Eve, from the Rift Valley’.

Thats not what DNA tests are testing. They’re working in a totally different timeframe. Last few hundreds to a small number of thousand years - not the previous tens to hundreds of thousands of years.

Erm no, it doesn’t mean that.

There are plenty of really simple reference books that could help you. Even a little Google.

If you want to learn you will. If you don’t you won’t. Up to you.

I’m 100% northern european, Finnish and Estonian to be precise. My maternal granddad was born in what is now Russia but this doesn’t come up at all.

Autosomal DNA tests of the sort offered by Ancestry of MyHeritage are looking at DNA over 5-6 generations. If you were a man you could potentially do Y-DNA to get back further but you have basically misunderstood the purpose of the tests. Genealogical DNA tests are about connecting you with cousins who share a common ancestor within the 5-6 generations, not telling you where in Africa man as a species originated.

Mine came back 90% English & 10% German. Have traced my family tree back to around 1500 and found no trace of anyone from Germany so not sure how it works!

DNA tests go back about 10 generations I think. The people who travelled from Africa would have been early humans, so way back from then. I think you'd be more likely to be 100% European than anything else because colonisation was by Europeans in Europe.

That’s a completely different question. What’s your agenda here? Are you planning a ’face of modern Britain’ post or something?

Yes I’m 100% north Western European. Mostly British and Irish. With about 5% Breton (part of France)