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?

It means you share 10% of DNA markers either people who currently live in Germany. More likely it’s from migration here from people for the area we now call Germany.

Not quite. The sites like Ancestry and MyHeritage use reference panels of people who have proven and evidenced family histories going back 6 generations or more in the same areas of the world. And then compare your data with theirs.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/c/dna-learning-hub/how-does-ancestrydna-work

Ah that’s interesting. Dr Adam Rutherford has done a few podcasts on these tests. I might need to listen again- thanks for the info!

Exactly what @LizardCase has said. It simply matches to current populations. My mum’s picked up a small amount of African ancestry and we traced that to someone brought here during the Nepolionic wars, so not really that long ago. I don’t think it would be likely to pick up ancestry from more than 300 years ago.

It might be the Anglo Saxon heritage being similar to modern Germans. My mum was all British/Irish in one iteration on Ancestry then the next upgrade they did she was suddenly about 20% German. I think she’s now mostly ‘south eastern England and north Western Europe’ now they’ve upgraded it again.

Her family are heavily from east Anglia.

You’ve probably got a bit of washed-up Armada sailor.

Oh that’s really interesting as I have a similar background. I was also originally 90% English & 5% Scottish/french then after the update they disappeared & it was switched to 10% German. My family are also mainly from the East and the Midlands.

What shows up on DNA tests is effectively profiles of anyone who lived in a country X generations ago. It's not actually a big number. Certainly the genetic isopoint (the point where everyone is related to everyone else) for those with British/European ancestry is only a thousand years ago. So there are clear identifiable profiles that only can be dated back 600-1000 years tops.

If you were born in the UK and know your grandparents were born in the UK and you don't think you have mixed ancestry you are unlikely to come up with anything other than European because of migration patterns (though it does happen)

DHs mum has a tiny bit of north African but we are reasonably confident that dates back to one particular ancestor who came from Spain in the 1600s.

Oh definitely, my grandad was from a town a few miles from Spanish Point.

Mine came back with a small amount of West African ancestry. I've found it interesting trying out where that came from. I believe the link is that one of my ggg grandfather's was born in the West Indies around 1800. He isn't my 'official' ggg grandfather because my ggg grandmother married someone else but from DNA matches I am pretty sure he was the biological father of my gg grandmother.

I’m 100% European, mainly northern English with a bit of Scandinavian thrown in. Was hoping for something more exotic and have quite olive skin so I was a bit surprised.

It's more interesting in places that were colonised. I know quite a few people who look entirely European but have Maori / Aboriginal Australian or African ancestry. These things were kept very quiet / half forgotten until very recent times.

It is.

Borders have changed quite a bit in the Baltic area. An Estonian might well have been born in Russia, since Estonia was a part of the Russian Empire from 1710 to 1917, with many Estonians achieving prominence in Imperial administration, and high military rank. Estonians lived all over north western Russia. Estonia again fell under Russian (Soviet) rule in 1939 and attained independence in 1991.

Quite a few years ago now Dh and I had our ‘ancestral’ DNA done by Oxford Ancestors.

We had the same paternal origin - I forget exact details but apparently shared with some 45% of native Europeans, dating back to the Middle East 30, 000 or so years ago. So he was evidently a busy old goat!

Different maternal ones, though - his was traced to SW France near Perpignan, around 25,000 years ago, and is relatively common, something like 25% of native Europeans IIRC.

Mine however, goes back 40,000 years to NW Greece, shared by only 11% of native Europeans, including Cheddar Gorge Man.

As I said to dh, he’s a mere parvenu!

How true/accurate it all is I don’t know, but it was certainly interesting. I dare say the DNA science/databases will have moved on quite a bit since then.