Anyway let’s see how Eurogenes compares with Living DNA which tells me I’m a 100% European (96.5% British, 3.5% Scandinavian). Bearing in mind Living DNA focuses on recent ancestry as opposed to many of the models on GEDmatch which tend to look further back to deeper DNA ancestry.
Hunter Gather V Farmer
This model gives me 50.47% Baltic hunter gather and 36.1% Mediterranean Farmer, with traces of other populations, which seems about right given my mother and father line ancestry, hunter gathers who migrated from Western Asia to Europe and Neolithic farmers who migrated from the Near East to the Mediterranean.
It makes little sense to give a blow by blow account of all the models, so what I’ve done is look for commonalities between them.
Eurogenes Commonalities
They all consistently show ancestry predominately from the North Sea/North Atlantic accounting for 50%-70% of my DNA placing me firmly in Northern and Western Europe, which is in keeping with what Living DNA is telling me.
It should not come as a total surprise either to see that several of them assign varying amounts of DNA (10-20%) to the Baltic and 7% to the Caucasus, given the results of the hunter gather v famer model. This probably reflects the deep ancestry of my motherline migration.
Interesting they also consistently show around 17%-18% Mediterranean ancestry, predominately West Mediterranean with 2%-3% thrown in from the Eastern Mediterranean for good measure. One outlier puts me as high as 28.79% Mediterranean. This again seems fairly consistent with my fatherline’s historic migration.
A couple of tests also suggest Eastern European ancestry in the 6% -15% range; this could be the result of the reference populations those models use giving a different view of the migration patterns of my ancient ancestors or the Germanic influences on my ancestry Living DNA references.
Echoes of deep Siberia, Asia and Africa ancestry also seem to appear regularly, though they seldom manage to break the 1% threshold. A couple of tests even throw up traces of Native American ancestry.
Several of the Eurogenes tests also link to Oracle, the tool that attempts to match your origins to a more specific population or region. Remember the lower the distance in Oracle the closer the match.
Oracle
The default Eurogenes model K13 concurs with Living DNA using a single population it has me as Southeast English @ 3.94
on mixed populations the results are mixed?
93.1% Southwest English + 6.9% Balkar @ 1.56
50% South Dutch + 50% Southwest English @ 2.9
50% Irish + 25% North German +25% Spanish Cataluna @ 2.67
The EUTest V2 K15 claims I’m
West German @ 7.07
88.6% West Norwegian + 11.4% Sardinian @ 4.85
50% West German +50% + West Norwegian @ 5.77
But I think the high distance values mean we can discount these results.
The original EUtest has me as
English @ 4.46
88.8% English +11.2% North Italian @ 3.74
50% English + 50% West & Central German @ 5.06
75% English + 25% French @ 4.28
Most of the populations referenced above seem fairly consistent with my Living DNA results. The various regions of Great Britain to which it assigns my DNA have significant German, French, Dutch and Spanish influences in their unique genetic signatures and the West Norwegian is I think a reference to what Living DNA highlights as my 3.5% Scandinavian.
I’m not sure why K13 flips from Southeast to Southwest England on mixed populations. I’m assuming its reference to the Balkar reflects the deeper ancestry of my motherline and that 7% Caucasian ancestry Eurogenes keeps flagging up. While the EUTest’s references to Sardinian and North Italian ancestry is a clear reference to my fatherline.
The K36 model
This provides the most detailed and therefore most speculative model of European ancestry.
This assigns about a third of my DNA to the North Sea/Atlantic, reasserting my English roots. There are also strong Central and Eastern European influences as well as Iberian and French ones, which as noted above are all consistent with the external influences Living DNA says has shaped my ‘English’ DNA heritage.
However it also assigns 9.75% of my DNA to Italian heritage and I think when we combine this with the EUtest Oracle match, which gives me 11.2% North Italian DNA, it’s safe to say despite Living DNA’s headline results GEDmatch confirms my DNA and cultural heritage are consistent and I’m 10% Italian give or take.
That’s all for now, I’m busy preparing for a trip Wickham festival next weekend, but once that’s over I’ll be exploring GEDmatch’s One-To-Many DNA Comparison tool and looking for other GEDmatch users I may be related to. The average British person has 1,700 fifth cousins, who knows maybe one of them is on Gedmatch?