North african DNA/ancestry in central european ? (American, search, Caucasian)
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It's to be expected to have small amounts of North African DNA in someone with a sizable continental European ancestry. This is likely through nearby regional influences of the Mediterranean and Middle East areas being nearby.
One thing to always consider when thinking of DNA and groups is basically thinking it out logically. If two regions are nearby they likely will have genetic influence over time... Even in a smaller scope than the major migrations. Basically it's like comparing the DNA to people from France and Germany, the borders have been variable and they are nearby, they also are connected by a lot of land, you will see genetic intermixing between those populations, just how populations typically work.
On top of that a greater understanding of which groups intermixed and moved where helps too and there is heavy intermixing between North Africa and the Middle East and Mediterranean as well as those areas and continental Europe.
For comparison my father who is mostly (so far as I have traced) American with British, German, and Swiss ancestry comes up 0.64% North African, and I'm not surprised.
There are some datasets out there on, I believe you can find them on the Eurogenes blog, that show you the average breakdown of these percentages for different samples... this gives you a very good idea of what you should expect... and basically any European population you wouldn't be surprised to see 1% or less North African (including Britain and Northern Europe) and even more in southern and eastern European areas.
Also on the topic of noise when looking at admixture results. Whenever I see anything of interest I always go to the chromosome painting (full size not reduced size, though reduced isn't a bad place to look for a higher level view before doing full size) and seeing if their are any large segments coming up as those ethnicity. If it's legitimately from an ancestor it will be a sizable enough segment and you might see more than one.
You can use this little tool here to convert the bp (build position) from the chromosome painting to cM: Rutgers Map Interpolator
(use physical positions only and just put the start and end number on line one and two, be sure to change the chromosome number to the right one).
I'm not sure how big of a segment is important for ethnicity but I use as a general rule the same segment size rules for ancestry... meaning you should mostly ignore anything smaller than 7 cM since you can't tell if it's noise or not.
For comparison with how results compare to 23andme and it's confidence levels (on 23andme they say speculative = 50%, standard = 75%, conservative = 100%), my aunt has a Sub-Saharan segment that's about 10-13 cm and still comes up as 100% confidence on 23andme.
She also has a native american segment that comes up somewhere around 6-10 cM that is 75% confidence level on 23andme (meaning it comes up on speculative and standard but not conservative).
Just some examples for reference I've run into in my own exploring.
I wouldn't be alarmed. Nothing wrong with "North African" who are largely Caucasian genetically anyway.
Your genetic profile makes a lot of sense if you claim Swiss ancestry. You are well aware, I'm sure, that the Swiss are a mostly Germanic people with major influences from France and Italy (indeed these are national languages in Switzerland), which when you look on a map you'll see that Switzerland is the crossroads between these cultures.
Italian genetics is partly (or strongly?) influenced by migrations from the Balkans. That explains your southern and eastern European influences.
Keep in mind that North Africa is a far cry from Central and Southern Africa, and when you understand that the Carthaginians, the Vandals, etc. who settled in No. Africa were originally Europeans anyway this makes even more sense. I also have no doubt the Etruscans/Romans/Italians mixed with and traded with No.Africa in varying degrees over the past couple 2-3 thousand years.
This question starts off with a wrong assumption to begin with. There is no clear demarcation between North African and European, just as there isn't a clear demarcation between N. African and Middle Eastern, or between Middle Eastern and Pakistani, and so on. Humans have been porking cross-culturally through history a lot more than we give them credit for. A lot of Tunisian/Algerian people could pass as Italian or southern French, and vice-versa.
That would be the best explanation if I had spanish ancestry
I seriously doubt it
the North African ancestry in Spanish populations has a lot more to do with Neolithic farmers who settled Europe from Mesopotamia and North Africa than later Moorish invasions.
9 time out of 10 it has to do with that and not Moors in Iberia.
Spanish Europeans are closely related to both, the Neolithic population of Europe and the later groups more related to all other Europeans.
This question starts off with a wrong assumption to begin with. There is no clear demarcation between North African and European, just as there isn't a clear demarcation between N. African and Middle Eastern, or between Middle Eastern and Pakistani, and so on. Humans have been porking cross-culturally through history a lot more than we give them credit for.
exactly.
the Neolithic settlers in Europe came originally from Mesopotamia and nearby regions including part of North Africa.
they also settled heaviest in Southern Europe, Spain , Italy., Greece,. etc...
most of the middle eastern or north African genetic ancestry in that part of Europe comes from that.
but at the same time it's not so close that a Tunisian/Algerian could ever pass for southern French though either.
most Southern Europeans are in between those extremes since they have a lot of ancestry in common with other regions of Europe too.
they only have subtle matches for Middle Eastern or North African populations unless its from recent ancestry in the last 300-500 years.
I wouldn't be alarmed. Nothing wrong with "North African" who are largely Caucasian genetically anyway.
Your genetic profile makes a lot of sense if you claim Swiss ancestry. You are well aware, I'm sure, that the Swiss are a mostly Germanic people with major influences from France and Italy (indeed these are national languages in Switzerland), which when you look on a map you'll see that Switzerland is the crossroads between these cultures.
Italian genetics is partly (or strongly?) influenced by migrations from the Balkans. That explains your southern and eastern European influences.
Keep in mind that North Africa is a far cry from Central and Southern Africa, and when you understand that the Carthaginians, the Vandals, etc. who settled in No. Africa were originally Europeans anyway this makes even more sense. I also have no doubt the Etruscans/Romans/Italians mixed with and traded with No.Africa in varying degrees over the past couple 2-3 thousand years.
this is most true especially in the OP's case
his NA percent is so low it probably has more to do with a north African population having sublte ancient native European ancestry than the other way around.
the have our genes but we don't neccesarily have theirs
My understanding is that you really only inherit DNA from ancestors within the last 200 years or so anything beyond that you wouldn't inherent much of it it wouldn't show so I don't know if it makes sense to think that it's ancient...I know that my great-grandmother was Mulatto and yet my brothers DNA shows only very little African ancestry..we know isnt noise...this is why you've got to do the paper trail you still have to do your own family ancestry the DNA can't tell you everything.
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