MyHeritage region relabling: Greece and Italy (germanic, search, world, percentage)
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It looks like MyHeritage has relabled their "Greek" region as "Greek and Southern Italian." I believe this is only a relabling, not an updated ethnicity.
Greek and South Italian
People with Greek and South Italian ethnicity have ancient roots in the Greek peninsula, centered around the Aegean and Ionian Seas. In modernity, people with Greek and South Italian ethnicity may also be found in Cyprus, the Caucasus, southern Russia, and the Mezzogiorno region of southern Italy. South Italy was perhaps the first region to be settled by the ancient Greeks outside of the Greek peninsula, going back to the 8th century BCE. Greek culture and identity have dominated Western civilization for centuries, in part because of Alexander the Great’s conquest of much of the ancient world, and his introduction of Greek culture everywhere he conquered. The great philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle hail from ancient Greece, as do the giants of ancient literature, Homer and Sophocles, and the famed mathematicians and scientists Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes. The ancient Greeks also made significant contributions to the arts, exploration, politics, architecture, music, science, sports - the list goes on and on. Cultural diffusion between Greece and southern Italy yielded significant cultural development: the ancient Greek alphabet was imported to southern Italy and adopted by the Etruscans and eventually evolved into the Latin alphabet, the most widely used alphabet in the world.
I see this as good news since DNA researchers have shown these groups to be part of the same genetic population.
It looks like MyHeritage has relabled their "Greek" region as "Greek and Southern Italian." I believe this is only a relabling, not an updated ethnicity.
There's a lot of misunderstanding about what Italy is.
Unlike Scotland, Wales, Ireland, England, Scandinavia and other places that have distinct DNA, Italy doesn't have that.
Italy is a huge admixture of DNA from the Caucus Mountains, Iran, Anatolia, North Africa, Greece, the Levant and other areas of Europe, including Celtic peoples.
The early Greeks, the eastern Greeks meaning the ones from Anatolia like the Phrygians, Lydians and Ionians established colonies on the eastern Italian Peninsula, and then later the western Greeks, the ones most people know about, migrated to those colonies and set up even more colonies.
Then you have the Phoenicians and their off-shoots the Carthaginians occupying the southern peninsula for centuries.
The cavalry in Roman legions were largely Persians, Medes and Assyrians, and then archers were from there, plus Dacia, Thracia, Moesia and North Africa.
Then later you have Germans flooding into the Italian Peninsula.
Autosomal DNA is really useless for determining ethnicity. If you really want to know your ethnicity, you need a Y-DNA or mtDNA test.
All of the web-site say my autosomal DNA is British Isles/Eastern European.
That's not of any real value.
My Y-DNA says I'm Greek, and mtDNA says I'm Romanian, which is actually how it is.
If you do a Y-DNA test and it comes back R1b-U, then you really might be descended of one of the Italic tribes that settled in the Alpine Region of Italy, then again, it could say you're from somewhere else.
Thanks. My hub is part Italian; his Y-DNA is from Sicily but he hasn't tested. He's now showing as 41.8% Italian, 8.7% Iberian, 4.3 Greek and South Italian. The rest 21.9% is Scandinavian. His mother is a mutt.
Ancestry (which seems more correct for his known history) says he is 46% Sicilian, 33% England, Wales & North West Europe, 9% France, 6% Ireland and Scotland, 3% Germanic Europe, 3% European Jewish. His mother's father is from France.
There's a lot of misunderstanding about what Italy is.
Unlike Scotland, Wales, Ireland, England, Scandinavia and other places that have distinct DNA, Italy doesn't have that.
Italy is a huge admixture of DNA from the Caucus Mountains, Iran, Anatolia, North Africa, Greece, the Levant and other areas of Europe, including Celtic peoples.
The early Greeks, the eastern Greeks meaning the ones from Anatolia like the Phrygians, Lydians and Ionians established colonies on the eastern Italian Peninsula, and then later the western Greeks, the ones most people know about, migrated to those colonies and set up even more colonies.
Then you have the Phoenicians and their off-shoots the Carthaginians occupying the southern peninsula for centuries.
The cavalry in Roman legions were largely Persians, Medes and Assyrians, and then archers were from there, plus Dacia, Thracia, Moesia and North Africa.
Then later you have Germans flooding into the Italian Peninsula.
Autosomal DNA is really useless for determining ethnicity. If you really want to know your ethnicity, you need a Y-DNA or mtDNA test.
All of the web-site say my autosomal DNA is British Isles/Eastern European.
That's not of any real value.
My Y-DNA says I'm Greek, and mtDNA says I'm Romanian, which is actually how it is.
If you do a Y-DNA test and it comes back R1b-U, then you really might be descended of one of the Italic tribes that settled in the Alpine Region of Italy, then again, it could say you're from somewhere else.
My feeling is that DNA services want to create a single "Italian" region to meet the desire of consumers who buy the test. I am not sure that is possible. Southern Italians, Sicilians, and Island Greeks do cluster together on autosomal DNA tests though, the science to date seems pretty solid on this point. I was happy to see MyHeritage recognize this with a Greek/Southern Italian region.
I think what companies need is a way to categorize DNA based on the individual. 23andMe already do this to some degree - they have a "Broadly Southern European" category that some DNA goes into for some people, and but then they also have more specific regions like "Italian" or "Greek/Balkans", which some people may also get results in. Instead, other companies try to pigeon hole every piece of DNA into some specific category just because sometimes that is possible, and as a result, many people wind up with results in "wrong" neighboring areas. If there's a portion of DNA that can't be narrowed down more than "Southern Europe", then put it in a category for Southern Europe! Meanwhile, if the same person has another portion of DNA that is more distinctly Italian or Greek or whatever, put it in the more specific region.
I think what companies need is a way to categorize DNA based on the individual. 23andMe already do this to some degree - they have a "Broadly Southern European" category that some DNA goes into for some people, and but then they also have more specific regions like "Italian" or "Greek/Balkans", which some people may also get results in. Instead, other companies try to pigeon hole every piece of DNA into some specific category just because sometimes that is possible, and as a result, many people wind up with results in "wrong" neighboring areas. If there's a portion of DNA that can't be narrowed down more than "Southern Europe", then put it in a category for Southern Europe! Meanwhile, if the same person has another portion of DNA that is more distinctly Italian or Greek or whatever, put it in the more specific region.
I like the "broadly" feature as well. When you look at mapped results for Eurogenes K36, you can see that some people are a REALLY strong match to a very specific region, while others match the entire genetic region more strongly, but are don't have as intense "hot spots."
Just checked my new results. Yes, they now include Southern Italy with Greece, but my results actually went UP. They eliminated my Middle Eastern (Iran, Iraq) results entirely. My percentage of European went from 87% to 91%. Turkey is still included my percentage but went down.
Regarding My Heritage results as opposed to others. My Paternal side is British and Irish. Results from Ancestry and Family Tree were very similar with a small percentage of Scandinavian. Those ancient Vikings?
My Heritage results were far more broad than the others to also include Southern portion of Scandinavian (Denmark) as well as Western Europe (France, Germany, etc.) Did not get Western Europe with other two sites.
I have traced my Paternal side in England back to the 16th Century through Wills, Deeds, etc, in Old English. The Surname today is nothing like back then. I have seen online genealogies with my modern day surname going back to a Lesser Norman Knight using both the modern day surname and sometimes using his Norman French Surname. Purely for information, I did a English Origins of Surnames search, which listed it a as French place name.
My Heritage going far back in time with DNA? I think so both from my Italian and British heritage. Well, what is wrong with that?????? You have to know the history of your ethnicity, especially as a genealogist.
Edit: Someone on here said she was 100% British from her DNA. Impossible. Even the Monarchs from England married people from other Countries.
Edit: Someone on here said she was 100% British from her DNA. Impossible. Even the Monarchs from England married people from other Countries.
All the ethnicity report really means is that a certain amount of your DNA most closely matches this category according to that particular company's reference panel and algorithm - it's not saying literally all your ancestors going back to the beginning of civilization were from Britain. But someone who gets a 100% British report very likely has 100% British ancestry going back as far as they can trace and probably further. Whether there's contributions from other places from before that particular ethnicity report represents is also very likely, but the ethnicity report does have its time range limitations. My cousin has 100% Italian ancestry as far back as she can trace and her AncestryDNA report says 100% Italian. Just because Italians likely mixed with neighboring regions much further back doesn't mean the ethnicity report is wrong or just a coincidence - it's consistent with her known ancestry, and I'd call that accurate.
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