But I know my grandparents came from Italy, how come I’m not 100% on my Italian DNA test? I know where I came from, why should I take a DNA test. Ahh, there just made up anyway, somebody I know took the test and it said they where only 10% Italian, how can that be?
All valid questions. One thing we have to remember is that Italy was not united until the mid 19th Century. Before then, it was conquered and ruled by many other countries. In addition, cities like Naples, Florence, Venice, Milan were all important stops on trade routes as was Sicily.
Autosomal DNA tests trace back 10 generations, so to your 8th great grandparents or anywhere from 200 to 250 years. The charts below will help you to understand.
My children are both adopted and for several years I kept seeing the same names from my wife’s DNA as matches to my son. I knew they had to be related in some way, but could not prove it. When her first cousin did a test, our son appeared as her 5th cousin. As they are all from the same general area in Puerto Rico, it is very possible that they are related.
| Relationship to You | Likelihood of a Match | % of DNA Shared |
| 1st Cousin (common grandparents) | 100% | 7-13 |
| 2nd Cousin (common great-grandparents) | >99% | 3-5 |
| 3rd Cousin (common great-great grandparents | >90% | .3-2 |
| 4th Cousin (common ggg grandparents) | >50% | <1% |
| 5th Cousin (common gggg grandparents) | >10% | Sometimes none detectable at match threshold |
| 6th Cousin (common ggggg grandparents) | <2% | Often none detectable at match threshold |
Another great question, how come my sister or brother is more Italian than I am? Here’s a great example from Who are you made of? Check there site for a lot more good info. Here’s a link to my DNA COMPARISON from 3 different companies. And one of my first posts on DNA.
Jellybean example to explain how impossible it would be for two siblings to have 100% identical DNA
- Imagine that you are sitting in front of two giant jugs of jellybeans. Each jug has 7,000 jellybeans, and each jug represents DNA from each of your parents. You are instructed to pour half of each container into a new jug, which represents your own DNA.
- You then put them back.
- Your sister or brother comes along, and is instructed to do the same thing (let’s pretend, in our story, that the jellybeans magically were poured back into the right jug for mom or dad). Your sibling pours jellybeans from each container into their own jug.
How many matching jellybeans do you think you each got? The probability is that about 50% of your jellybeans were the same, and about 50% of them were different. This is a very simplified example of the way that DNA inheritance works. When your parents conceive you, the DNA that you will randomly inherit from each parent is already programmed into the sperm and the egg. A statistician could probably give us the exact odds, but all we really need to know is that probability favors about half of your randomly chosen jellybeans matching the ones that your sibling selected.
In this image below, They illustrate overlapping shared DNA between siblings, and what is not shared:
We have some recommended some very good books on DNA.
I tried to make this simple, but not easy!!!
Where does Italian DNA come from?
Another thing to also consider is Haplogroups. Here is a simple explanation from Living DNA on Motherline
Within each of your cells, you have thousands of mitochondria, structures which supply energy to the cell. Your mitochondria have their own DNA, which makes it possible to trace the motherlines of individuals across the world and see how they connect. As our ancestors changed how they were living, from generations to generations, it created changes in the mtDNA – which is shown as branches of the mtDNA tree.
Each person on this planet receives their mtDNA from their mother, who received it from her mother, who in turn received it from her mother. Males also receive the mtDNA from their mothers, but do not pass it on to their children, as the few mitochondria that power the sperm before it fertilizes the egg are dwarfed by the thousands of mitochondria in the egg.
Your haplogroup is a collection of family lines you are connected to within your mtDNA. You share a common ancient ancestor with all the people who share your haplogroup. Haplogroups can be associated with geographic regions, and are also used to trace the ancient migrations of early humans.
The details and history of your haplogroup are and you can view a map of haplogroup distribution, your haplogroup’s speculated migration route over hundreds and thousands of years and where on the mtDNA tree you fit.
The maps used are what we know today to be the borders of each country, however these have just been created for political reasons. This means that although you may be shown your ancestry comes from certain countries, this would have looked very different 100 years ago.
Haplogroup: U4
Subclade: U4a
A genetic story of your motherline
Haplogroup U encompases U1-U8 and K. Origin pre-dates agricultural expansion in Europe.
Your motherline belongs to the U4 group.
The U4 haplogroup can be found in low frequencies across much of Europe and Asia. Uncommon in Middle Eastern areas, and it is rare to find frequencies above 2%. Similarly, U4 is not far from absent in African populations. This group is more commonly found in populations near the Ural Mountains and Volga River in Siberia (Malyarchuk et al., 2010).. Studies have suggested that the Kalash have the highest percentages of U4 in the world (Quintana-Murci et al., 2004). However, these are based on small samples that may suggest the percentage of U4 is higher than it is in reality.
This motherline is estimated to have arisen up to 25,000 years ago. Amongst the Mansi, a small Siberian population, U4 originated around 18,000 years ago in the later stages of the Upper paleolithic (Malyarchuk, 2004). U4 is therefore an old group, which helps to explain the relatively low frequencies in populations today. It is now thought that haplogroup U4 was involved in migrations into Europe from the Middle East that occurred before the end of the last ice age.
Who were the people who carried your signature?
The U4 group has been linked to migrations into Europe during the last ice age. The populations who migrated from the Middle Eastern regions would have been hunter gatherers. They were hardy nomadic people who utilised caves and natural shelters to protect themselves from predation and the elements. They ate edible plants, nuts and berries and had skilled huntsman to catch prey to cook and eat. The Pitted Ware cultures have also been interlinked with this motherline. Pitted Ware populations were a later hunter gatherer group. They were mainly found across Scandinavia from 5200 years ago.
Studies suggest U4 is at its highest frequency today in Kalash populations. This population has puzzled geneticists for quite some time, proving to be a difficult enigma to crack. They appear to have much higher frequencies of U4 that neighbouring populations, which was once thought to be down to conquering groups colonising the area. This would perhaps fit in with the Kalash’s self proclaimed idea that they are descendants of the armies of Alexander the Great. However, discoveries in genetics are beginning to point towards a Siberian descent – an area in which U4 is commonly found (Ayub et al., 2015).
Citations
- Ayub, Q., et al. 2015. The Kalash genetic isolate: ancient divergence, drift, and selection.
- Malyarchuk, B. A. (2004). Differentiation of the mitochondrial subhaplogroup U4 in the populations of Eastern Europe, Ural, and Western Siberia: Implication to the genetic history of the Uralic populations.
- Malyarchuk, B. et al. 2010. Mitogenomic diversity in Tatars from the Volga-Ural region of Russia.
- Quintana-Murci, L., et al. 2004. Where west meets east: the complex mtDNA landscape of the southwest and Central Asian corridor.
BUT MOM WAS FROM BARI!!!
Motherline Countries
Motherline Migration
Fatherline haplogroup from Living DNA.
Your Y chromosome (YDNA) is passed down from father to son, which we refer to as your ‘fatherline’. The Y chromosome is the sex chromosome that determines you are male. So only sons inherit the Y chromosome from their father, who inherited from his father and so on. It is a direct male line you can trace back along your entire ancestry.
Your haplogroup is a collection of related family lines you are connected to through your Y chromosome (YDNA). You share a common ancient ancestor with all the people who share your haplogroup. Haplogroups can be associated with geographic regions, and are also used to trace the ancient migrations of early humans.
The details and history of your haplogroup are and you can view a map of your haplogroup’s distribution today, your haplogroup’s speculated migration route over hundreds and thousands of years and where on the YDNA tree you fit.
The maps used are what we know today to be the borders of each country, however these have just been created for political reasons. This means that although you may be shown your ancestry comes from certain countries, this would have looked very different 100 years ago.
Haplogroup: G2a
Subclade: G2a2b2b
A genetic story of your fatherline
Your fatherline is concentrated across the mountainous regions of Europe.
Your fatherline signature belongs to the G2a group.
Your fatherline has been associated with the migrations that occurred from the Near East to Europe during the Neolithic (New Stone Age). Around 11,500 years ago, haplogroup G2 split into two branches: G2a and G2b. G2b spread across Iran, whilst G2a travelled with its carriers across Anatolia and Europe. WIth the spread of agricultural technologies, practices and ideas came movements of people and populations. The populations that spread into Europe are thought to have carried the G2a fatherline with them, which helps explain the small presence of this haplogroup across Europe today. The high percentage of G2a found in samples from Neolithic burials suggests the carriers of this group played a significant role in Neolithic migrations across Europe some 6-8000 years ago (Lacan et al., 2011).
Today, the highest frequency of G2a can be found across the most mountainous zones of Europe. This fatherline can be found from the Apennine mountains to Greece. One possible reason for this haplogroup being so concentrated in the mountains is that these high altitudes acted as a place of refuge for the migrating tribes who carried G2a. Most likely during the early Bronze Age, carriers of your fatherline retreated to the mountains after Indo-Europeans invaded much of Europe from the Eurasian Steppe (Hay, 2016).
Who were the people who carried your signature?
People from the Near East gradually migrated across Europe via Anatolia from 9,000 BP, bringing the knowledge of raising livestock and cultivating crops. Hunter gatherer lifestyles were slowly replaced and farmers assimilated with many existing groups across Europe. These populations are thought to have brought the G2a haplogroup to Europe, alongside the new farming techniques. The farming populations that migrated from the Anatolia region to the rest of Europe were discovered to be predominantly of the G2a group (Lacan et al., 2011). The farming of land occurred around 2000 years before this European expansion, partly due to the lengthy processes involved in the domestication of crops, thus hunting and gathering for food would have remained a staple for survival for many millenia.
It is possible to link carriers of G2a with populations who were part of the Cardial Pottery culture, among many other cultures across Europe. These people were likely farmers who made and transported cardial style pottery, travelling across the Aegean by sea and ultimately settling across what is now Italy, France and Iberia (Hay, 2016). From here, the style evolved into Cardium Pottery some 6000 years before present, whereby shells were used to print shapes onto clay (Amorosi & Morelli, 2012). Of the Neolithic remains associated with this culture, a large majority belonged to G2a.
Citations
- Amorosi, A., & Morelli, A. (2012). The Influence of Transgressive Paleogeography on the Development and Decline of Cardium Pottery Culture (Mediterranean Neolithic). Climates, Landscapes, and Civilizations, 171-176.
- Hay, M., (2016). Haplogroup G2a, [ONLINE].
- Lacan, M., et al. (2011). Ancient DNA suggests the leading role played b y men in the Neolithic dissemination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(45), 18255-18259.
Fatherline Countries
Fatherline Migration
My Autosomal Chart from Living DNA
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Do you have the haplogroup? My Maternal side from the Caucasus.