This afternoon my mum mentioned that she might be interested in the "ethnic origin" results of a DNA test, so I went looking for what the various companies offered.
Of course, they have teaser cases on their sites to show how wonderful they are, so I had a read.
Ancestry are headlining three stories.
1. An Australian who knew that her ancestors came from the UK (back to the Norman Conquest, she claimed), Italy and Malta. For some reason, she was surprised to hear that Ancestry thought her ancestors came from Western Europe (basically Italy to Spain), and included DNA from west Asia and north Africa. Well Malta's second closest neighbour is Libya, and Malta has traditional links with the Holy Land (or west Asia).
2. A Londoner who knew his dad had German and Russian grandparents and his mother's side were Greek. Ancestry decided that he was 40% British, 25% German and 35% Greek. Well, seeing as "German" and "Russian" were interchangeable when talking about the world before the 20th century, are you surprised?
3. A Columbian living in New York who discovered, that she was 35% native American, 5% African and 29% from the Iberian peninsula. The same could probably be said of half the population of Columbia.
I could have guessed all these locations from the information that the subjects already knew. I reckon that I could probably have even guessed the percentages within a 10% error margin.
I shall try to convince my mum that she ought not to waste her money!