The AncestrybyDNA ™ Test
Provides your ancestral breakdown of the four founding populations: these are European, Indigenous American, Sub-Saharan African, and East Asian. The four founding populations listed in your test results are used in simple terms. It's significant to bear in mind that these "founding populations" refer to a group of people with combined ancestry that live in certain geopolitical areas with "blurred boundaries." To describe your ancestral make up, we use a term called Biogeographical Ancestry, this is explained below.
You could discover that several of your ancestral proportions may not be what you were expecting. Interpreting your results in relation to your own physical appearance is also explained further down.
Biogeographical Ancestry
In "defining your racial background," the AncestrybyDNA™ test also delivers a statistical approximation of an individuals BioGeographical Ancestry (BGA). BGA is a way of stating the proportional ancestry of a person that is independent of the various socially stated "races." Race is frequently reported by social or political conventions (there is no biological definition of "race"), biogeographical ancestry describes populations that share comparable DNA markers because of a mixed ancestry, which could cross a number of geographical areas.
Defining the European Population
The categories of the founding populations specified in the test report are used generally, for conciseness and practicality. For example, our use of "European" population indicate people of collective "proto-European" ancestry, this includes not only populations residing within the European continent, but also encompasses the Middle East and South Asia. Our definition of this founding population is based on evolutionary and anthropologic studies which show that these peoples' common ancestor ascended from anatomically modern humans who travelled out of Africa approximately 50,000 years ago to inhabit the Fertile Crescent area of the Middle East—this today includes the counties of Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Syria, also including the territory between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
As a result, people living in Europe, Middle East, and South Asia (India) share common ancestral markers dating back 10 to 50,000 years ago. In DNA testing a variety of world populations, for example, South Asian Indians are found to have considerable, but lower, level of "European" markers while Middle Easterners display an elevated level of "European" markers. In the AncestrybyDNA™ test, the average South Asian Indian displays 58% European ancestry, while Middle Easterners have between 80-90% European ancestry.
Test results from a variety of world populations can be read here: Average Results for Various Populations.
Percentages and Physical Appearance
Persons displaying physical characteristics of a population group generally have at least 30-35% identity with that group. For example, persons with an 85% European and 15% African generally display few, if any, physical likeness or characteristics of the African group, such as a darker tone of skin.
This is explained because the genes that determine physical appearance are all but a very tiny percentage of the total number of genes in the genome. Therefore for all of these genes to have sequences distinguishing of one group, the person would need to be of high proportions for that particular group. The higher the percentage of African a person is, the more probable the areas of the genome that determines physical appearance will be of African origin.
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