First look at Geno 2.0

Okay, so The Legal Genealogist usually writes about DNA on Sunday. Therefore, I hereby declare that, this year, December 12th falls on a Sunday. Because my National Geographic Geno 2.0 results are in … and I can’t resist posting the highlights.

First off, I regret to report that though I’ve often been accused of being a knuckle-dragger, the fact is that I really don’t have any higher than average Neanderthal ancestry, and very little Denisovan:

And, as I’ve already known, since I’ve taken just about every DNA test known to mankind, my maternal haplogroup (mtDNA) is H3, a very common European haplogroup:

My overall ancestry percentages — and remember, these are deep ancestry, not recent times — are as follows, with the explanation of each:

Then comes the part that’s both wonderful and frustrating. The wonderful part is that the one country where my recent ancestry is most thoroughly documented is Germany. And that, says Geno 2.0, is the population I most closely match:

The “say what?” frustrating part is the population Geno 2.0 pegs as the second closest population match for me:

Greek.

Right.

Now I do understand, intellectually, that these results are preliminary and will be refined with time. I realize that this whole admixture business is dicey because you’re trying to mix the apples of recent ancestry with the oranges of deep ancestry, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that sometimes you end up with fruit salad. And we’ll all be examining and interpreting these results for a long time to come.

But still, in my case, I can’t help but wonder how it is that Greek (Northern European 28%, Mediterranean 54%, SW Asian 17%) is a closer match to my Northern European 41%, Mediterranean 38%, SW Asian 21%, than would be, say, British (Northern European 50%, Mediterranean 33%, SW Asian 17%), which is where my paper trail says my mother’s side is from.

But hey… what do I know? It’s all Greek to me!

Funny, though, I have this strange urge to go out and buy some Ouzo and some moussaka…

Oompa!

Disclosure: I received a Geno 2.0 test kit free from National Geographic’s Genographic Project. In no way has that affected my reporting on this test.