Italian Heritage

I recently took a DNA test from Ancestry DNA to determine ethnic background. There were a couple of revelations. 

The first was that no non-European ancestry appeared, despite family stories and apparent photographic evidence to the contrary. This is another story for another day.

The second was that a certain percentage of what Ancestry DNA calls "Italian-Greek" ancestry appeared. It was surprising because our family simply had no knowledge of this prior to the test.

Ancestry DNA says they test your DNA at forty different locations. They then give you averages and ranges for each regional ethnic group. For example, at one location on your genome your Scandinavian DNA may be five percent, but at a different location it may be fifty percent. If that fifty percent were the highest among the forty locations, then your range would be five to fifty percent.

Among my regional ethnic groups, only three had non-zero lower limits. One of these was the Italian-Greek. 

Here's the summary table of my results:

This gives me a personal connection to things I like, and it means I'm not appropriating someone else's culture with my ancient Roman religious practices. That makes me very happy.