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I don't know how the exact percentages are determined

That's where most population genetics scientists get angry at 23andme, not necesarily because their statistical methods for genetic admixture are wrong but how average people will (expectedly) misunderstand the results. Let alone how they then will act with the new premise of "I'm part moroccan, part finnish, part italian, part aztec and part korean"

but those actually allow you to paint an (imperfect) timeline and create groupings (haplogroups)

This is correct. I think part of the issue comes from assuming that because a few genes can be tracked as population markets means there is more variability between people of different backgrounds than people of the same background - when in reality having the same background only accounts for 15 percent of genetic difference, with the rest being individual variability.

Well said. Genetic information comes from many sources of descent and can be used to pinpoint lineage. Plus there's even talk of epigentic profiles being inherited (at least parent-child), which could be an extra coordinate.

Aren't all inhabitants of the British isles descended from Mil king of Galicia? So there is a better than 50/50 chance your y chromosome would also look Iberian.

Yeah, the post says at 32 generations (800 years) there's more ancestors than base pairs, but at 37 generations, there's more ancestors than humans that have ever existed.

DNAv6 when

This is Abstergo erasure

Frozen 3: Blood Memory

In North America, a certain percentage of your ethnicity must be Native American in order to qualify for recognition by the government to receive tribal benefits. I think it's a minimum of 1/12th. in the US (not 100% positive on the exact number). This is called the "blood quantum."

If you don't meet the minimum, regardless of how or where you were raised, or what you look like, or what languages you speak, you are automatically disqualified from stuff like scholarships, reparations, and official membership to a federally recognized tribe. This was put in place in the early 1900s by white people with no discussion about how Native Americans establish heritage or tribal membership.

A lot of racism in the US still lingers around this concept where a person is or isn't part of an ethnicity based on their blood quantum, rather than their lived experiences. Someone who is 1/4th. black, for example, may have their concerns dismissed because "they're not really black." That is until it becomes convenient for the racist to go by the "one drop rule," which is when a person has any non-white heritage, they are no longer considered white (even if it's something like 1/100th. black).

Not an expert but

In the first place, mitochondrial dna are shared among many people, for the basic fact that it is passed matrilineally. This allows us to prove the existence of the so-called Mitochondrial Eve, to whom all humans alive today are related.

Second, the mitochondrial dna encodes basically the production of ATP. Not genes that would be used to express any apparent difference between people.

Third, the number of base pairs in mitochondrial dna is very small, tens of thousands, compared to the 3.1 billion base pairs in nuclear dna.

Dawkins is a piece of shit for a number of reasons, but where did he ever say anything like that?

800 years is just the hard cap, the theoretical maximum. In reality, not all 3 billion base pairs are relevant to distinguishing humans from each other. Much of the genome is just basic biology shit, which is why the human genome overlaps 70% with bananas, 96% with chimpanzees, etc.

This 800-year rule also ignores the fact that there were not 4 billion people on earth in 1250 AD. There is a lot of… ahem… crossover within our lineage.

The point is that the way many people think about identity is rooted in a wrong understanding of genetics. The whole point of these genetic tests is to discover a supposed “true” identity that is ostensibly encoded in one’s DNA. Closely related with this belief is a strictly biological view of race and ethnicity.

that's totally false. people feel all kinds of ways about things done hundreds, even thousands of years ago.

lots of people will tell you about their "line" being "traced" back to such n such. most prominently all royalty everywhere but lots of normal people have stories.

this feels pretty culturally disconnected/nuclear-family-brained tbh

I mean, same, but I wouldn't want to project that onto others. Feels like conflating these new age physiognomy peddlers' bullshit with actual connection to place and people

???