Here’s an article about hunting for your ancestry by way of genetic analysis: Ancestry testing goes for pinpoint accuracy .
The article warns that interpreting the results of genetic tests can be difficult. Apparently, some of the testing companies have not only advanced equipment and well-trained technicians but also reputable academic researchers as advisers. That may not matter in all cases since no one knows how to explain some of the complexities of genetic analysis in ordinary language nor can the experts themselves understand all those complexities. The results of tests from even the most sophisticated companies might well be wrong. Among other problems, the techniques can’t yet correlate large numbers of genes well enough to clearly distinguish, in an example found in the article, a stretch of genes found in males from Scandinavia and North Africa.
What would detailed information give us if these technical problems are one day solved? So far as I know, I’m nearly all British in my ancestry — perhaps a mixture of Celt and archaic British and German of various sorts. (For this essay, I define `British’ in terms of residence as of a thousand years ago or so. By `archaic British’, I mean the residents of the British Isles before the Celtic and then Germanic immigrations, conquests, and other uninvited intrusions.) My father’s side is mostly of English ancestry, coming probably from the Birmingham region with perhaps a drop of Native American blood. My mother’s side is a mixture of Highlander (true Scots who were members of a Gaelic tribe of the northern regions of Ireland: `Scotia’ was the Roman name for a region occupied by Irish Gaels), Anglo-Norman, Lowlander (labeled `Lithonian English’ by some historians and said by some to be largely Anglo-Saxon and perhaps some of that `archaic Brit’.) Would I gain much to discover the exact percentages or to discover that, say, 4% of my genes are from the Lakota Sioux or maybe to discover that some guy from Greece slipped into my ancestry? It’d be interesting to discover I carry genes from someone as exotic as an Apache or a Babylonian Jew, but would it mean much to me? Serious genetic studies across all or some of the human race, some of which are ongoing, might tell us much that would be interesting and important about the large-scale movements of peoples. Such studies might also help us to answer such questions as: did various invaders exterminate or absorb the native populations? Recent research indicates that at least some Neandertal populations were absorbed by breeding into growing populations of modern human beings rather than being exterminated: see John Hawks’ website for information and intelligent, professional analyses of the issues of human origin and some related issues.
Math is difficult, Barbie. Genetics is difficult, Ken. And so is history…
One danger in all of this is that we might forget that genes are important but you don’t come into or leave this world as a freestanding individual built according to some specs found in your genes. The advocates of cultural shaping or even cultural determinism were off-base but they were on the right continent. We are hunks of clay with particular characteristics and lots of undeveloped possibilities. We are shaped as others interact with us and as we interact with others and with our environments, including the entirety of our cultural settings. We are born into narratives, histories, and we will ourselves live in personal narratives, biographies, which interact with a large number of other narratives, including those of the non-living world. Within broad possibilities given by our genetic makeup, the entirety of the human species and then successively more specific family lines, we become moral creatures, of various qualities, by responding actively to our environments.
Let’s say I get a genetic analysis and it confirms I carry Gaelic (Celtic) genes and Anglo-Norman (Germanic) genes and English genes from the Birmingham area (I’m guessing those ancestors of mine were mostly non-Gaelic Celts but they might have been at least partly Germanic or partly Gaelic). What does that mean? I have enough understanding of the history of those peoples and of some of my ancestors in recent generations so that I can draw tentative conclusions about the possible traits found in their genes or perhaps activity levels of genes coming from environmental factors — let’s label this last effect as epigenetic. My Gaelic ancestors greatly preferred the pastoral life, in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland and the backwoods of Kentucky. My Anglo-Norman ancestors were good at organizing or participating in large-scale projects, including military invasions and the imposition of hierarchical structures on conquered countries. My other (presumed) British ancestors have proven their worth as farmers, shopkeepers, factory workers, and managers — very modern of them. This seems to open up a lot of possibilities for my family line, though it’s doubtful many will have more than a small share of all those implied talents and moral qualities.
The situation remains far from clear even given all my assumptions including that of improved technical understanding of genes and of our various human family lines. Were my ancestors typical Gaels or Anglo-Normans or Celts? Are epigenetic and cultural effects strong enough to mitigate any undesirable traits or to weaken any desirable traits displayed by my ancestors? Can my culture or my personal efforts help me to be a little different than any of my ancestral groups if I or my family or my other communities so choose?
Our world is a narrative composed of an unimaginably large number of smaller narratives. That narrative is set in a concrete world of concrete entities. Those entities and that world have been shaped from more abstract stuff which remains yet in the perceptible and tangible stuff of this world. To understand this world, we need to understand both the narrative (history in the context of this essay) and also the stuff (genes and other bodily substances in that same context). Without the larger scale perspective, without a knowledge of context and perhaps a very broad context, knowledge of our genetic makeup remains useful for medical purposes but it’s worthless for understanding ourselves and our other possibilities. Even medical knowledge is improved by knowledge of the foods our ancestors ate or the level of their physical activity.
We’re concrete creatures and not just a catalog of possible or actual medical problems, some good medical traits, and a variety of possible traits of other sorts. We are flesh-and-blood us, for good and bad.