At least once a week someone posts their autosomal (‘family
finder’) DNA test results to a Jewish genealogy group on Facebook, and a
helpful soul proclaims that the x% of unexpected DNA is a clue to Sephardic
ancestry. A couple of posts later the tester is told that their ancestors ‘fled
the Inquisition’. I parody, but not much.
Is reported DNA ancestry from Iberia, North Africa, West
Asia, Italy, Sicily, France, Greece, Near East, Mediterranean, etc proof of
Sephardic ancestry? No. The statistical probability is that the ancestors allegedly
from those places were not Jewish, but who knows?
Sometimes someone with mainly Ashkenazi ancestry wants to ‘Judaize’
unexplained segments. It is a pity because the unexplained segments may lead to
insights, and those people may have been Jewish anyway.
The ethnic/geographical results of an autosomal DNA test is
not a route map of your family’s travels over the last few hundred or thousand
years. It approximates where different sections of your DNA - from different
ancestors - may have derived. The Mediterranean has been a trade highway for
thousands of years. You would expect people from different places to have
migrated during that time.
You DNA results are personal to you and can open unknown doors
to your family history. Why not follow the chromosomes rather than estimations
derived from generalisations of data compiled from thousands of strangers?
