How can the test tell where I'm from?

How can the test tell where I'm from?

Alastair Greenshields (Principal) gives expert video advice on: How can the test tell where I'm from?; Would this suggest I am related to them?; How do I decipher the information? and more...

To a certain extent the DNA test can tell you where you're from. The test that we look at are looking at the direct paternal line and direct maternal line. If you go back ten generations, there are well over a thousand ancestors. You can see what blinkered. We only look at the direct lineages, male and female, nothing in between. The test can look very precise at those lines. They miss everything else, so your Y chromosome might come from Africa, but everything else might come from Asia. If we are only looking at one chromosome, we're only going to pick up that African bit. In a sense, they can tell you where you're from, but at those direct lineages they are very precise.