Read This If You're Curious About Your MyHeritage Ethnicity Results And You're Italian

MyHeritage ethnicity estimates seem to be THE WORST of all the major testing companies.

We've received dozens of emails from people of 100% document Italian heritage where MyHeritage says they are 0% Italian.  We've received three screenshots, which we will not share due to privacy concerns.

Something is amiss.  These people showed us documented Italian heritage, 100% Italian cousins, and some were born in Italy.  They show up on MyHeritage as Sardinian, Middle Eastern, Spanish, West Asian -- anything BUT Italian!!!

MyHeritage ain't getting it done.  We would demand a refund kind readers.  It's OK to come close.  As we've noted, all ethnic calculators are pseudo-science.

But MyHeritage isn't hitting the dart board in the bar next door.

Ancestry DNA Issues Revised Ancestry Estimates, Finds that Germans Exist

Judy G. Russell, the Legal Genealogist, is out with a fantastic new post on AncestryDNA's new ethnicity estimate percentages.

As she wryly notes in the opening, she is delighted to find out that they have discovered that Germans exist.

We've wrote about this before, as have others.  The major testing sites -- some of which are run by people who seem hostile to Germans (America's biggest ethnic group) -- have written Germans off the map.  23andme is particularly bad at identifying German DNA.  They disclose it too, but they bury it in the fine print.

We have been repeatedly depressed by newbies, who know from good paper records that they are a quarter German (or Swiss, or French, or Austrian) say, "duh, gee, duh, this unscientific website tells me I am really 21.2% English wow gee duh am I adopted?"  NO!  The science isn't there yet.  As Judy Russell says, "it's not quite soup."

And it STILL isn't quite soup.  This post focuses on Germans, but the major testing services have an equal problem with Italians, another major American ethnic group.  Poor Italians who get tested often end up with anything but Italian.  (Spare me your pseudoscience on how Italy has been invaded.  EVERY country has been invaded.)  Italy is a long country with many peaks and valleys, and for much of its history was an exporter of population to surrounding areas.  The testing sites need more samples to identify all the different permutations of Italians.

Bottom line, as we've said before, and as every credible scientist says - DO NOT TRUST the ethnicity estimates of the testing services.

Intact Samnite Tomb Discovered; Will They Recover DNA?

With all the focus in Southern Italian history being on exotic influences (which as we've posted before make up a very small part of the Italian genome), people often forget that there were people in Italy, in great numbers, who were highly civilized, before the peninsula was Romanized, and aside from the [insert invasion name here].

One of the most influential civilizations in Italy was that of the Samnites (Italian: Sanniti), a group of Oscan-speaking tribes, sometimes called "Sabellian," who lived in the interior of Italy.  If you are Italian and come from any region from Rome southward (including eastern Sicily), chances are that you are of predominantly Sabellian stock.  For hundreds of years, these hardy southern Italics fought off Roman domination and Greek colonization.

For a while it was even unclear who would be the master of Italy: the Romans or Samnites.  After the battle of the Caudine Forks (Samnite victory over Rome, 321 BC) and right before the battle of the Colline Gate (Roman victory over Samnites, 82 BC), it looked like the Samnites would be the masters of Italy (and perhaps an empire).

Archaeologists recently discovered an intact Samnite tomb, dating from 2400 years ago.  This was at the peak of Samnite ascendancy.

Let us hope they extract DNA.  We will confidently predict here that the DNA will be related to living people in Campania (incl Naples), Molise (the heart of Ancient Samnium), Basilicata, and Calabria (especially Cosenza province).

Here is the story if you want to read it.