My husband bought me a 23AndMe kit for Christmas. Today my initial results came back: my mitochondrial DNA is from the European/Near-East group (yawn), and I am 3.0% Neanderthal! This is more Neanderthal DNA than 93% of people in the 23AndMe Database, so w00t.
My husband has been giggling about it all day. I’m his little cavewoman. We are getting a kit for him, next.
My question is this: my ancestry is evenly divided between Germanic and Celtic. He has more Germanic ancestry than I do (and what’s left over is Celtic). Given that the Neander Valley is in Germany, is he, as a mostly-Germanic person, likely to have an equal or higher percentage of Neanderthal blood?
The time depth between “Neanderthal” and “Germanic / Celtic” is so different, they’re not really comparable. The ancestors of the Germans and the Celts, linguistically at least, were the same people for the 38,000 years following the last of the Neanderthals.
. . . Which is why, when a character in fantasy literature (or a game of Dungeons and Dragons) is described as the race of “half elf” or “half giant” or “half pretty much anything,” nobody ever bothers asking what the other half is.
The Neander Valley is where the first fossils were found, but I don’t think it’s considered to be a place where Neanderthals were particularly common. They were found all over Europe and Asia.
Just got my ancestry report back. Ladies and gentlemen, I am disappointed to report that there were no surprises in it. Apparently I come from a long line of upright, honest people who only boink who they’re supposed to, and are exactly who they say they are.
23AndMe is not allowed to provide health reports, but there are plenty of third-party sites that will take your genome and give you a report. I just paid $5 to have Promethease run mine. Some interesting results there. The stuff that I am generally at high risk for is indeed stuff that runs in my family, or that I already have. I learned that I have hemochromatosis, and carry the phenylketonuria gene.
The Promethease report also gives you fun stuff, like do you have the soapy-tasting cilantro gene, the asparagus pee gene, the supertaster gene.
It told me my blood group, and it was wrong. Or my doctor was wrong.
I also have several “big boob” genes. Figures somebody would have studied that, huh?
Interestingly, there are several markers for personality traits in there. Apparently I am optimistic, have a good memory, seek novelty, have high pain tolerance, and due to a strong pleasure response I am unlikely to have problems with addiction.
I am also technically blond-haired and blue-eyed. Because, apparently, all Northern Europeans have those genes, even if other genes tweak them into brown eyes and brown hair… like I have.
Well there’s your problem. Bryson is a fun writer, I like his stuff, but always double check anything you read from him for facts. He has a track record of making significant mistakes.
My 23andMe report came in at 2.93% Neanderthal, I always thought the high percentage was probably related to the fact that I am 100% Northern European - English/French/German with a drop of Finnish - no “drops” of any exotic blood. I’m the whitest girl you’ve ever met.
And I managed to get in under the wire for the 23 and me health reports – they were very interesting but I can see why the FDA disallowed them, some of the reports they based the risk factors on were based on one or two very small studies. It was good to find out that I didn’t have any of the genes indicative of serious conditions, though
