I see people say “I am 1/10th of ethnicity”. I’m wondering, how far can you go with that? Is it possible to have 1/40, or 1/60 parts of you being a certain ethnicity? And I know it’s genetics, but how does having 1/10th figure out in terms of ancestors/relatives?
Well, you’d pretty much have to know every ancestor you ever had since the beginning of time, wouldn’t you? And if (what I think is the) prevailing theory is correct, eventually you would wind up back in Africa with the same female ancestor that everybody else in the world has, anyway. We probably don’t even have to go back that far to find someone we’re all descended from.
When people talk about being 1/x of a certain ethnicity they mean they believe that 1/x of the ancestors they know of were of that ethnicity (in a lot of cases, in fact, this really just means “born in that country”). But, it’s all pretty meaningless in an actual genetic sense.
Without incest, the numerators can only be 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 et cetera…
The denominators can be whatever the case is. e.g. if 3 of your great-great-great-grandparents were Irish, then you are 3/32nds Irish…
Luckily within the EU this has far less relevance, since a majority of people are live and die in the country they are born in. Apparently it has to do with the language barriers…
Hope this helps…
Actually, I have that numerator - denominator thing backwards - the 1 2 4 8 16 32 thing is the denominator…
Sorry 'bout that now…
The unescapable truth to all this is that no matter how you slice it ALL our ancestors go “all the way back” to wherever/whomever. Logic demands it.
I’m 1/32 Cherokee.