Follow up^^^
It’s also well worth noting that many general market companies lack the dataset (or the desire) to go into detail explaining what percentages of similarity or dissimilarity can really mean. For example, they may tell you that your DNA is 75% similar to modern Dutch people, so you are 3/4 Dutch by ancestry. Okie doke, that isn’t a LIE, but it’s also misleadingly incomplete.
What they aren’t explaining is that each person’s DNA consists of BILLIONS of individually unique genetic sequences, which have all been mapped out and identified by scientists at the level of humans as a species, but the precise function and origin of each genetic sequence has not yet been identified. In other words, scientists have been able to sequence out and label all our genetic bits and pieces, but they aren’t yet 100% certain on what each bit and piece of our DNA actually does, or how they relate to each other in their incalculably diverse recombinations generation by generation, or precisely how & why certain genes remain unchanged for thousands of years but others spontaneously mutate or recombine in only a single generation. It’s all a very constantly evolving and improving picture, so drawing superficial conclusions can be misleading.
It’s also worth pointing out that we should keep in mind that the percentage of our DNA which diverges from one person to another, and from one ethnic population to another, is astronomically small. As in, modern Europeans are all almost genetically identical; they differ by a fraction of a fraction of 1% of their DNA. And that has been the case going back several thousand years to the introduction of the Neolithic/Chalcolithic Yamnaya, Bell Beaker, and Corded Ware populations that migrated into Europe from the Pontic Steppe. We can map their movements because they replaced and assimilated most of the previous populations, and leave a genetic as well as archaeological break from the previous several thousand years of evidence which *appears* to correlate with the arrival of the Indo-European languages. We also know that they remain the primary gene pool from which all subsequent European ethnicities and genetic data spring. But here again, we’re talking about a fraction of a fraction of 1% of an individual person’s DNA that diverges between a potential Bronze Age Proto-Celt in Iberia or the British Isles and a Proto-Slav or Proto-Germanic person from the North European plain. There’s a bigger difference between all of them and the previous populations of “Stone Age Hunter Gatherers” or “Early European Farmers” gradually replaced or assimilated by the newcomers, but even that is ultimately far far smaller than 1% of the entire individual DNA code.
All of which is to say that the general market companies just don’t have the time, inclination, or information to get THAT specific with their results, and to explain the mathematical and historical details. Who’s going to read that letter in 30 seconds and post the results on social media haha?
It’s also worth acknowledging for reference that yes, every single human currently alive is technically 98.8% genetically identical to a chimpanzee. Literally. This also helps explain why our ancestors were able to interbreed with hominids of other species, like Neanderthals and Denisovans, with whom we were over 99% genetically identical. The genetic differences between us as modern human beings and ethnic groups is THAT SMALL, and yet nonetheless very real. Again, this stuff just doesn’t make for a fast, superficial result letter to read.
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