What does it mean?
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/dna/origins/share/faa05c93-a250-4678-9522-88a7026844e0
Latest update to Ancestry DNA. Lots of discussion online about what the Geographic results on Ancestry DNA results mean.
Looking at my case, the major Grouping is England and North Western Europe,which can be translated as England, including “North Western Europe” in this category seems like nonsense in most cases, only including as it does Calais as a definition of Northwestern Europe. Soabout three quarters of my genome is matched to modern populations living in England, which is fair enough as that is exactly what the records show for my family going back a few hundred years. It represents to a great extent the population of indigenous “British” population mainly represented by incomers in the Bronze Age with a smattering of the Neolithic population that were largely wiped out by the p;ague brought in by the incoming Bronze Age settlers (who had at least partial immunity).
Next highest are Germanic Europe and Wales. The Welsh element probably represents the huge English derived population of Wales that actually makes up the majority of the population of Wales that have genes derived from the border areas of Somerset, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire, in my case mainly from Somerset as per the historical records in my family. These genes were brought to Wales by the massive influx of English people from Norman times onwards and especially during the Industrial Revolution when South Wales sucked in workers from all the adjacent counties, considerably outnumbering the local indigenous Welsh. these results show a similarity, not a movement vector, so this has to be gleaned from historical records, and the overwhelming evidence is for English people going to Wales rather than the reverse.
The Germanic Europe element is interesting and probably harks back to the shared genes between “Germanic Europe”, especially maritime areas from Denmark down to Northern France, which were the homelands of Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and Franks, who settled in Eastern Britannia from the 3rd to the 8th Centuries, and of course the Belgic tribes (German derived and speaking according to Julius Caesar) who invaded and settled Southern Pritan (Britain) around 200-100 B.C. and of course the Bronze Age settlers who came in about 2,000 years before that. So 11% for this group would sound about right.
4% Sweden and Denmark shows most likely a splash of Viking settlement from the 9th century and some overlap with Dark Age settlers “Angles and Jutes” from Denmark.
At last the spurious “Scottish” classification has been toned down to be non-existent in my tree, as it was largely meaningless outside of very rural areas of Scotland.
So my conclusion is that the DNA ratings are becoming better, but really need the inclusion of aDNA to be more meaningful outside the historical documented period that can be researched in other ways.
Travelling Through Time to Trace Your Ancestors 