photo characteristics

[dnaval]

Hi
This is a picture of my sister she sent me today.
What do you think is her ancestrybydna results?

[VelvetVellocet]

Hi
This is a picture of my sister she sent me today.
What do you think is her ancestrybydna results?

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you can't really tell by looking at someone what their ancestry or DNA result is.

You can only guess and make baseless superficial generalizations in terms of (your favorite subject) "race".

Haven't you posted what your ancestry or DNA group is, wouldn't she have the same provided that you share the same parents?

Taken from a previous post of yours:

"Hi I was wondering if dna print will re-do a test.
Resently I found some interesting info in my family tree.
my great-grandfather married a full-blood mayan in Mexico.
Also recently discovered my grandmother was 1/2 cherokee.
My ABDNA said 12% possibly up to 20%
They said could just be statistical noise.
I would appreciate any input."

I'll take a stab in the dark and say she looks Lebanese.

(If I'm right I must be psychic, because there's no way to know what her ancestry by DNA is from a photograph).

[rainbow]

Your sister resembles lots of different European people. What I thought of was French Canadian. Some French Canadians have Native American (or native canadian?) ancestry, called Metis (mixed).
She looks European to me.
I've read on the ABD site that admixture of something like less than 34% isn't visably noticeable/obvious. So, if someone is 75% one thing, 25% of another, the quarter, or 1/4, or 25%, of another 'race' the person won't look it. Will look like the 75%.

[PDHOTLEN]

I'm too ugly

I'm too old and ugly to submit my photo. Anyway, I am a mixture of various European strains. The farther I traced my paper trail lineage (probably went wrong somewhere), the more variety I turn out to be. One of my distant grandmothers even looks to have a French maiden name.

[Maria_W]

My European dominates my Native American.

I sorta hesitate to guess peoples heritage. Why? Its sorta a stressfull thing to do. Because, I feel some people already have an idea in their mind of what they think they are and they are looking for validation. If you don't get it right, you run the risk of upsetting them. The reality is, I am of mixed blood. Simple as that. I am a mixture of 10% Native American and 90% European. I have brown hair, blue eyes and light skin. So my 90% European is going to dominate my 10% Native American. If you didn't know my heritage, I think you would say 100% European. You would not say Native American, Asian or African American!

Maria

[Nordvarg]

Hello,

I think it's partially based on a subjective choice of physical traits.

Furthermore, some could say you look like individuals from a region. Other could say you look like individuals from another region... Their opinion (perception) is probably based on the observation of different physical traits and the association they make between those traits and different countries.

Nordvarg

[rainbow]

Hello,

I think it's partially based on a subjective choice of physical traits.

Furthermore, some could say you look like individuals from a region. Other could say you look like individuals from another region... Their opinion (perception) is probably based on the observation of different physical traits and the association they make between those traits and different countries.

Nordvarg

That's true. Like, I've recently read that people consider Sicilians to be very dark or Arab. That's strange to me because all Sicilians I've ever known, except one, were all very fair with pale blonde hair, much fairer than any people I've ever seen. Southern Italians are very dark, but Sicilians are very fair.
And I've seen lots of Irish-Americans that look very dark or Arab, actually most are, and maybe one in ten, that I've seen, are strawberry blondes (reddish blonde). Most Irish-Americans I've known will tell me, after being friends for a long time, that they are part Native American. But they don't tell people that openly. They generally say they are 'Irish' and they consider themselves Irish.
The area where I grew up was mostly Roman Catholic & Hasidic, so much of what I know is about people from those groups. I was the only kid of 'wasp' (non-religious home) descent, so I never knew anything about Protestants, and English people first hand. And in my neighborhood, most of the Jewish kids were as fair as me, with blonde hair, and didn't look at all like the old media stereotypes I've seen later on.

[Yaffa]

photo characteristics Italy

Rainbow,

I grew up near you and yes you are correct about the Italians I knew too. Norther Italians were lighter than the southern Italians

This is from Wikipedia:

In 1720, Sicily came under Austrian Habsburg rule and was swapped between various European powers until Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Sicily and Southern Italy, allowing for the annexation of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into the new Italian state in 1860.

In very general terms, many Northern Italians tend to have fairer complexions, somewhat similar to central Europeans, along with a higher frequency of light-coloured hair (see image) and eyes. Most Southern Italians tend to have darker features, similar to other peoples of Southern Europe such as the Spaniards and the Greeks.[4] Due to population movements throughout Italy's history, these physical characteristics are not greatly pronounced. For the Y-chromosome and mtDNA genetic lineages of the Italian and other peoples, see: Y Haplogroups of the World and Atlas of Human Journey.

Jodi

[Jodee]

Hello,

I think it's partially based on a subjective choice of physical traits.

Furthermore, some could say you look like individuals from a region. Other could say you look like individuals from another region... Their opinion (perception) is probably based on the observation of different physical traits and the association they make between those traits and different countries.

Nordvarg

Hi there,

I think there's a lot more possibility in trying to tell heritage when looking at old photos from generations back, though still a gamble.

I think its very subjective too, or at least often based on typical opinion.

It's funny how it works out. i don't look particularly Scandinavian, though I am half that. On the other hand, my daughter with a "not Scandinavian" father looks very Scandinavian (or what I perceive as Scandinavian) and is the picture of my mother when she was little, except blonde. My Mom was dark haired Danish. My Dad, a very fair blue eyed blonde Welsh, English, Scotch-Irish mix and 1/4 PA German. Coloring always seemed a little backwards in our family, still their facial features tended to be more of what one would expect from their family backgrounds - or at least what I've come to recognize in those individual backgrounds through stories, traditions and old relative's faces.

So i think there's a bit of both - a random mix of eyebrows from grandpa this and grandpa that with high cheek bones from Swedish grandmother 400 years ago.

Though after weeks of playing with old pictures, I have to say its kind of fun trying to piece ourselves together

Jodee

[Nordvarg]

[QUOTE=Jodee]Hi there,

I think there's a lot more possibility in trying to tell heritage when looking at old photos from generations back, though still a gamble.

I think its very subjective too, or at least often based on typical opinion.



Hello Jodee,

I agree with you but It's also very often subjective.

When I said that it was "partially based on subjective choice of physical traits" I meant the following thing:

Many individuals,for example, associate "red hairs" with Scots and Irish. They will tell someone he looks like Scots because he has red hairs and he has a european face. But red hairs are also found in many other European countries (and even in some non european populations). Other individuals associate blue eyes with Germans. So they will tell someone he looks like German if he has blue eyes and a european face. However, many physical characteristics are not restricted to one region.

Many individuals associate a characteristic with a region. If you don't have it they will tell you that you don't look like individuals from that region. Some of my colleagues are Scots. So many people told them they didn't look like "true Scots" ! They said that Scots had "Big heads", "Red Hairs" and a "round face" !

So it's difficult to know from what european region came a european.

Do the following exercice. It's funny. Ask ten people (some colleagues who don't know your roots) from where they think your ancestors came just by looking at your face and your hairs, eyes... You will get many different answers.

Nordvarg

[Jodee]

I agree with you but It's also very often subjective.

When I said that it was "partially based on subjective choice of physical traits" I meant the following thing: Many individuals,for example, associate "red hairs" with Scots and Irish. They will tell someone he looks like Scots because he has red hairs and he has a european face. But red hairs are also found in many other European countries (and even in some non european populations). Other individuals associate blue eyes with Germans. So they will tell someone he looks like German if he has blue eyes and a european face. However, many physical characteristics are not restricted to one region.

So it's difficult to know from what european region came a european.

Do the following exercice. It's funny. Ask ten people (some colleagues who don't know your roots) from where they think your ancestors came just by looking at your face and your hairs, eyes... You will get many different answers.

Nordvarg

i think so too Nordvarg -

Heavens forbid if someone asks me where I think their ancestors are from - i haven't a clue anymore

I found myself doing the same - mapping out faces based on inherited traits often from regions or population groups that I'm familiar with, while many of those same regions and population groups have their own perception of what is characteristic of an area -

Theres a Welsh folk tale on how a boat full of women came to Anglesey in Wales and terrorized the town, some saying they were witches, some robbers, and that they had red hair and came from Scandinavia, others say they had black hair and came from Ireland -

just goes to show we just never know

Of course genetic traits can offer insight, but i think when looking in the mirror we tend to self-identify a bit. But at least we can know that there's much more then what's showing in the mirror

Jodee