Ovum Act 5 Option A Late Urnfield to Hallstatt Culture. Devin Gate, Europe 800 BCE

Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

The Homelands of H6a1a8?

Credit: ©  Although OpenStreetMap Contributors.

These blog posts do not claim to be factual beyond the available written records. Based on the fragments I can glean from Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA variants—supplemented by evidence from ancient DNA and archaeology—I weave a narrative. To a scientist, this leap of faith might seem heretical. But I am no scientist; I am a Time Traveller, and I claim the storyteller’s right to narrative.

I ask your forgiveness as I spin these stories through a web of ancient cultures. I cannot prove that a specific ancestor belonged to any particular archaeological horizon; I can only suggest what might have been. It is a matter of plausibility, not certainty.

In that spirit, I suggest that the map above—spanning the Alps, the Carpathians, and their surrounding regions—might just be the cradle where H6a1a mutated to become H6a1a8. It is plausible that this was the homeland of my later F8693412 private variant, shared today by an Austrian tester and several English H6a1a8 descendants.

Now, I shall zoom into the Vienna and Danube Basin, focusing on that narrow gap where the river passes near modern-day Bratislava: The Devín Gate.

In 800 BCE, the Danube here was a labyrinth of shifting gravel banks and braided waterways, choked with deadwood. Dense, riparian wild forests of willow and poplar lined the alluvial plains. Bison, aurochs, wolves, brown bears and red deer still frequented the shallows.

Human presence and their mixed agriculture were defined by the archaeological culture known as Urnfield, which was then transitioning into the Hallstatt culture; the local inhabitants likely left traces of both. To the east of the Devín Gate lay the downstream expanse of the Little Hungarian Plain—the Danubian Flat—where vast, wild wetlands dominated the landscape. 

The success of local cultures did not lie entirely with their agriculture. It also lay in their position within Europe—a position that was particularly valuable now, as the first iron smiths arrived to bring the Late Bronze Age to a close. Trade routes brought precious amber down from the Baltic through the Morava River valley; Europe was not some neat division of peoples, isolated from one another. Meanwhile, salt moved north from the Hallstatt salt mines in the Alps. Locals would control these movements and barter for luxuries: textiles, bronze, tin, and wine from the south.

It was this movement of people along established trade networks that could have been responsible for carrying the mitochondrial DNA haplogroup H6a1a8 (including but not only the F8693412 private variant cluster) towards its modern distribution in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Finland, and Sweden (note* ftDNA maps). Central to that distribution is my proposed homeland. Trade routes across different ages may have helped to carry H6a1a8 through various successive cultures; I perceive mtDNA haplogroup H6a1a8 to be intrinsically connected to the European Iron Age.

This movement of peoples across the Continent and even into the British & Irish Isles, offers one explanation of the distribution of a haplogroup, that Family Tree DNA currently dates to a TMRCA (Time of Most Recent Common Ancestor) of 761 BCE - representing a range of between 1230 BCE and 328 BCE.

Although the people who lived here at this time were to be increasingly identified as belonging to Hallstatt Culture, their Urnfield practices continued.  Almost all of their dead were cremated, cheating modern geneticists of their ancient DNA. The ashes of their loved ones were then placed in distinctive urns, which would be buried in vast urn fields, devoid of mounds.

Their settlements were often small, open villages located on fertile river terraces. Within timber-framed longhouses and pit-houses, walled with wattle and daub, they lived under roofs of thatched reed harvested from the wetlands. There is archaeological evidence that the walls of the houses may have been decorated with red or geometric patterns (triangles or spirals).

However, people were just beginning to move back up onto the Devín and Braunsberg heights for protection as social tensions rose. Society was becoming "heroic" in the Homeric sense; power was held by local "big men" who proved their worth through feasting and gift-giving. Into this mix, the new technology of iron was arriving.

Interestingly, ancient DNA studies from the broader Iron Age suggest that many of these communities practiced matrilocality or maintained strong maternal clan structures. The women here may have been the permanent heart of the community, while men moved between tribes to forge alliances.

There were also larger hillforts, such as those crowning the heights of the Devín Gate. These forts featured box ramparts that would have appeared as massive white or grey stone walls from a distance. Here, the chieftains and elites resided.

These people loved colour. They used natural dyes such as woad (blue), madder (red), and weld (yellow), and plaid-like patterns (checked weaving) were already in use. Jewellery was bold—heavy bronze neck-rings (torcs) and "spectacle" fibulae (large brooch-pins made of coiled wire).

Perhaps, my one hundred-times great-grandmother was here? Maybe that is her weaving above? My mtDNA H6a1a8 ancestor.

GO TO NEXT ACT OPTION A - Early Jastorf culture, The Elbe, Altmark, North German plain. 500 BCE


Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

Ovum Act 5 Option B Hallstat C culture. Eastern Alps, Europe 800 BCE

Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

My 105 times great-grandmother in 800 BCE. Hallstatt C culture, in the Eastern Alps (Austria ). As visualised by Google Gemini AI.

The Salt Kingdoms: From Bronze to Iron

These people descended from earlier Central European lineages—the Corded Ware and Únětice cultures—which evolved through the Tumulus and Urnfield traditions before crystallising into the early phases of the Hallstatt. The Hallstatt economy was bolstered by a sophisticated prehistoric salt-mining industry and the expansive trade networks it triggered. The creamy, translucent mineral salt they produced has been preserved deep within the Alpine peaks for millennia, serving as both a vital preservative and a high-value currency.

As the Urnfield period gave way to the Hallstatt culture around 800 BCE, this salt-driven wealth sparked a social revolution. The "Hallstatt phenomenon" was not merely a change in pottery style, but the birth of a new, ostentatious aristocracy. Control over the salt mines allowed local chieftains to trade with the Mediterranean world, swapping Alpine minerals for Greek pottery, Etruscan bronze, and silken finery. This influx of luxury goods transformed the social landscape, shifting the focus from communal Urnfield burials to the monumental "princely" mounds that define the Hallstatt period.

The phenomenon was also defined by a technological leap: the mastery of iron. While the earlier Unetice and Urnfield cultures were masters of bronze, the Hallstatt elite were among the first in Central Europe to wield long, heavy iron swords. These weapons, along with the iconic four-wheeled wagons found in their tombs, suggest a society geared toward status, ritual, and territorial control. It was a culture of "conspicuous consumption," where wealth was not just hoarded, but displayed in life and buried in death.

Yet, even as these iron-wielding elites built their hillforts and established their trade routes, the underlying genetic story remained one of slow, steady continuity. The grand political shifts from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age were like waves on the surface of a deep ocean; beneath them, the maternal lineages—the mtDNA—remained anchored to the land. The "Hallstatt Celt" may have been a new cultural mask, but the faces behind it were the descendants of the same salt-miners and farmers who had walked those Alpine valleys for generations.


The Matriarch of the Salt Mines: A Hallstatt Lineage

I have chosen to envision my Hallstatt and La Tène female ancestors not merely as witnesses to history, but as high-status participants within it. This perspective provides a compelling explanation for the later dispersal of their genetic signature as far afield as the British Isles. Here, I trace the journey of my 105th great-grandmother—a high-ranking member of the Hallstatt C community, a society built upon the glittering wealth of the Alpine salt trade.

I propose that it was within this influential region, or its immediate spheres of interest, that the mtDNA haplogroup H6a1a mutated into the specific subclade H6a1a8. The Hallstatt culture, with its vast networks of prestige and power, was perfectly positioned in both time and space to act as a catalyst for this distribution. This was a world of "white gold" and "black metal"—salt and iron—the twin engines of an economic revolution that demanded constant movement and connectivity.

Through the mechanism of elite marriage alliances and the protection of trade corridors, this maternal thread was pulled across the continent. It travelled West to the tin-rich coasts of Britain and Ireland, South-East into the Hungarian plains, and North toward the Baltic and Finland. While the men may have fought for territory, it was the women—moving between hillforts and salt-halls to cement tribal bonds—who carried the H6a1a8 lineage into the fabric of the European fringe. In this light, salt and iron were more than just commodities; they were the impetus for a genetic legacy that survives to this day.


The Celtic Paradox: Blood, Art, and Identity

The Hallstatt culture is frequently heralded as the grand flowering of the early Celts. Yet, this raises a fundamental question: what, exactly, is a Celt? Is "Celticity" defined by a specific school of art, a shared linguistic root, or a distinct biological population?

While countless volumes romanticise the Hallstatt and La Tène periods as a "Golden Age," many scholars now wonder if this identity is a relatively modern invention—a product of 18th-century romantic patriotism. Genetically, there is little evidence of a singular "Celtic" ethnic group. Instead, we see a mosaic of populations emerging from the crucible of Bronze Age Europe. These peoples were a complex fusion of much older lineages: the Steppe pastoralists (Yamnaya), European Neolithic farmers, and Western Hunter-Gatherers.

Some purists distance themselves from the Alpine Hallstatt origins, preferring to seek the "true" Celtic spirit in the "Insular" traditions of the Atlantic fringe. They look to the rugged coasts of Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany—the lands where La Tène art and Brythonic or Goidelic languages took their final stand against the Roman tide. Others argue a more pragmatic view: that Western Europeans are simply a varied mixture of those three ancient ancestral foundations, regardless of the labels we fix to them.

However, a different perspective emerges through the study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). While archaeologists define cultures by the silent remains of pottery, jewellery, and earthworks, mtDNA whispers a story of biological persistence. These modern categories are often rigid, yet the maternal line slips effortlessly across the artificial barriers of "culture" and "era." Even in times of migration, conquest, and societal collapse, the women remained. They are the unbroken thread, weaving the disparate patches of our history into a single, enduring fabric.

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself.

GO TO NEXT ACT OPTION B - Earlier Iron Age South East Britain. 550 BCE


Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

Ovum Act 3 Yamnaya culture from Moldovian Steppes to Pannonian Plain 3,000 BCE

Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

Images of my 190 times great-grandmother as visualised with a lot of prompting and correcting by Google Gemini.

Meet my 180th great-grandmother. Her personal name is Hen-at-yah. We can reasonably speculate on this because she almost certainly spoke an Indo-European language—the ancestor to most modern European tongues. The year is 3000 BCE, and she belongs to the archaeological group known as the Yamnaya culture. Her mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup is H6a1.

Beside a wagon burial, Hen-at-yah bids farewell to her late husband. She is now the widowed matriarch of her family. Her husband’s remains will be covered by a massive mound of earth—a kurgan—serving as a permanent memorial to a great man. Wherever these people have roamed across the Pontic-Caspian steppe, they have left the landscape littered with these monumental burial mounds.

They are a metalworking people who long ago mastered copper and are now experimenting with its alloys. Living along the "Steppe Corridor," they have been exposed to innovative ideas from both east and west. They have adopted sheep, goats, and cattle from the Fertile Crescent south of the Caucasus, and from the same regions, they refined their metallurgical skills.

Crucially, they have utilised the first domesticated horses of the Eurasian steppes and combined them with the invention of the wheel to create their own wagons. These are a nomadic people; their wealth lies in their livestock, and they roam the endless grasslands to guide their herds. In this mobile, pastoralist economy, their wagons are not just tools—they are the very foundation of their way of life.

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself. Lines represent possible migrations. Also indicated is the discussed migration from what North Moldovia, to the Pannonian Plain of Hungary.

Hen-at-yah buries not only her husband but also her connection to the vast grasslands her family has roamed for generations. The Yamnaya have mastered the exploitation of dairy; this nutritional breakthrough has led to a surge in population, and with it, intensifying disputes over grazing rights. She has heard travellers' tales of a great plain far to the west—a place of lush grasses sheltered by mountains. Hen-at-yah promised her late husband that she would lead their folk to this whispered paradise.

This "plain" is the Pannonian Plain in modern-day Hungary. Her journey represents the monumental migration of nomadic herders from the Pontic-Caspian steppes into the heart of Europe. Most modern Europeans of local descent carry a significant genetic legacy from this event:

Region Estimated Yamnaya DNA Typical Populations
Northern & NW Europe 38% – 50% Norwegians, Scots, Irish, Icelanders
Central & Eastern Europe 30% – 40% Germans, Poles, Lithuanians
Southern Europe 18% – 32% Greeks, Spaniards, Mainland Italians
Mediterranean Islands 2% – 12% Sardinians, Sicilians, Maltese

The most common Y-DNA haplogroups of European males—dominant even in Western Europe—are direct descendants of R1 (R-M173), a lineage that arrived with the Yamnaya Horizon.

Whether measured by autosomal DNA (general ancient ancestry) or Y-DNA haplogroups, Western Europeans—particularly those from the North West—possess substantial Steppe ancestry that reached Europe between 3000 and 2500 BCE. On my direct paternal line, I am an exception; my yDNA arrived from south of the Caucasus in South West Asia much later. However, my mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA), inherited through my direct maternal line, did arrive during this Chalcolithic migration. H6a1 is effectively the maternal sister-line to the R1a and R1b paternal lineages that reshaped the continent.

They had lived on the Pontic-Caspian steppes, developing a distinct economy and a subsequent culture. Their belief systems, concepts of wealth, and social structures were perfectly adapted to that expansive environment. They brought to Europe more than just their DNA and the Indo-European languages (the ancestors of modern English, Gaelic, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian); they brought a technological revolution.

With them came advanced skills in working copper, gold, and bronze. They brought the wheel and, almost certainly, the horse. They also introduced new religious beliefs centred on celestial deities: the sun god and the storm gods of the vast, open steppe sky. These were the myths and rituals they practised while huddled around campfires, carryovers from a world where the horizon was endless.

GO TO NEXT ACT - Únětice culture, Carpathians, Europe. 2,200 BCE


Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

Magdalenian - out of the Big Freeze

Image Source.  Bison Licking Insect Bite; 15,000–13,000 BC; antler; National Museum of Prehistory (Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, France).

The Magdalenian Culture of Palaeolithic Europe follows the big freeze of the Last Glacial Maximum and dates from 17,000 to 12,000 years ago. Climatic conditions continued to remain grim, but a warmer interstadial known as the Bølling–Allerød, lasted between 14,690 and 12,890 years ago. The Magdalenian first appears in France, where it is contemporary with the Epigravettian Culture of Italy and further east. The founder population of the Magdalenian descends from earlier West European groups, including West Gravettian / Solutrean, and Western Aurignacian.

Image Source. Photo by Karl Steel (Flickr).

Magdalenian yDNA haplogroups so far discovered are I, and one HIJK

Magdelanian  mtDNA haplogroups all U (several U8b and one U5b).


One cluster at El Muron was found to be related to West European Aurignacians of the Goyet caves of Belgium, from 20,000 years earlier, supporting that the Magdalenians were descended from earlier Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers of western Europe. However, later Western Hunter-Gatherers of the Mesolithic, were closer related to the more south eastern groups of the Epigravettian Culture.

Image Source. Flint blades from Grottes de Labastide.

Long, regular blades were struck from prepared, carinated cores. Later phases are associated with harpoons made of antler, ivory, and bone. Main prey species on the Continent was reindeer, although other groups such as those in Britain, focused on tarpan (horse). Red deer and ibex were also targeted. One study found little evidence of salmon nor saiga antelope in the diet of a Magdalenian woman. Another study has found evidence of consumption of wild plants and bolete mushrooms.

Diet of Upper Paleolithic Modern Humans: Evidence From Microwear Texture Analysis. AJPA 2014. Zaatari and Hublin.

This study found that the diet of Magdalenians was more varied, with more abrasive foods than those of earlier hunter-gatherers in Europe.

Image Source. Reproductions of some Lascaux artworks in Lascaux II.

Magdalenian Britain

Kent's Cavern

Image Source. Gough's Cave skull potentially evidencing cannibalism

The Cannibals of Gough's Cave.

Just as the climate began to improve circa 14,700 years ago, some Magdalenians sheltered in Gough's Cave Somerset. Batons and tools were left within, along with horse bones and human remains. Tarpan seem to have been their main prey, and they may have been following the horse herds north into Britain as the climate improved. The human bones had been treated in much the same way as the bones of food prey. Cut marks and incisions suggest that they were stripped of flesh, and this discovery has led to much debate about possible cannibalism. Human crania appear to have been modified into drinking cups:

'The skulls were scrupulously cleaned of soft tissue shortly after death. Marks show cutting of the lips, cheeks and tongue, and extraction of the eyes.

Then the bones of the face and the base of the skull were carefully removed. Finally the cranial vaults were meticulously shaped into cups.'

It has been suggested that a British Late Magdalenian Culture existed, called the Creswellian Technology, dating 12,000 to 10,000 years before present that is similar to a Hamburgian Culture on the Continent.


Gravettian - into the Big Freeze

Image Source. The Venus of Brassempouy.

The Gravettian overlaps the late Aurignacian, dating from circa 33,000 years ago, and surviving until 20,000 years before present. This included the coldest peak of the last Ice Age, the Last Glacial Maximum around 24,000 years ago until 18,000 years ago. These really were Ice Age Europeans. Travel as far north as Britain must have taken place during warmer intervals. Otherwise the Gravettian is found in a band across Western Eurasia, which stretches from Portugal and the Basque region, through France, Germany, Czech republic, as far east as Georgia and South Russia.

Image Source. Female face. Ivory carving, Dolní Věstonice.

Gravettian yDNA haplogroups so far discovered are CT, I, IJK, BT, one C1a2 and one F.
Gravettian mtDNA haplogroups overwhelmingly U (mainly U2 and U5), with one M.

The Late Gravettian developed into a culture in France and Iberia, that we call the Solutrean. Meanwhile in the south east of Europe, from the Italian peninsula across the the Western Steppe, it diverged into the Epigravettian culture, which overlaps for much of its range with the Mammoth Steppe.

We identify a genetic ancestry profile in individuals associated with Upper Palaeolithic Gravettian assemblages from western Europe that is distinct from contemporaneous groups related to this archaeological culture in central and southern Europe4, but resembles that of preceding individuals associated with the Aurignacian culture. This ancestry profile survived during the Last Glacial Maximum (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) in human populations from southwestern Europe associated with the Solutrean culture, and with the following Magdalenian culture that re-expanded northeastward after the Last Glacial Maximum. Conversely, we reveal a genetic turnover in southern Europe suggesting a local replacement of human groups around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, accompanied by a north-to-south dispersal of populations associated with the Epigravettian culture. 
A previously unknown population replacement event that was archaeologically invisible, occurring during the peak of the Ice Age.  This DNA was then passed on via the Solutrean people to the following Magdalenian people. 

Image Source. Triple Burial at the Upper Palaeolithic Site of Dolní Věstonice.

These people buried their dead more frequently in graves than did the Aurignicians.  The grave of three male teenagers at Dolní Věstonice was particularly enigmatic. The person on the left, has a hand placed over the stomach of the middle character, where red ochre had been applied. The central person had a curved spine, diagnosed as caused by chondrodysplasia calcificans punctata (CCP).  The body on the right had been placed facing down. Red ochre had also been applied to the heads of all three.

A Mirror into the Past and Present. On the Dolni Vestonice Triple Burial. Academia.edu 2020. Olga Viviana Nauthiz Szynkaruk
For their last journey, the individuals have been richly equipped with headdresses made of the teeth of the arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus), wolf (Canis lupus), and unidentified large predators. In the mouth of DV15, a mammoth ivory disc was placed.

Image Source. Gravettian points.

Prey appear less restrictive than for the earlier period which focused on reindeer. The Gravettians hunted deer, mammoth, hares, lions, bear, foxes. Rather than use split antlers as points, they used flint blades known as Gravettian points. There is evidence that the Gravettians had access to bows and to the spear thrower. Furthermore, they may have had the first domesticated animal, the dog.

Image Source (Flickr).  Altamira Cave Paintings. By Carlos Calamar

British Gravettian

Image Source (modified).  Find-spots in Britain of Gravettian tanged points. Northern Britain was covered by ice sheets, and the North Sea was dry, connecting Great Britain to the Continent.

Image Source. The Venus of Willendorf.

Conclusion

The Gravettians entered Europe in the long, slow run up to the Last Glacial Maximum, and endured much of it. Although they inhabited a vast region of Western Eurasia, their culture remained constant, albeit with some divisions between west and east. The Pavlovian Culture developed in the east as mammoth-hunters.  The Gravettians often buried their dead with much ceremony, wearing seashell beads, ivory, and animal teeth. They were successful and adaptive Ice Age hunters, preying on deer, reindeer, mammoth, fox, hare, hyena, wolf, seal, and foraged for shellfish. They lived in circular, semi subterranean shelters, but were mobile. Skilled artists with cave paintings and carved ivory. They tipped projectiles with flint blade points, and may have used bows, boomerangs and atlatls. Nets were woven, and lamps of stone used. They may have developed an early relationship with dogs.

During the Last Glacial Maximum, although their artefact culture continued, there was a population replacement event by people closer related to their Aurignician predecessors.  These later Gravettians fostered the Solutrean Culture in France and Iberia, and the Epigravettian culture of the east and south east.

First Homo Sapiens in Europe - Apidima

Creative Common images from Il Fatto Storico


These fossils shake things up. Two fragments of human skull crania were found in Apidima Cave in Southern Greece during the late 1970s, but radiocarbon dating failed and typology was difficult with the partial survival. They were found close together, lodged down a crevice.

The authors of the report applied U-series radiometric method to date Apidima 2 to more than 170,000 bp  and propose that it has Neanderthal features.

Apidima 1 (images above), they have dated using the same method to more than 210,000 years ago, and have assigned to it a morphology of mixed primitive and modern features.  This surprised the researchers as it had been wrongly assumed that the two fragments were found so close to each other (centimetres) that they shared a single context and time.

Apidima 1 described as having some modern features, is an extraordinary claim, as is the title of the Nature publication. It suggests arrival of anatomically modern humans (Homo Sapiens)  into SE Europe at an extraordinary early date.

The emergence of fossils that we regard as anatomically modern has shifted further back in time. I recall when the Cromagnon fossils of Europe, dated then to circa 40,000 years ago were regarded as the oldest in the world. But finds from both out of Levant and Africa began to challenge this. Eventually, Kibishish-Omo and Herta in Ethiopia were hailed as the oldest fossil finds of modern Homo sapiens. They were dated to circa 195,000 years bp. A recent research publication has revised the dating of these proximal deposits of the finds to 233 ± 22 kyr. Yes, 220,000 years ago:

Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa. Nature updated 2022. Vidal, Lane, Asrat etal

It doesn't end there.


The fossils designated to be Homo sapiens found at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, have been dated 315,000 ybp.

The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age. Nature 2017. Richter, Grün, Joannes-Boyau etal.

In conclusion it would appear likely, that the sort of modern features associated with Homo sapiens emerged piece by piece, much earlier than could be credibly imagined by anthropologists back in the 1960s. Modern features developed gradually from as far back as the Middle Palaeolithic. That there is more and more evidence of earlier hominins (of Homo habilis type) exiting from Africa at vastly earlier dates, would support that these early modern humans could have existed and made their way out of Africa towards Apidima.

Thoughts in understanding ancestry DNA

Above image.  My Global 10 Genetic Map coordinates:  PC1,PC2,PC3,PC4,PC5,PC6,PC7,PC8,PC9,PC10 ,0.019,0.0272,0.0002,-0.0275,-0.0055,0.0242,0.0241,-0.0033,-0.0029,0.0015.  The cross marks my position on a genetic map by David Wesolowski, of the Eurogenes Blog. 

The above map shows genetic distances between different human populations around the planet.  Look how tightly the Europeans cluster.  Razib Kahn recently blogged on just this subject.  The fact of the matter is that the greatest diversity exists between populations outside of Europe, particularly within Africa, and between African and non-African populations.  However, we obsess over tiny differences within European populations, when in truth, most Western Eurasians are very closely related.  We share ancient ancestry from slightly varied mixes of only three base ancestral groups, with the last layer arriving only 4,300 years ago.  This obsession in the Market drives DNA to the consumer businesses to largely ignore non-European diversity, and to focus too closely on differences that blur into each other.

The above image is from CARTA lecture. 2016. Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute. It shows the currently three known founder populations of Europeans and their average percentages.

However, at the same time the new Living DNA service seeks to zoom in closer on British populations, attempting to detect ancestry percentages from such tiny zones as "East Anglia".  They appear to be having a level of success with it as well, although that blurriness, that overlap and closeness of populations in Europe gives problems.  Germans are given false percentages of British, Some Scottish appear as Northern Irish, and the Irish dilute into false British areas.  However, I've seen enough results now to suggest that it is far from genetic astrology.  They get it correct to a certain level, particularly for us with English ancestry.  Ancestry DNA customers expect perfection.  I don't think that we will ever get that from such closely related populations at this resolution, but it does provide a new genealogical tool that can point us into some revealing directions.

Above image.  My Living DNA Map.  Based on my recorded genealogy, I estimate 77% to 85% East Anglian ancestry over the past 250 years or so.  Living DNA at Standard Mode gave me 39%.  I'm impressed by that.  That a DNA test can recognise even at a 50% success, my recent ancestry in such a tiny zone of the planet.  I have doubts though that this sort of test will ever be free of errors, and mistakes.  The safest DNA test for ancestry is still one that is based on more distinct populations, and outside of Africa, that can be as wide as "European".  23andMe for example in their "Standard Mode" (75% confidence), assign me 97.3% European, and 0.3% Unassigned.  That is a pretty safe result.

Autosomal DNA tests for ancestry, particularly for West Eurasian (European and Western Asia) descendants, are not reliable at high resolution.  If you want to get really local, then sure - do it.  However, only use the results as an indication, not as a truth.  Populations in Western Eurasia are closely related, and share recent common descent.  There has been a high degree of mobility and admixture ever since.  Some modern populations tested do not have a high level of deep rooted local ancestry in that region.  They overlap with each other.  Keep researching and meander through different perspectives of what your older pre-recorded ancestry could have been.

Above image by Anthrogenica board member Tolan.  Based on 23andMe AC results.  My results skew away from British, and towards North French.  He generated this map, plotting myself (marked as Norfolk in red), and my Normand Ancestral DNA twin Helge in yellow.  My results fall in the overlap with French.  Helge is Normand but in AC appears more British than myself.  I am East Anglian yet in this test appear more French than he does.