Using your DNA to explore your ancestry -- beware

I've recently read a great book entitled A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes, by Adam Rutherford. It's about using DNA for anthropological purposes, such as finding the relationship between humans and Neanderthals. (You and I have Neanderthal DNA.) Rutherford says that the companies who tell people that they are 24% Cherokee, or whatever, are on a par with the horoscopes in the newspaper.

There are many reasons for this. One of them is that humans are all related. One evidence for that is  that many pieces of DNA are shared between various ethnic groups.

Another lesson, repeatedly told, is that the concept of race has no genetic basis. Again, we are all related. By this, Rutherford means that two people from different locations in Africa are likely to have less common DNA than either one of them and someone from, say, Belgium, have in common.

It's impossible to do justice to the book in this brief post. It is readable by people without strong backgrounds in science.

Note this passage from the Bible: Acts 17:26 He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons, and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

Thanks for reading.