But now I have new questions that may not be answerable. I don’t know anything about the ~1/3 of my ancestors who were Amerindian, not even their tribe names. Many paper records were lost or never that complete in the first place. I hope some genome blogger somewhere will start a project specifically for Amerindian ancestry someday. Likewise I wish I knew more about the history of the African slave ancestors or Jewish ancestors that every Mexican seems to share, but are hardly talked about in official histories. This experience makes me realize that there is so much academic research that has yet to be done despite the history being less than 500 years old. But I now have a whole new understanding of my ancestral home and I feel more of a personal connection to it.

Unfortunately, as Anthony says, many people on the street still think Hispanic/Latino is a race and don’t understand it could refer to anyone with any sort of appearance. This misconception has caused problems for me socially. Although both my parents are of Mexican descent and genetic testing says I have 1/3 Amerindian ancestry, I have light skin and everyone (whether Mexican, white, other Latin American, etc) assumes I’m white. So when people (usually white people) find out my ethnicity sometimes their reaction is negative. They may actually back away from me in shock, or suddenly get very quiet and start avoiding me, give me a hard stare, etc. I wish I looked more like a stereotypical Mexican so I could avoid these awkward situations. Even Jessica Alba, who is only half Mexican, looks more stereotypically Amerindian than me.

To a college admissions officer, or a “human rights commission” DBE clerk, “hispanic” means a person with ancestry in the Americas south of the United States. It might also mean people whose ancestry is directly from Spain or Portugal, though that’s controversial, and depends on the specific agency.

On the “street”, it means you’re likely to respond reasonably correctly if addressed in Spanish, which usually means having some visible American Indian ancestry, or at least a good tan and black hair. Until I got my 23andme results, I thought my mother’s ancestry was purely European, but when I was working outdoors a lot, the Mexican construction laborers would usually address me in Spanish first. It turns out I’m about 6% American Indian, which shocked my mother.

But ‘lost time traveler’ still has some utility.

https://www.appam.org/conferences/fall/boston2010/sessions/downloads/4407.1.pdf.

Yes, I’m Irish, but what I’m interested in is not that swath of blue (European), but all those other bits – the how and why of it all. Like my small percentage Papuan, what is this, is this Denisovan (aka Home Erectus) or Neanderthal?

On a more general note, I’m still trying to figure out how my number of matches (about 650 now) is in the Colonial US range and how most of them are concentrated in 5 adjoining states in the US South – and the fact that this is the same for both of my parents, even though one is Native Irish and one is Anglo-Irish. How I have about 25 or so relatives where I have 2 or more shared segments, and they came from different parents. So somehow my parents share a common ancestor back in time.

Also, how my father happens to have relatives all over Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, South Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Greece) and around the Carribbean (Barbados, Bahamas, Jamaica, Mexico) – even though he’s Native Irish, with only one known emigrant – to Iowa in the 1840′s?

Also how both my parents have 100% Ashkenazi Jewish relatives, and of my top 12 closest relatives, 3 of them are mtDNA K1a1b1a – when I have no known Jewish ancestry, and indeed Jews in Ireland were historically about 1,500 people total.

http://www.razib.com/admixture/wp-content/gallery/thick_k_10_id001_id043/k_pathan.png

the yakut turks are all violet. to further explore i could run a different “eastern biased” admixture.

you have some violet, but that’s probably not that abnormal among tibetans (look at the japanese).

but you’re right, your dad is the one to go too.

My Indian ancestry is consistent with the idea that my great-grandfathers were Pathans. Not proof, but it’s one additional data point. The “east Asian” element is also not terribly surprising. I suppose the next question, which may or may not be answerable, is whether this is Turkic or Mongol, or whether it’s Tibeto-Burman. I’m hoping that Zack’s HAP project will tell me something about the female lines, but the reality of it is that I’m much more likely to find something interesting but I strongly suspect that my best bet would be to get my father to submit a sample…

what is really fascinating for me is that it seems to me you americans don’t really realize how these stereotypes actually dominated your world view.

I feel the same way about a gene scan: complicated, of course, by worries about intellectual property.