u/Mehehelu

23andMe, IllustrativeDNA, and mapping tools.

Hi. I'm an ethnic Romanian from Eastern Romania, with my Moldavian family in the region for at least the past 600 years, minor gentry and then only free peasants as time passed. According to family oral history, I have one fully ethnic Hungarian ancestor from Hungary (Roman Catholic, minor gentry or wealthy commoner), and one Slavic ancestor from Ukraine under the Russian Empire at the time (merchants and ironsmiths).

I'm including my ancient autosomal DNA breakdowns mainly for fun, as the algorithm tends to over-fit when forced into more than three groups, leading to a few exotic proxies.

What stands out, however, is the high number of matches to early Pannonian and Hungarian samples. This suggests a genuine ancestral signal from ancient and medieval Scytho-Sarmatian, Avar, and Magyar-era populations that faded over generations due to local assimilation and recombination.

Nowadays, a profile compatible with mine is easily reconstructed using a mix of Slavic and Italian-like proxies. Given the scarcity of local Iron Age samples from Romania, largely because Dacians traditionally cremated their dead and not enough sampling, it's likely that part of this local Paleo-Balkan/Dacian heritage is currently absorbed by the Italian and Slavic components.

For IllustrativeDNA, these are the only results with a fit under 2 (keeping total source groups under 5 to avoid over-fitting). I understand these represent an approximate mathematical model of my autosomal DNA rather than a literal genealogy.

I also noticed the platform currently lacks Iron Age samples directly from Romania (no Geto-Dacians, Daco-Romans, etc.), so the model relies on neighboring Paleo-Balkan and regional proxies.

For modern populations, my fits for Romanian are 2.8 - Moderately Close, while Hungarian is 3.9 - Slightly Distant, with all modern distances being above 2 due to regional sample variations (a very accurate sample match would be under 1). I’ve included my 23andMe results for comparison.

I am from Eastern Romania (Moldavia region). As far as I knew through family oral history, my family has been local to Eastern Romania for generations, with two exceptions, one ancestor from Hungary and the other from the Russian Empire.