DNA test: Who's your daddy's daddy?

Now, according to the TV commercial, you can have your DNA tested.

This isn’t about getting away with murder. In this case at least, your DNA won’t prove you didn’t really kill Col. Mustard with the candlestick in the drawing room. This is only about checking out your ancestry.

We’re the Great Melting Pot here in the USA, but that doesn’t mean we all don’t want to trace ourselves back to something really cool, whatever that is. Royalty, I suppose, or the guy who invented socks.

This test doesn’t get that specific. It just determines where your people came from. Having a name that begins with “Vander-" or ends in “–ski” doesn’t cut it anymore.

I’ve got a friend who tried it. He always thought he was Irish, but the test came back saying he was Danish and Romanian. As we all know, there are two kinds of people in this world, the Irish and those who wish they were, and my friend just crossed the Great Divide going the wrong way. Now he’s stuck being Danish and Romanian. They won’t send him a refund.

Here’s what baffles me. These guys doing the testing — how do they know where to stop? I mean, people have always moved around a lot, but humanity supposedly originated in Ethiopia. If this testing company told everybody they evolved from Ethiopians, it wouldn’t stay in business long.

“You’re a direct descendant of Adam and Eve! That’ll be $200, please!”

On the other hand, if I sent in a sample and it came back identifying my ancestry as having come from the Neenah-Menasha area, I think I’d go to the police.

So this company cleverly chooses to target somewhere in between these two extremes, at some limited number of digits in the DNA sequence that takes results beyond your mom and dad’s home town but stops somewhere short of the Cradle of Civilization.

“Um, Denmark and Romania! That’s it. Your people were from Denmark and Romania!”

All they have to do is go back far enough that there’s no way to check.

Someone with excess money could test their honesty, I guess. Send them two samples at two different times and see whether the results match. Maybe you can surprise yourself to learn you’re Belgian and your twin sister is Polish.

Give it a try and let me know what you find out. Don’t send them blood, though. You just have to lick the envelope. And remember to enclose a check or money order.

psrubas@pressgazettemedia.com and follow him on Twitter@PGpaulsrubas