https://www.ancestry.com/dna/
I've always wanted to try this but now that I took the time to check it out I learned the site ancestry.com doesn't ship their DNA kits to Europe. It seems to be the best one but I'm wondering if there are any EU alternatives?
They claim to match DNA across many different cultures and people. Is it for real or is it a kind of pseudoscience?
It's real but it's not an exact science. What these companies do is take DNA samples from populations around the world. When you have your DNA tested, it's compared to that DNA. With a little math, they come up with what percentages you share with those regions.
It's called autosomal DNA testing. Essentially, it's looking at your entire genetic makeup and assigning a percentage. What you'll find is that we are all mutts. If your father was Italian and your mother is Greek for instance, most people would just assume that you are 50/50 but that's not how it works. You inherit a bit of DNA from every single one of your ancestors back to the beginning of humanity. What you end up with is a culmination of all of that genetic material that you have inherited. So in the above example, if one of your grandparents was German, you may or may not inherit a tiny percentage of that and so on.
It's a good starting place and will tell you the complete amount of DNA you've inherited but that's about it. It's not an exact science and the percentages are going to be based on the populations tested. It's not going to flat out say that you are Italian for instance. It might show that you are 40% Italian, 30% Greek, 20% German, 10% Dutch, etc.
If you care about your family name and want to see where your father's line came from, there's a bit of a unique genetic marker on all males called Y-DNA. You inherited your Y-DNA from your father and he inherited his from his father and so on. It never changes. Because of this, you can trace your exact lineage from 1000s of years ago to see where your grandfathers came from. That IS an exact science and is really cool. Ultimately, we all end up in Africa but it's pretty crazy to see how we spread out and settled all around the world and the different branching paths.
For us in America, it's a bit more of a challenge because a lot of us don't know how we got here. Y-DNA can help there to at least tell you where your father's line came from before the states.