FORGET trying to tell an Italian apart from a Spaniard by their looks. A collection of tiny differences in genetic make-up can locate a European far more effectively – even down to a single country.
By reading single-letter differences in the DNA of thousands of Europeans, two groups of researchers have shown independently that you can tell someone with a Finnish heritage from a Dane and distinguish those with German ancestry from the scions of England. The resulting genetic map mirrors Europe’s geographical map, right down to Italy’s boot.
“It tells us that geography matters,” says John Novembre, a population geneticist at the University of California, Los…
