I’m rewriting this after being accused of using AI for my first review. Just to clarify, I’m a real person and this is based fully on my own research and personal opinion.

Living DNA includes Slovenia in a region called West Balkan, which honestly doesn’t make much sense. Geographically, Slovenia is part of Central Europe. Genetically, culturally and historically, Slovenia has a lot more in common with Austria or northern Italy than with the southern Balkans.

What bothered me even more was the genetic grouping. Slovenians were lumped in with populations from Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and others, but these are not genetically the same groups. We might share some overlap with northern Croatia, but even that part of Croatia is more Central European than Balkan.

Also, the label West Balkan DNA is misleading. There’s no such thing as a single West Balkan genetic group. For example, Albania is also in the Western Balkans, but Albanians have a completely different genetic profile from Slavs or Central Europeans. The region is way too diverse to be grouped under one simplified label.

This isn’t just my opinion. A 2018 study in Frontiers in Genetics found that Slovenians are closer genetically to Northern and Eastern Europeans. Another study in Scientific Reports (Fernandes et al., 2020) showed that Slovenians cluster more with Central Europeans, not with populations from the southern Balkans.

Living DNA should really rethink how it defines regions like this. A more accurate and research-based approach would make the results much more meaningful for people from Central and Southeastern Europe.