You’re more than just your genetics; insights from DNA testing can help add dimensions to your family history, ancestors, and sometimes distant connections to populations worldwide.
When exploring those connections, you need a trusted guide like 23andMe. 23andMe’s Ancestry Service offers the most comprehensive genetic ancestry breakdown on the market, with more than 3,500 geographic regions, reports on traits, Neanderthal Ancestry, your Ancestry Timeline, ancient maternal and paternal lineages, and more. The Ancestry Service also offers access to our pioneering DNA Relative Finder tool, 23andMe’s automatic family tree builder, and more than 30 trait reports, with insights into hair and eye color, taste preferences, and facial characteristics.
In this post, we’ll tell you a little about what you can learn using the 23andMe Ancestry Service. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, 23andMe is also the only DNA ancestry service that allows you to upgrade to include FDA-authorized health reports anytime.
So, let’s look at 23andMe’s Ancestry Service. And just a heads up before you dive in, it also happens to be a great time to do so. Now through October 15, 2024, we have our lowest price of the year on the 23andMe Ancestry Service for customers in the United States at just $59. Learn more here.
Ancestry Composition
Like everything at 23andMe, it all starts with science and a touch of wonder.
Here’s a fascinating fact: your DNA is not just a blueprint for what makes you you; it’s also a record of your ancestors’ geographic origins.
23andMe’s Ancestry Composition helps you visualize your ancestral origins. 23andMe compares thousands of sections of DNA across your genome to an ever-expanding library of reference populations. Then, we use those comparisons to assign a closely matching reference population for each of those sections of your DNA, and then we tally them up. That allows our Ancestry Composition tool to break down the percentages of your DNA that link to different populations from Asia, Europe, the Americas, or Africa.
We arrange this breakdown into a hierarchy. At the top is the continent level, which is then broken down into the region, country, and local levels. That breakdown is all plotted on a map to help you visualize where your DNA is from.
The Ancestry Composition report also shows specific Genetic Groups you match with, which may reveal connections to specific cultural, ethnic, or linguistic groups such as Germany’s historically Swabian-speaking communities, people from Italy’s Monregalese region, the Maya peoples of Mesoamerica, Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest, the Ashanti people from what is now Ghana, historical Sephardic Jewish communities of northeastern Mexico, and so much more.
Over the last few years, 23andMe has updated the granularity of results for customers with ancestral lines from around the world. Read about our recent updates here: Japan & Scandinavia, Germanic Europe, South America, and the Levant, African ancestry, Chinese ancestry, Indigenous Caribbean ancestry, Spanish and Portuguese ancestry, Indigenous American ancestry, and British and Irish ancestry.
23andMe customers can see their Ancestry Composition here.
Ancestry Timeline
23andMe’s ancestry reports sometimes reveal surprises. You might find hidden African or Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, for instance. But 23andMe’s ancestry reports often augment what many of us already know about our heritage.
Information gleaned from 23andMe’s Ancestry Service can sharply illuminate family lore passed down from those who came before. For instance, the Ancestry Timeline feature uses statistical methodologies to estimate how many generations ago your most recent ancestor from a specific population likely lived. The Ancestry Timeline allows customers to go back seven or more generations to discover how their unique ancestral tapestry was woven together.
So, it might indicate how recently your ancestor lived and who had 100 percent Nigerian, Spanish, or Portuguese ancestry. This can sometimes clarify our family histories, offering a more vivid connection to past generations.
In addition, connecting to at least one parent using 23andMe can tell you what ancestry you inherited from your mother and what came from your father. For instance, you can see whether a small percentage of Italian ancestry comes from your mother’s or your father’s side.
Family Tree
23andMe’s Ancestry Service also includes a Family Tree that automatically builds a tree highlighting your close DNA relationships that are part of DNA Relatives.
Customers can also manually add people who are not 23andMe customers or are not part of 23andMe DNA Relatives. It’s easy, convenient, and just a click away. To start your Family Tree, opt into DNA Relatives. This allows you to see and be seen by your genetic relatives on 23andMe. Then, the Family Tree’s algorithm populates a tree in one go with your predicted genetic relatives, so you can get a head start figuring out whether cousins and other relatives are on your mom’s or dad’s side of the family.
With an updated algorithm, 23andMe’s Family Tree predicts connections to your genetic relatives, so you don’t have to start from scratch. It’s a simple way for customers to explore their family ties, whether they are relatives they already know about or new ones. The hope is that the tool’s simplicity will help customers understand different family connections.
The joy of using 23andMe’s Ancestry Service is that it can introduce people to new relatives. With the simple Family Tree feature, you can see how these DNA relatives relate to you and where they are on your Family Tree.
DNA Relatives
23andMe’s Ancestry Service connects people.
Along with discovering more about their heritage, 23andMe offers customers the opportunity to choose to connect with other customers with whom they share DNA.
23andMe’s DNA Relatives tool looks at overlapping chromosome segments to help customers find or connect with close and distant relatives. For customers who choose to participate in DNA Relatives, it is optional; you must opt in to participate and can opt out of participating at any time. You can use it to help find new relatives in their family or reconnect with cousins.
The tool — which our scientists continue refining and improving— helps customers find new relatives and see how they are genetically connected. DNA Relatives allows customers to sort their relatives based on location, family names, how closely they are related, or the number of DNA segments they share. For DNA Relatives with whom you are sharing, you can also learn more about your genetic relationship by seeing a prediction of how you are related — such as via a second great-grandfather or great-grandmother.
If customers choose to participate in DNA Relatives, they can begin a conversation to learn together about their shared family histories.
Haplogroups
Adding another dimension to those family connections, 23andMe also offers customers a chance to trace their maternal — and, in some cases, paternal — haplogroups.
We say ‘some cases’ because the paternal haplogroup report only applies to genetically male people (individuals with a Y chromosome) or females whose close paternal male relatives (such as a father or brother) have tested on 23andMe. This is because paternal haplogroup assignments are made by tracing a person’s Y chromosome, which genetically female people do not inherit. That’s why the paternal haplogroup assignments are only available for some customers.
As our ancestors branched off into groups that migrated first throughout Africa and then out of Africa, genetic variants arose in those diverse groups, allowing us to trace lineages that descended from a common ancestor.
Maternal haplogroups, traced through users’ mitochondrial DNA, follow a customer’s maternal line and paternal haplogroups follow the path of the paternal line. Those haplogroups can offer customers insight into their place in the human story and, in some cases, meaningful insight into their heritage.
Neanderthal Ancestry Report
23andMe’s Ancestry Service doesn’t just help you add to your family story. It connects you to the human story, including your genetic connection to our ancient human cousins, the Neanderthals.
Even though Neanderthals vanished about 40,000 years ago, their DNA lives on in us. 23andMe’s Neanderthal Ancestry report can show you how much your ancestry traces back to Neanderthals using SNPs across all your autosomes and X chromosome(s).
Looking back can be both fun and enlightening because your DNA offers a biological record that can reveal ancestral connections to a time when modern humans first migrated from Africa and encountered our early human cousins, the Neanderthals.
Using advanced science, our team of population geneticists, engineers, and designers built a fun and engaging feature. The Neanderthal Ancestry Report also shows whether you have more or fewer Neanderthal variants than other 23andMe customers and what traits could be influenced by your Neanderthal DNA variants, such as your likelihood of feeling angry when hungry or “hangry.”
Scientists still uncover what these early connections mean, the traits we may carry because of those encounters, and what other ancient human DNA may still linger in our genome.
Traits
Exploring your DNA offers deeper insight into more than just your ancestral origins and DNA relatives. It can also tell you about different traits that make you, you.
The Ancestry Service includes more than 30 Traits Reports. Our Traits Reports are a fun way to explore how your DNA makes you unique, from your food preferences, like whether you enjoy salty versus sweet snacks, to physical features, like whether you are more or less likely to have cheek dimples, a unibrow, or freckles.
More with 23andMe+ Premium
23andMe’s Ancestry Service includes innovative and scientifically robust features, more than 3,500 geographic regions, interactive features and ways to explore your connections to DNA Relatives.
The Ancestry Service also opens the door to exploring your genetics further. You can seamlessly upgrade to 23andMe+ Premium, for more additional ancestry features, like Historical MatchesSM, advanced DNA Relative filters, and access to more DNA Relatives. You get all that as well as more insights into your health.
Are you still waiting to be a customer? Find out more about 23andMe’s Ancestry Service here, or 23andMe+ Premium here.
