Maybe the gap between the Greatest Generation and Generation Z, or the chasm between Baby Boomers and Gen X, isn’t a divide at all; perhaps we just haven’t had the right tools to see the thread that connects us, a thread woven into our very DNA.
October is Family History Month, a time to reflect on where we come from and all those who came before us. 23andMe offers people a different way to learn about themselves and their families, giving families an opportunity to see the DNA they share across generations.
23andMe’s newest tool, GrandTree, allows families to connect deeper across three generations, letting them see the thread that ties grandchildren to their grandparents. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-1024x705.jpg" alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-25777" width="1024" height="705" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-1024x705.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-300x207.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-768x529.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-880x606.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-1180x812.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree.jpg 1188w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />If a grandchild, and a grandparent are 23andMe customers, and they are sharing their 23andMe results with each other, GrandTree allows them to see more than just the percentage of DNA that they share. It also allows customers the chance to trace a trait through generations. Showing if a grandchild got their red hair largely  from one grandparent or another, for instance. If a grandparent or grandchild hasn’t yet tested, 23andMe makes it easy for customers to invite them to sign up.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-2-1024x723.jpg" alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-25776" width="1024" height="723" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-2-1024x723.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-2-300x212.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-2-768x542.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-2-880x621.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree-2.jpg 1082w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Looking at DNA offers a unique way to connect across generational lines, and the GrandTree tool is just one of many features  23andMe has to do that. Customers can also use 23andMe’s Share and Compare feature to see what traits and ancestry they share with a brother or sister, or their parents, or children. You can even see the overlapping segments on each chromosome that you share. You can go deeper by using the DNA Relatives tool to do something similar but also compare yourself with a parent, grandparent, child, (or anyone you share with), and see detailed segment data.
Beyond that 23andMe’s Ancestry Composition feature, which highlights the mix of places where your ancestors came from, includes a feature that allows you to compare your DNA to your parents’ — if they are using 23andMe — and see a “split view” of what ancestry came from your mother and what came from your father.
When families use 23andMe together, they connect in a different way, tracing the thread of traits, and ancestry, that links child to parent and grandparent, bridging the gap between each generation.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree3-1024x751.jpg" alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-25775" width="1024" height="751" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree3-1024x751.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree3-300x220.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree3-768x563.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree3-880x645.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GrandTree3.jpg 1042w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Connecting Generations with 23andMe’s GrandTree

Over the last year or so, we’ve been working hard to update some of our most popular tools here at 23andMe, and sometimes in the<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/haplogroup-300x300.png" alt="" class="alignright wp-image-25344 size-medium" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/haplogroup-300x300.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/haplogroup-150x150.png 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/haplogroup-271x271.png 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/haplogroup-372x372.png 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/haplogroup-574x574.png 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/haplogroup.png 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> flurry of all that activity, we make a mistake.
This week one of our customers alerted us to outdated information provided within one of our paternal haplogroup summaries. Although the erroneous reference occurred in just one section of one report, the error has big implications for people with Ashkenazi ancestry.
The reference, which we missed in the editing process, was to a discredited theory about the origins of the Ashkenazi Jewish population. 23andMe corrected the error within 24 hours of being alerted about it. Our mentioning the so-called “Khazar theory” was an unfortunate mistake for which we apologize, and 23andMe does not endorse the theory. In fact, one of our scientists was co-author on one of the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3928">papers</a> that discredits it.   
 
 
We regularly field questions, concerns, and suggestions from customers. These communications help us make the 23andMe experience the best it can be. Don&#8217;t hesitate to contact our Customer Care if you have questions or concerns of your own.

Haplogroup Report Edit

Papa was a rolling stone. (His Y chromosome was anyway.)
The story of your paternal-line ancestry is the story of an extraordinary migration. Over 300,000 years and 10,000 generations, Dad’s male-line descendants have rolled over land and sea, hunted mammoths, created pottery, forged iron and survived an Ice Age. And today, the genetic voyage leads to the person reading this blog — you!
Through 23andMe&#8217;s new and improved <a href="https://you.23andme.com/reports/paternal_haplogroup/">Paternal Haplogroup report</a>, customers* can trace the footsteps of their paternal-line ancestors over thousands of generations of human history. And that should be music to the ears of anybody interested in their family’s unique history. 
<h6>What is a Paternal Haplogroup?</h6>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/male_line-300x214.png" alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25625" width="300" height="214" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/male_line-300x214.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/male_line-768x548.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/male_line-1024x731.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/male_line-880x628.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/male_line-1180x842.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/male_line.png 1450w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />The most obvious artifact of your paternal ancestry may be your surname. But surnames are actually a pretty recent invention, and names change over time as records are rewritten or lost. For some cultures, even the concept of a paternal surname is foreign. 
Genetics offers another way to discover your paternal-line history that doesn&#8217;t depend on a paper trail. And it can tell a story that reaches back hundreds of thousands of years.
Each generation, fathers pass down copies of their Y chromosomes to their sons. So if you are a genetic male, you inherited your Y chromosome — and all the genetic markers it contains — from the unbroken line of men in your paternal lineage.
Alone, this doesn&#8217;t reveal that much about your heritage. But by comparing the genetic markers on Y chromosomes from men all over the world, researchers have built a genealogical tree of all paternal lineages. This tree reaches back more than 275,000 years to just one man who lived in East Africa: the most recent paternal-line common ancestor of all humans living today. 
Your paternal-line &#8220;haplogroup&#8221; describes how your lineage is related to all the others. Each haplogroup is a family of lines that descend from a common ancestor. In the Paternal Haplogroup tree, this is represented by a branch or a cluster of branches. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/paternal_hap_tree-300x176.png" alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25627" width="300" height="176" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/paternal_hap_tree-300x176.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/paternal_hap_tree-768x450.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/paternal_hap_tree-1024x600.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/paternal_hap_tree-880x516.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/paternal_hap_tree-1180x692.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/paternal_hap_tree.png 1790w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
To trace your ancient paternal-line history, we can follow the path from the root of the tree out to your particular branch. And, just as you and a first cousin are connected through your grandparents, you and many others around the world are connected through the common ancestor of your haplogroup. 
If your lineage carries haplogroup R-M405, for example, you and King Henry IV of France can trace your paternal lines back to the father of haplogroup R-M405. 
<h6>Tracing the Migrations of Your Paternal-Line Ancestors</h6>
<div id="attachment_25626" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25626" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/hap_C_migrations-1024x432.png" alt="" class="wp-image-25626 size-large" width="1024" height="432" />Major migration routes of Haplogroup C-M130</div>
Researchers can discover the geographic origins and migrations of some of our paternal-line ancestors by comparing where different haplogroups are found around the world and how they are related to each other. All of our stories begin at the root of the haplogroup tree in eastern Africa. For over 200,000 years, our ancestors hunted ancient gazelle across the seas of grass and split into diverse groups within Africa. Then, sometime around sixty thousand years ago, one small group crossed the Red Sea and forged new paths across all of Eurasia.
In the new Paternal Haplogroup report, customers follow the major migration routes of their paternal lineage, branch by branch, over tens of thousands of years.
<h6>Ancient DNA Sheds New Light on Old Stories&#8230;<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/yamnaya_paternal-263x300.jpg" alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25629" width="263" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/yamnaya_paternal-263x300.jpg 263w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/yamnaya_paternal.jpg 350w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 263px) 100vw, 263px" /></h6>
With major improvements in technology, geneticists are unraveling more of our ancestral mysteries. One prime example is the origin and spread of haplogroup R — the dominant paternal haplogroup in western Eurasia. In the early 2000s, the available evidence suggested that men bearing haplogroup R reached their prominence after surviving the last great peak of the Ice Age nearly 20,000 years ago.
But just in the last several years, researchers using  DNA extracted from the remains of men who lived in Central Asia and Europe thousands of years ago have connected the recent spread of haplogroup R to <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/thousands-horsemen-may-have-swept-bronze-age-europe-transforming-local-population">men who swept down from the steppes</a> only 5,000 years ago. 
These migrations began with an early Bronze-Age culture called the Yamnaya. They were herders, and needed to travel fast to keep their livestock fed. Atop the world&#8217;s first domesticated horses and armed with some of the earliest bronze tools and weapons, Yamnaya men spilled east into Central Asia and west into the Balkans. Their descendants eventually stretched from the British Isles to India.
In addition to their technology and paternal lines, the Yamnaya also brought their language. This language was the ancestor of the Indo-European language family, a group that includes 445 living languages spoken historically from the western tip of Europe to central and southern Asia.
<h6>&#8230;And New Stories Are Written</h6>
With the technology to <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/game-changing-study-suggests-first-polynesians-voyaged-all-way-east-asia">extract ancient DNA</a> and <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/almost-all-living-people-outside-africa-trace-back-single-migration-more-50000-years">sequence the entire human genome</a>, new doors are opening in the study of human population history and the pace of new discoveries about our ancestors is accelerating.
What&#8217;s more, researchers from all fields have a new set of tools: people like you. From professional genealogists to beginner hobbyists, individuals are researching their family histories and sharing data like never before.
As geneticists, genealogists, and citizen scientists work together to uncover new evidence and gain new insights, new details will be added to all of our ancestral stories. 
* Because genetic females do not have Y chromosomes, 23andMe is unable to directly determine the haplogroup of their paternal line. Female customers can, however, link accounts with a brother or father to receive their paternal haplogroup results.

The Paternal-Line Story Written In Your DNA

Bones found in an old mine at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco have scientists rethinking their understanding of mankind’s origins in Africa —
<div id="attachment_25487" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25487" class="wp-image-25487 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/546212a-f2-300x104.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="104" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/546212a-f2-300x104.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/546212a-f2-768x267.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/546212a-f2-880x306.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/546212a-f2.jpg 946w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />A view of the site at Jebel Irhoud where the bones of early humans were found. Photo: Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig</div>
indicating that our story there is much more complicated and goes back longer than we once thought.
The fossils — the oldest homo sapiens remains ever found — counter the idea that modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago in one verdant valley in <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/genetics-101/human-prehistory-101-out-of-eastern-africa/">East Africa</a>.
Instead, the find points to the possibility that modern humans emerged as far back<a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v546/n7657/full/nature22335.html"> as 300,000 years ago</a>, and in multiple places across Africa. Our origins were not in one “cradle of civilization,” according to the researchers.
“There is no Garden of Eden in Africa, or if there is a Garden of Eden, it’s Africa,”<a href="https://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossil-claim-rewrites-our-species-history-1.22114"> said paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin</a> of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and the lead author of the studies published in<a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v546/n7657/full/nature22335.html"> Nature</a>. “The Garden of Eden is the size of Africa.”
Not everyone agrees, suggesting that perhaps <a href="http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2017/06/out-of-north-africa.html">North Africa</a> is the site of human origin, but the findings in the journal<a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v546/n7657/full/nature22335.html"> Nature</a>, are only the latest <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25485" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Skull-178x300.jpg" alt="" width="178" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Skull-178x300.jpg 178w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Skull.jpg 441w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 178px) 100vw, 178px" />in a series of archeological and DNA inspired discoveries in the last five years that have significantly altered our understanding of human history.
From genetic evidence of intermixing between modern humans,<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/news/the-neanderthal-within/"> Neanderthals</a>, Denisovans — and possibly other now extinct archaic humans — to new fossil remains of<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/hello-cousin/"> Homo naledi</a>, perhaps a primitive offshoot of our direct lineage, found at the so-called Rising Star Cave in South Africa. Each new bit of information has added greater complexity to the already interesting human story.
In truth the findings fill in gaps in both the fossil and genetic record that scientists are using to trace back to the dawn of humanity. The human family tree is much more complicated, and interesting, than we thought. It includes many twisting branches, some that lead to now our extinct archaic human cousins, some that curve back into our own lineage.

Human Origins

How far back can you trace your maternal line? To your mother? Your grandmother? How about your maternal great-great-great-grandmother? Whether you know your maternal-line genealogy back ten generations or none at all, you can discover the history of your ancestors going back tens of thousands of years. Their story is in your DNA — your mitochondrial DNA, to be precise. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/maternal_pedigree-300x167.png" alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25378" width="300" height="167" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/maternal_pedigree-300x167.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/maternal_pedigree-768x427.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/maternal_pedigree-1024x569.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/maternal_pedigree-880x489.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/maternal_pedigree-1180x656.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/maternal_pedigree.png 1189w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Each generation, mothers pass down their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to their children. Both their daughters and their sons inherit mtDNA, but only women pass it on. As a result, you inherited your mtDNA from the long, unbroken line of women who make up your maternal line. 
Researchers study the genetic markers in mtDNA to trace the histories of our maternal lines. Using these markers, they can identify maternal haplogroups, families of maternal lineages that descend from the same woman.   
In fact, they&#8217;ve discovered that we are all direct maternal-line descendants of a single woman who lived in eastern Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago! As her daughters and their daughters migrated out of the cradle of modern humans, they branched out into different groups that crossed Africa and the globe. Many of these migrations can be traced using haplogroups. 
At 23andMe, we&#8217;ve just released a redesigned version of our Maternal Haplogroup report, placing customers’ own ancestral stories within the context of the broader human story. We determine each customer&#8217;s maternal haplogroup by looking at the genetic markers in their mtDNA. Then, we walk each customer step by step through the points at which their maternal line branched off from others over thousands of years. Furthermore, the report lets you know if you share a maternal haplogroup with a notable individual or groups of individuals in history.
Customers wanting to explore this redesigned report can go<a href="https://you.23andme.com/reports/maternal_haplogroup/"> here</a>.  Not yet a customer? Visit our<a href="https://store.23andme.com/en-us/cart/"> store</a>.
[sp_image responsive=&#8221;1&#8243; id=&#8221;25379&#8243;]

23andMe’s Updated Maternal Haplogroup Report

Inside each of us is a beautiful, rich genetic story. Some of which is told through the people with whom we are related.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25268" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/You-Related-1.jpg 414w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> 
23andMe’s new Ancestry Report has reimagined how you see these relatives — both close and distant — not just matching you with people with whom you share pieces of DNA, but putting those matches into context that tells you something about yourself.
Our new Ancestry Report introduces you to the 23andMe customers who make up Your DNA Family in a whole new way.
<h6>Your DNA Relatives, Let&#8217;s Do the Numbers</h6>
So how many relatives are we talking about, here? As you trace your family tree back in time, you can see that you have more ancestors with each generation. Look back 150 to 200 years, for instance, and you likely have 64 fourth-great grandparents. That many people have a lot of descendants. In fact, using a simple model where each family has only two to three children, we estimate that the average person has 4,700 fifth cousins out there!
You can find a number of these cousins when you use 23andMe’s DNA Relatives tool. Most 23andMe customers find hundreds, or even thousands of DNA Relatives who have also chosen 23andMe to explore their genetic heritage. That’s a lot of people — and a lot of stories — to sort through!
Your DNA Family helps you get started with a high-level overview of your 23andMe DNA Relatives grouped by their prediction relationship to you. These groups include close relationships (up to second cousins), third to fourth cousins, and distant cousins (5th cousins or more distant).
The significance of these distant cousins isn’t so much about the number of matches you have, but what these matches can tell you about your family history. You may see this in how your DNA relatives share surnames, or ancestry or hometowns. This information could help inform some of what you may already know about your ancestors and where they came from. Or you may learn something new.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-25234" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1.png" alt="" width="979" height="523" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1.png 979w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1-300x160.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1-768x410.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/relative_buckets_wide-1-880x470.png 880w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 979px) 100vw, 979px" />See Your DNA Relatives Around the World
Seeing your relatives in a new way offers you insight about your ancestry you might not otherwise have. The Your DNA Family report features map to show you the <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25222" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-300x221.png" alt="" width="300" height="221" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-300x221.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-768x566.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-1024x755.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-880x649.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles-1180x870.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/us_map_with_toggles.png 1652w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />distribution of your DNA Relatives across the United States and around the world.
The pattern of how those matches plot on that map may reflect both decades-old migration  or more recent patterns. But they tell you a story that could include a family lodged in one region generation after generation, or ancestors who immigrated across continents or oceans seeking new opportunities.
<h6>Ancestry Composition Patterns</h6>
Human history is the story of migration, and clues to that story is also found in your DNA.
While your history is tied to the history of each of your cousins through at least one common ancestor, it is also tied to specific regions in the world.
23andMe’s Ancestry Composition can show you the mix of ancestry you have, but we’ve also added in features that help you compare that mix with your DNA Relatives.
This helps you explore the commonalities and differences in your ancestry. You can see this in a summary of the Ancestry Compositions of your DNA Relatives. You’ll find out how many different populations are represented in the ancestry of your DNA Family as well as how many of your relatives have ancestry from each of those populations.
<h6>Traits of Your DNA Relatives<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25265" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module-300x186.png" alt="" width="300" height="186" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module-300x186.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module-768x477.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module-880x546.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/traits_module.png 918w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></h6>
23andMe’s New Ancestry Report also looks at this pool of DNA Relatives and asks what beyond segments of DNA do you share.
By looking at shared traits, the new report offers you another way of looking your DNA Family.  For instance, maybe you have more DNA Relatives who can wiggle their ears, or a chorus of singers with perfect pitch. Perhaps your DNA Family has more than its fair share of vegetarians.
The New Ancestry Report looks at  a collection of common habits, tastes, characteristics and abilities — drawn from responses to  surveys 23andMe customers answer —  and then we tell you how your DNA Family stands out. We can do that by comparing the percentage of your DNA Relatives who report having each trait to the matching percentage of all 23andMe customers.
<h6>A Starting Point for Your DNA Relative Search</h6>
Want to dig further? Connect with relatives using the DNA Relatives tool. In the tool, you can find individual relatives and explore their profiles one at a time. Message your cousins to share information, and compare DNA segments with multiple matches to find clues to your shared family history.
To begin and end with words from our CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki:
“Every day I watch people connect with their DNA family, and see how the concept of family can evolve into something greater — and even more meaningful.” 
Find out how your DNA Family can help you discover your rich genetic story.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-25231" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AC_comparison_apr12th-e1492192125921.png" alt="" width="640" height="518" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AC_comparison_apr12th-e1492192125921.png 640w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AC_comparison_apr12th-e1492192125921-300x243.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />

Meet Your DNA Family

Robin Smith, 23ndMe Senior Scientist


When did that 2 percent Yakut ancestry make its way into your family tree?
The newest <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry">23andMe Ancestry feature</a> may have the answer for you.
This feature is another first for 23andMe, which broke new ground by offering customers a detailed accounting of their genetic ancestry with the Ancestry Composition report. Customers who have connected accounts with a parent can also see what ancestries were inherited from each side of the family tree. The Ancestry Composition report also allows customers to dig deeper into their genetic ancestry with a genome map of their ancestry. (To learn more about this feature, see the <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/meet-your-chromosome-painting/">Meet Your Chromosome Painting</a> blog post.)


Now, 23andMe has added a fourth analysis to the report, which we call <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">&#8220;Ancestry Timeline.&#8221;</a> This feature allows customers to go back in time and learn approximately when a particular ancestry entered their family tree.

Ancestry Timeline was made possible through pioneering work by 23andMe Research Scientist <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/a-conversation-with-23andmes-kasia-bryc/">Kasia Bryc</a>, whose previous <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/dna-usa-2/">research provided insights into the American melting pot</a>.
<div id="attachment_25230" style="width: 881px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25230" class="wp-image-25230 size-large" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ancestry_timeline_sarah_antonio-871x1024.png" alt="" width="871" height="1024" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ancestry_timeline_sarah_antonio-871x1024.png 871w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ancestry_timeline_sarah_antonio-255x300.png 255w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ancestry_timeline_sarah_antonio-768x903.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ancestry_timeline_sarah_antonio-748x880.png 748w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ancestry_timeline_sarah_antonio-1003x1180.png 1003w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 871px) 100vw, 871px" />According their Ancestry Composition results, Sarah is about 25% British &amp; Irish and Antonio is about 20% Iberian. The Ancestry Timeline feature puts these results in a new context. Sarah likely had a recent ancestor (a grandparent, great-grandparent, or 2nd great-grandparent) who was 100 percent British &amp; Irish, while you have to go pretty far back on Antonio&#8217;s family tree to find someone who was 100 percent Iberian (5-8 generations ago.)</div>
23andMe determines your Ancestry Timeline by analyzing the pattern of ancestry in your genome. It looks at both the number and size of segments that derive from a particular ancestry as well as their distribution across your chromosomes. Large segments of ancestry in your genome that all come from the same population suggest a recent ancestor, while shorter segments suggest a more distant one.
An important caveat of the Ancestry Timeline feature is that it assumes that your ancestry from each population originally comes from a single (recent or distant) ancestor.
It also says nothing about where a particular ancestor was born—only their genetics. Therefore, a British &amp; Irish ancestor born in Philadelphia would look the same as one born in Dublin. Ancestry Timeline also has the same limitations as Ancestry Composition, in that it doesn&#8217;t report contributions by recently admixed populations (e.g. &#8220;Mexican&#8221; ancestry is reported as a mixture of European, Native American, and African ancestry) and trace ancestries (e.g. &lt;0.5 percent) should be taken with a grain of salt.


For a more technical explanation of how the Ancestry Timeline feature works, <a href="https://permalinks.23andme.com/pdf/23-14_admixture_date_estimator.pdf">read our white paper</a>.

23andMe’s New Ancestry Timeline

Sarah Laskey, 23andMe Product Scientist
The Chromosome Painting is one of my favorite parts of the 23andMe experience because it is packed with information. Then again, it can also be a little intimidating because it shows so much all at once. In this blog post, I’ll walk through some basics of what your Chromosome Painting shows. And I&#8217;ll explain what kinds of stories it can tell you about <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">your genetic ancestry</a>.
<h6>What is a Chromosome Painting?</h6>
Your Chromosome Painting is another way of looking at your Ancestry Composition results. It shows a colorful representation of the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up your genome. Here is a photo of what real human chromosomes look like under a microscope, side by side with my Chromosome Painting:<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24850 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-880x464.png" alt="" width="880" height="464" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-880x464.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-300x158.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-768x405.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-1024x540.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-1180x623.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype.png 1520w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
In the microscope photograph on the left, the chromosomes are laid out vertically. In the Chromosome Painting on the right, they’re shown as colorful horizontal bars. In both images, the chromosomes are shown in pairs and labeled with numbers (1 through 22) or the letters X and Y.
My Chromosome Painting has two copies of the X chromosome because I’m female. The picture on the left shows the genome of a biological male, who has one copy of the X chromosome and one copy of the Y chromosome. Y chromosomes aren’t shown in Chromosome Paintings.
In the Chromosome Painting, gray regions in chromosomes 13, 14, 15, 21, and 22 represent parts of the genome where 23andMe doesn’t test any markers because the DNA sequences in those regions are repetitive and hard to measure.
<h6>Exploring your genetic ancestry</h6>
In your Chromosome Painting, your genome is “painted” with colors representing up to 31 different ancestries. You can hover over or click on the different ancestries in your Chromosome Painting to learn where they’re found in your genome.
The 31 Ancestry Composition populations are organized in a hierarchy, which reflects the genetic structure of global populations. For example, Britain and Ireland are part of Northwest Europe, which is part of Europe. To see this hierarchy in action, take a closer look at my Chromosome Painting:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24851 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-880x663.png" alt="" width="880" height="663" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-880x663.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-300x226.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-768x579.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-1024x771.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-1180x889.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting.png 1476w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
My Chromosome Painting shows genetic ancestry from several different fine-resolution populations like British &amp; Irish, French &amp; German, and Ashkenazi Jewish. But these are all sub-categories of European. When I click “European” on the right hand sidebar, my whole genome is colored in “European blue”:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24852 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-880x663.png" alt="" width="880" height="663" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-880x663.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-300x226.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-768x579.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-1024x771.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-1180x889.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european.png 1476w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
What can you do with your own high-resolution picture of the Ancestry Composition on each of your chromosomes? You can click on the different populations to understand how they relate to each other and where they’re found in your genome. You also can talk to family members (or connect with them on 23andMe) to learn which branches of your family contributed which parts of your genetic ancestry.
<h6>One segment, two segment, red segment, blue segment</h6>
The colors in your Chromosome Painting tell you about your Ancestry Composition, but you can learn even more by looking at the number and length of the DNA segments assigned to each ancestry. Everyone inherits half of their DNA from their mother and half from their father. When DNA is passed from parents to their children, the two chromosomes in each pair are randomly shuffled together in a process called recombination.
This process breaks up long segments of a single ancestry into shorter segments. Sometimes very short segments of ancestry are lost during recombination and don’t get passed to the next generation. This is why ancestry from your distant ancestors only shows up in a few short segments of your genome, if at all.
The technical term for the genetic mixing of previously separate populations is admixture. If you have different DNA segments painted with different colors in your Chromosome Painting, those are evidence of admixture in your genetic history. Take a look at these two Chromosome Paintings side by side:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24853 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-880x498.png" alt="" width="880" height="498" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-880x498.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-300x170.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-768x435.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-1024x579.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-1180x668.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white.png 1944w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
<h6>Every Chromosome Painting Tells a Story</h6>
These Chromosome Paintings show very different genetic histories, and not just because of their Ancestry Compositions! Even if we ignore the colors themselves, the two pictures are pretty different. The long, unbroken stretches of color on the left are evidence of recent admixture, while the short segments of different ancestries on the right suggest admixture many generations ago.
My Chromosome Painting is the one on the left. I have one grandparent whose family came from Germany, one grandparent whose family came from Ireland, and two Ashkenazi Jewish grandparents. In other words, my ancestors from different European populations just started mixing together in the past two or three generations. The Chromosome painting on the right shows someone who identifies as Latino (Antonio, an Engineer at 23andMe), whose Native American (yellow), African (pink) and European (blue) ancestors probably started mixing with each other many generations ago.
How can you use this information to understand your own Chromosome Painting? In general, if your most recent ancestor from a population was very recent, you will have segments of that ancestry on more chromosomes, and those segments will be longer, than if your most recent ancestor was many generations ago.
<h6>Thanks, Mom and Dad!</h6>
If you have a biological parent or child who is also a 23andMe user, you can connect with them to improve the resolution of your Ancestry Composition results.
Connecting with a parent will also reorganize your Chromosome Painting so that the top chromosome in each pair is the one you inherited from your mother, and the bottom chromosome is the one you inherited from your father.
<h6>Connecting or not with a Parent</h6>
Even if you are not connected with either of your parents through 23andMe, you may still be able to learn a little bit about their ancestry by looking at your own Chromosome Painting:
<ul>
<li>If you are male, you inherited all of the ancestry painted on your X chromosome from your mother.</li>
<li>If you have the same ancestry painted in the same place on both copies of a chromosome, then you inherited the same ancestry from both of your parents in that region of your genome.</li>
<li>If you share a segment of DNA with a <a href="https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/">DNA Relative</a>, and you know whether you are connected to that relative on your maternal or your paternal side, then you inherited that segment of DNA (and its ancestry) from the same side of your family through which you’re connected to that relative.</li>
<li>If your parents come from different genetic backgrounds, then you may be able to guess which chromosomes you inherited from which of your parents. You can do this by by looking at the ancestries painted on each chromosome. For technical reasons, this will work even better if you are connected with a parent. That is because our computational algorithm will be able to phase your raw data with more accuracy.</li>
</ul>
<h6>A deeper dive: Confidence levels</h6>
If you’ve mastered the basic details of your Chromosome Painting and you’d like to explore at an even more advanced level, click on “Change confidence level” and move the slider that appears above your Chromosome Painting. You can explore the different views of your Chromosome Painting at different confidence levels. You can also compare those different views to each other.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24854 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-880x218.png" alt="" width="880" height="218" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-880x218.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-300x74.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-768x190.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1.png 964w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
The algorithm we use to calculate your Ancestry Composition analyzes one small piece of your DNA at a time. For each piece of your DNA, we calculate the probability of that piece coming from 31 different populations. The confidence slider on the Chromosome Painting allows you to explore our estimates of your genetic ancestry at different probability cutoffs. For example, if a segment of your DNA has a 55 percent chance of being Japanese, then that segment will be painted as Japanese at the 50 percent confidence level. But at the 60 to 90 percent level it will be painted with a more broad ancestry (either Broadly East Asian, Broadly East Asian &amp; Native American, or Unassigned).
<h6>Putting it all together</h6>
Everyone’s genetic history is a little different. Every Chromosome Painting has a different story to tell too. This means that you may learn more about your ancestry from some of the suggestions in this blog post than from others. Just remember – like every true work of art, your Chromosome Painting isn’t something to be understood.  It&#8217;s something to be explored.
For a detailed technical explanation of how we calculate your ancestry and paint your chromosomes, check out the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/">Ancestry Composition Guide</a>.

Meet Your Chromosome Painting

DNA extracted from bones at a burial site in a rocky valley on a remote island in the South Atlantic could hold important information for those with ancestral roots in Africa.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1974" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oldafricamap1508-300x221.png" alt="oldafricamap1508" width="300" height="221" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oldafricamap1508-300x221.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oldafricamap1508.png 350w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
A fascinating article in <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/what-dna-reveals-about-st-helena-s-freed-slaves-1.21096?WT.mc_id=SFB_NNEWS_1508_RHBox">Nature</a>, describes work led by <a href="http://snm.ku.dk/english/staffsnm/staff/?pure=en/persons/368359">Hannes Schroeder</a> to make that connection. Schroeder, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, and his team have extracted genetic material from skeletal remains of some of the thousands of slaves who were freed by the British Navy between 1840 and 1865.
Taken from slave ships on their way to the New World as many as 20,000 people, many of them children, were saved from enslavement in the Americas, but were then unceremoniously deposited on the island of St. Helena. Sick and emaciated from their brutal ordeal many of them died there. The island’s Rupert Valley is the final resting place of more than 8,000 people.

This little known history would have been forgotten altogether if the graves were not found a few years ago during a construction project. The find, and the promise of sequencing the DNA of some of the bones there, offered Schroeder and his team a tantalizing opportunity – a chance to sequence individuals who’d been destined for slavery in the New World but never got there. Their DNA could reveal what written records have failed to track, the specific regions in Africa from where slaves came.
This is the part of Schroeder’s work that is most interesting for us here at 23andMe, where our own <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/the-african-genetics-project">African Genetics Project</a> is also trying to make that connection, albeit in a different way.
While much has been done to document the history of the enslavement of the more than 12 million Africans who survived the brutal Middle Passage to wind up in bondage in the New World, this effort, and 23andMe’s, offers a chance to look beyond the limitations of the written record. We know that the Africans enslaved in the Americas were not a monolithic group but individuals from different cultures and with different languages who were forced together into slavery.
Schroeder and his team have already sequenced partial genomes of about 20 individuals, and found that they represent a diverse collection of African groups. As the article notes some of the samples indicate shared ancestry with West and Central African ethnic groups, such as the Bamoun and Kongo. But for the others, matches could not be found. This is likely because there are not diverse reference data sets to compare them too. Schroeder is hoping that two medically-related sequencing efforts in Africa will help change that.
In the meantime 23andMe’s African Ancestry Project has begun to recruit people in the United States, who emigrated, or whose parents emigrated, from several specific countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to improve its set of African reference data. This will not just improve the information we can report back to people of African descent, it could also help yield new insights into the TransAtlantic slave trade.
“23andMe researchers hope to identify direct connections between locations in Africa and the Americas, possibly adding important details to the historical record,” said Joanna Mountain, Ph.D., senior director of research at 23andMe.
Like 23andMe Schroeder and his team are looking to make direct connections from specific locations in Africa and the individuals who wound up in St. Helena. In turn this may also help people of African descent living in the Americas a bridge to their own ancestral past.
Fatimah Jackson, a biological anthropologist at Howard University in Washington DC who is sequencing ancient DNA from other slave burial sites, is quoted in the Nature article as saying that his kind of research has the potential of changing people’s perception of the past.
“It&#8217;s a very personal thing for us,” Jackson said. “It&#8217;s not just ancient DNA. It&#8217;s ancient DNA of potential ancestors.”

Ancestry Service — Page 15