Editor&#8217;s note: Alice dropped us a line to update us on her story. 
&#8220;23andme has helped me AGAIN with my ongoing search! If you&#8217;ll remember I&#8217;m adopted and found my bio mom via information I got from the 23andme test &#8211; but when I found my bio dad, it turns out HE was adopted too! Now I am on the trail of my father&#8217;s biological father.&#8221; 
Alice Toler is an accomplished artist and writer, but she calls herself a nerd of sorts. 
Really more than that – for most of her life Alice has felt disconnected from others, more like “an alien.”
“My mind doesn&#8217;t seem to work like other people&#8217;s,” Alice said. “Throughout my life I felt a little bit like I’d been beamed down from some other place. I later learned that a lot of adoptees feel like that – disconnected from others in some way.”
<div id="attachment_19163" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19163" class="size-medium wp-image-19163" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-300x224.jpg" alt="Alice at 7 with a photo of her biological dad at the same age." width="300" height="224" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-300x224.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-768x574.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-1024x765.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-880x657.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-1180x881.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Alice at 7 with a photo of her biological dad at the same age.</div>
That feeling changed a bit recently when she met her birth mother for the first time with the help of 23andMe and a lot of detective work of her own.
So perhaps it was appropriate that Alice met her mother for the first time in the otherworldly landscape of the Black Rock desert in Nevada. For a week each year, this wasteland hosts an “ephemeral city” of tens of thousands of unconventional thinkers at the annual Burning Man festival, where West-coast tech gurus and professional engineers meet hippies and alien abductees to create some of the most ambitious interactive art on the planet. Though off-season and empty of revelers during their day spent there, the open desert provided a fittingly uncanny backdrop for the first intense exchange of information between a woman and her child, separated at birth.
“The experience was surreal,” Alice said. “She was so happy to meet me, and she has a friendly dorkiness to her that suddenly opened a window of understanding onto my own dorky personality. We are nerds together!”
The story of how Alice found her mother is long and complicated, involving decades of on-again and off-again searching. But her big break came after finding a distant cousin through 23andMe.
Although she was adopted by a British couple in the Bahamas, she turns out to have genetic family roots in New Mexico and also discovered she has Native American ancestry. Finding her birth mother and then her birth father, and learning about her ancestry, grounded her in a way she never thought possible.
“I went from having no information at all, to finding out that I have extensive recorded family lines on my mother&#8217;s side–in fact, my grandmother&#8217;s family is recorded all the way back to the Spanish conquistadors,” Alice said.
And her life is richer, she said.
“Most people only have two parents and two ancestral lines,” she said. “I have four parents, more cousins (both adoptive and genetic) than I can count, ancestral lines documented back hundreds of years, AND the challenge of a new mystery to solve. I am truly lucky.”

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Connecting With The Past

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-18559 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1704" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-768x511.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-880x586.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9696-1180x785.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Greta had given up on ever finding her mother.
From her adoption papers she had a name, Carolyn Palmer, but decades of searching never got her any closer to finding the woman who gave birth to her, or any other blood relative for that matter.
“My missing family history amounted to a million missing pieces that left me feeling vulnerable and disconnected,” she said.
So by the time she joined 23andMe it wasn’t really about finding family members, she just wanted to learn a little bit more about herself.
That all changed earlier this year when Greta got an email from another 23andMe member.
“&#8217;I am new to this <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">DNA relative finder</a> website, but it seems we are first cousins! This is a pretty neat discovery,&#8217;” said an email from her new-found cousin Laura Oliver.
Greta was stunned. It was her first contact with a blood relative.
Greta and Laura exchanged emails and then Laura mentioned her grandparents names, Thomas and Sadie Palmer.
“I gasped in disbelief as I realized that, for the first time in my life, I was hearing from such a close relative. In that initial email she also told me that she was the grand-daughter of Thomas and Sadie Palmer. My biological mother’s name was Carolyn Palmer. I began to cry,” Greta said. 
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Then the bitter pain of learning that she was just a few months too late to meet her mother, who had died less than a year before.
“But you have a sister who is still alive,” Laura told Greta.
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“The words still take my breath away. Laura went on to tell me that my living sister’s name was Stacy Arena and that she was “so beautiful.”
Unbeknownst to Greta, Stacy had been searching too.   It was just that Stacy didn’t know where to start looking. More than 20 years ago, after Stacy’s older sister died in an accident, her mother told her that she had a sister, whom her mother had given up for adoption at birth.
But her mother had told her nothing more and wouldn&#8217;t speak about it. So for Stacy, all she had were questions. Who was her older sister?   What did she look like? Where was she?
Ever since then Stacy would wonder whether she was passing her sister in the street. Sometimes she’d look out into a crowd and scanning for a women who looked like her. “Could that be her?” she’d ask herself.
It wasn’t until her cousin Laura made the connection through 23andMe, that Stacy could finally answer those questions. A few weeks after connecting online the two sisters met for the first time, hugging in the front yard of Stacy’s home in South Carolina, holding on to each other for a very long time.
Inside the living room the two sisters thumbed through family photo albums. Greta marveling at pictures of people who were strangers to her but who were her relatives. She spent a long time staring at pictures of her mother, looking at her face and eyes.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-18560 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1704" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-768x511.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-880x586.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-1180x785.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />
“I’m connected to all these people I’ve never seen before. This was my family,” Greta said. “It’s quite disorienting.”
With her sister sitting next to her Stacy marveled at the miracle of the two finding each other.
“If it weren’t for 23andMe this never would have happened,” she said.
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

Sisters Connect with 23andMe

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-18189" title="DVelasco" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DVelasco.jpg" alt="" width="628" height="418" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DVelasco.jpg 628w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DVelasco-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 628px) 100vw, 628px" />
On her 105th birthday, Dominguita Velasco danced so long that her worried family asked her to sit down.
When she turned 111, she had a party with friends and family and blew out the blaze of candles on her cake.
Never far from her daughter, grandson and great grandchildren and always involved in her Oakland neighborhood, Dominguita says the secret to her long life has been to “stay happy.”
Her great granddaughter thinks it might be something else as well.
“I don’t know but I think it’s genetic,” said Erika LaTour. “Her mother lived to 102.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-18191 size-full" title="Tita_with_hat,velvetCap,FlapperDress,1929" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita_with_hatvelvetCapFlapperDress1929.jpg" alt="" width="213" height="350" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita_with_hatvelvetCapFlapperDress1929.jpg 213w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita_with_hatvelvetCapFlapperDress1929-183x300.jpg 183w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 213px) 100vw, 213px" />
A long-time customer of 23andMe, Erika recently signed up her great-grandmother for the service.
The two wanted to delve into the genetics of both Dominguita’s interesting ancestry – she’s from Mexico and has a mix of Native American, Southern European, Sephardic, and a little Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry  – and the traits that may have contributed to her long and healthy life.
“She’s really just had some issues with high blood pressure but doesn’t really take any medication,” Erika said.
Although Dominguita has had some issues with her heart, her hearing, and glaucoma, she’s never felt burdened by them. Or, as she says, “I don’t have any pain.”
On Mother’s Day – May 12th—Dominguita will turn 112, making her the 28th oldest “validated living supercentenarian” in the world, according to Gerontology Research Group. 23andMe would like to wish her a happy birthday, and you can sign a card for her here or simply post your wishes on Twitter or 23andMe&#8217;s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/23andMe">Facebook</a> page.
<h2 dir="ltr">Supercentarian</h2>
A “supercentenarian” is anyone who lives to be more than 110. Of the more than a quarter of a million people genotyped by 23andMe, about 100 are over the century mark, but none are as supercentenarian as Dominguita.
While average life expectancy continues to rise, the reasons why some people live long and healthy lives—even working into their 90s and beyond—and others don’t are still not known. There are some intriguing possibilities.
One genetic link to longevity that appears to be pretty strong is the APOE gene, better known for its association with Alzheimer’s disease. In particular, while people with Alzheimer’s are more likely to have a version of the APOE gene known as e4, long-lived individuals are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23286790">less likely</a> to have the e4 version. Similarly, the e2 version of the APOE gene is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23040522">associated</a> with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s and higher odds of being long-lived.
Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Institute for Aging Research are focused on Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry and a few genetic variants in two genes – CEPT and APOC3 – that protect against certain conditions. A different variant in APOC3 among Amish people is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19074352">associated</a> with lower levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol. Meanwhile, another study identified variants in the FOXO3a gene that may protect against certain cancers and heart disease in people of Japanese ancestry. National Geographic recently included a graphic illustrating the studies.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-18193 size-medium" title="Tita and Erika 2012 holding hands" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita-and-Erika-2012-holding-hands-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita-and-Erika-2012-holding-hands-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tita-and-Erika-2012-holding-hands.jpg 628w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
<h2 dir="ltr">The Secret to a Long Life</h2>
However intriguing all of this is, no one has yet found the secret to a long life. Some of it is clearly genetic, but lifestyle and diet almost certainly play a significant role. On the Greek<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0"> Island of Ikaria</a>, a wonderful mix of diet, genes, and a relaxed and straightforward daily life seems to be particularly conducive to a long life.
And in Dominguita’s case, she may have benefited from all of those things. Her philosophy of staying happy, her genes, and her active life may all have helped her live a long life. A fixture in the local lore of Oakland, California, where she has lived since the early 1920s. Dominguita has by no means escaped hardship. She lost her husband and a daughter to tuberculosis and scraped and saved to raise her surviving daughter. She also had to work hard to keep her family restaurant afloat. But she did it all while remaining active in her community and surrounding herself with family.
Happy Birthday Dominguita, your life inspires us all.

A Birthday Wish For A Supercentenarian

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-18161 size-full" title="Grunge Map of Europe" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1736" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-1024x695.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-300x203.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-768x521.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-880x597.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/euro-map-1180x800.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />The story of H is really the story of people in modern Europe.
H refers to a maternal lineage – also known as a maternal haplogroup – that originated long ago in the Near East but expanded into Europe with the recession of the last Ice Age. H –with its dozens of subgroups – is the most prevalent haplogroup in Europe today, but it wasn’t always that way.
Recently a team of scientists used DNA extracted from human skeletal remains dating from around 500 years ago to nearly 6,000 years ago to reconstruct what they say is the first detailed genetic history of modern Europe. Modern humans were in Europe as far back as 35,000 years ago, overlapping with Neanderthals who’d arrived first. But in looking at the DNA, specifically the DNA that defines maternal lineages, scientists found that H was very rare in those early hunter-gatherers.
So how did H become so common in Europe?
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What about you?
23andMe can tell you where you fall on that maternal family tree with details on more than<a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/deep/"> 750 different maternal haplogroups</a>.
Check out what branch of the human family tree your maternal line falls.
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The scientists, who wrote about their findings in a<a href="https://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/full/ncomms2656.html"> paper published in the journal Nature Communications</a>, theorize that the dramatic shift in haplogroups mirrors different waves of migrations into Europe and the stark change from a hunter-gatherer culture to one dominated by agriculture. The DNA evidence supports this theory, they say, and is bolstered by the archeological evidence. It wasn’t just a movement of ideas and technology that transformed prehistoric Europe, but the movement of people.
“This is the first high-resolution genetic record of these lineages through time, and it is fascinating that we can directly observe both human DNA evolving in ‘real-time’, and the dramatic population changes that have taken place in Europe,” said Dr Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide’s Australian Center for Ancient DNA, a co-author of the study.
The mitochondrial DNA used in this study tells not only stories of human prehistory, but also personal ancestry stories.  Everyone can trace his or her maternal ancestry using DNA testing. Your maternal lineage, defined by a type of DNA called mitochondrial DNA, is passed down to you only from your mother, who got it from her mother and so on all the way back in time to “mitochondrial Eve.”
This little piece of DNA is almost totally unchanged through the generations, linking us back through time to our ancient ancestors. The very slow rate at which it changes allows scientists to pinpoint in time major changes in human history such as our migration out of Africa and the patterns of people moving across the planet.
Each time there is a change in that DNA – a mutation – it creates a new “branch” of the maternal family tree – which traces back generations from one mother to the next. By using information from archeology, history and even what we know about changes in climate, we are gaining a better and better understanding of human history.

Mother Europe

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-18144" title="neanderthal" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/neanderthal.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="270" />
By Amick Boone
They once numbered 300 strong, but the Oregon Cavemen, members of a Grants Pass booster club formed in 1922 whose members claim to be “direct descendants of the Neanderthal,” are fading fast.
Club members worry that as their numbers dwindle, soon there won’t be anyone around to protect their totem — a 17-foot fiberglass caveman statue that has long been a sort of guardian of the town, known as the gateway to the Oregon Caves National Monument.
The Oregon Caveman story appeared recently in an <a href="https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324010704578419171802521946.html?mod=ITP_AHED">article in the Wall Street Journal</a>, which detailed how the group fought tooth-and-nail to keep their animal-skin-wearing, club-wielding caveman standing tall on one of the main streets of Grants Pass.
The group’s original bylaws made claims regarding their Neanderthal lineage, but back then there was no way to know for sure.   These days, we have access to genetic testing that could help the Cavemen find out how much Neanderthal DNA they have, but it might not necessarily mean what they think. And the club might be as exclusive as they once believed.
Most non-African people do have Neanderthal DNA, on average about 2.5 percent, but some outliers have even more. However — sorry, Oregon Cavemen — Neanderthal DNA may not predispose you to an animal-print fashion sense or a taste for primitive weaponry.   In fact, what it means to have a higher percentage of Neanderthal DNA — whether it gives you a thicker forehead or makes you hairier, for instance — isn’t known.
Homo neandertalensis — thick-boned humans who thrived for hundreds of thousands of years in Europe and parts of Asia — died out about 30,000 years ago, while we modern humans (Homo sapiens) survived. Apart from some theories of how Neanderthals contribute to modern humans, including that they gave us some sort of <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110809/full/476136a.html">“hybrid vigor”</a> — according to Peter Parham, a geneticist at Stanford University School of Medicine — why we flourished and Neanderthals died out is an evolutionary mystery <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/find-your-inner-neanderthal/">we’ve yet to unravel</a>.
While the fate of the caveman statue in Grants Pass has very little to do with Neanderthals, it does give us a chance to revisit the topic of our ancient human cousins. Far from being dumb and unable to communicate, scientists have learned that Neanderthals used relatively complicated tools, created adornments, and likely had a spoken language.
Clearly our understanding of Neanderthals has evolved from the cartoonish caveman depictions of the past as we learn more about not just our shared DNA but also as more Neanderthal artifacts are uncovered.
As University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks noted in <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/decoding-neanderthals.html">a recent NOVA special on PBS</a>: “Neanderthals have the mother of all image problems.”
For more on Neanderthals check out these posts:
&#8211; <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/more-fun-with-neanderthals/">More Fun with Neanderthals</a> 
&#8211;<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/ancestry-2/find-your-inner-neanderthal/"> Find Your Inner Neanderthal</a> 
&#8211;<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/news/new-evidence-suggests-interbreeding-between-humans-and-neanderthals/"> New Evidence Suggests Humans and Neanderthal Interbreeding</a>
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<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-14049" title="neanderthal icon" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/neanderthal-icon-96x150.jpg" alt="" width="50" height="77" />
Got Neanderthal DNA?
23andMe customers can <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/labs/neanderthal/">find their inner Neanderthal</a> or at least how much Neanderthal DNA they have. Not yet a customer? <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store">Visit our store</a>!
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Amick Boone

Oregon Cavemen May Have Neanderthals All Wrong

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17459 size-full" title="richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="960" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res-240x300.jpg 240w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res-704x880.jpg 704w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />Richard Hill as a child with his adoptive parents, Harold and Thelma Hill. 
Richard Hill spent his career working in the sciences and in marketing, but hearing about his decades-long search for family you get the sense he would have made a great detective.
While shoe leather helped him unravel much of the mystery of his birth, it wasn’t until the availability of personal genetic testing, including testing through 23andMe, that Richard completed the picture of his biological family.
“My search had lurched ahead and stalled repeatedly over 31 years,” he says in a book he wrote about his quest <a href="http://www.dna-testing-adviser.com/finding-family-book.html">Finding Family: My Search for Roots and Secrets in My DNA</a>. 
The gap in Richard’s history became apparent when he was 18. That’s when his doctor looked through his medical file and let slip that Richard had been adopted. He was stunned.
“My heart skipped a beat,” Richard said in his book.
‘“Excuse me?” I asked. I must have misheard him. Or maybe he had me confused with someone else. I’m Richard Hill, son of Harold and Thelma Hill. Surely, he must have someone else’s file in his hands.’
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17460 size-full" title="Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="2100" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES.jpg 1500w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-214x300.jpg 214w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-768x1075.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-731x1024.jpg 731w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-629x880.jpg 629w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-843x1180.jpg 843w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" />
Find Him
Thus begins Richard’s saga, which is part memoir, part detective story. It details his search for family, and how after decades of using paper records and tracking down whoever knew any tidbit of information that could help, Richard finally turned to DNA testing from 23andMe and other services. These tests helped him identify first his late biological father’s surname and later confirmed his exact place in his large biological family.
His search wasn’t fueled by a sense of abandonment. Richard knew his parents loved him, and he in turn loved them. Whenever someone asks him about finding his “real” parents, Richard corrects them, saying his real parents were the couple who adopted him. But the search and the answers he found on the way helped him fill in missing pieces of his history.
“I have a great appreciation of my adoptive parents and how they raised me,” he said. “And this certainly has made me think about the whole nature versus nurture thing and what I got from my biological parents versus what I got from my adoptive parents. But it’s also made me feel more complete.”
Or as he says in the book, “many of us (adoptees) will never know peace until we know all the pieces.”
Richard said that although he learned about being adopted at 18, his career and family all got in the way of seeking out more information about his birth parents. Digging into his adoption didn’t start in earnest until he was in his 30s after his father was bedridden by a stroke. He’d visit his dad often during that time and he would sit at his father’s bedside and talk. At one point, as if freeing a burden that had weighed on him all those years, his father said, ‘Well I guess you know you were adopted?”
His father went on to reveal the first bits of information Richard had ever heard about his biological mother. She was “a cute little Irish girl” and her name was “Jackie.” He added one more fascinating piece: that she had had another son. So Richard learned that somewhere out there he had a brother. His father suggested that Richard should find him.
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Ancestry Tools You Can Use
Not everyone’s family story is cloaked in mystery like Richard Hill’s. Most of us just want to learn a little more about our history and gain insight into the generations from which we descended.
23andMe’s Ancestry tools can help you explore what your genetics says about your ancestry. Some of the insights can only be had through genetics. When used with other information – whether it’s your family’s oral traditions, names of ancestors in a family Bible, or other paper records – your 23andMe results can become even more powerful.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-14613" title="ancestry dashboard" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ancestry-dashboard-200x200.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" />
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“Bingo”
When Richard started looking, he almost immediately faced daunting obstacles and dead ends. For instance, although he found the identity of his biological mother, he quickly learned that she’d died a little over a year after his birth. With a lot of work and luck, he was able to connect with her son, his half-brother. The two met for the first time in 1981.
But finding Richard’s biological father seemed impossible: He had no name – the one on his original birth certificate was the name of his birth mother’s ex-husband. In addition, his mother never told anyone who fathered her second child. The pregnancy itself was a secret and she had left town for the delivery. Still, none of that stopped Richard from searching. He did this by painstakingly piecing together his mother’s life at the time of his conception in 1945, and then contacting people who knew her or worked with her at the time and were still alive.
It took years. At one point he thought he’d found his birth father only to learn, after a paternity test, that he was wrong. That didn’t stop him either.
Finally, with the advent of early genetic tests that traced Y-DNA, the paternal line, Richard matched a distant cousin whose surname might also be that of his father. That provided a vital clue. He went back to some of the records he’d accumulated in his search. His mother had worked at a bar called Dann’s Tavern. Looking at old records he noticed that the name of the bar’s owner matched the surname he’d dug up.
“Bingo,” Richard thought.
Correcting a Mistake
Although the bar was long gone, and its owner dead and buried, Richard was able to find a niece of the man. He learned the owner was one of five brothers, and all of them were now deceased. So Richard started contacting sons of each man, asking if they would agree to a DNA test to determine if they were siblings. But unlike 23andMe’s test that now reads more than a million points in your genome, the only test available then looked at just 15 genetic markers to estimate family relationships. That test led him to identify the wrong man as his father and the wrong children as his siblings. It took a few more years, and a test by 23andMe and a test by FTDNA, to figure out that he’d made the mistake.
The two tools he used to correct the mistake were 23andMe’s Relative Finder and FTDNA’s Family Finder. The first test was on a man he thought was a cousin, but after getting the results back from 23andMe, it was clear that this man was actually his half brother.
“DNA testing helped me and it can help others,” Richard said.
His years of searching and his use of DNA testing has also made him a go-to source for others turning to genetic testing for more answers about their ancestry. He set up a website, <a href="http://www.dna-testing-adviser.com">www.dna-testing-adviser.com</a>, to help people make sense of the different tools out there.   And even with the ups and downs of his family search, he doesn’t regret a thing.
&#8220;I did not have to give up anybody in my adopted family. It&#8217;s not an either-or thing. You&#8217;re just adding on. You can&#8217;t have too much family.&#8221;

23andMe’s Tools Help Solve Ancestry Mystery

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-7425" title="ancestry-photo-sheridan" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ancestry-photo-sheridan.png" alt="" width="280" height="152" />
We first met <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-introducing-sheridan/">Sheridan</a>* in the fall of 2010. As an adoptee, she was curious about her DNA and what 23andMe might be able to tell her.
With the help of old friends and some new ones on 23andMe, Sheridan learned about her <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-sheridans-global-origins/">global origins</a>,  which include an African-American father and a mother of European descent, and <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-sheridans-got-relatives/">connected with DNA relatives</a>.
She even discovered that she and her good friend Brian are <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-finding-connections/">4th cousins</a>, which means she has some Irish ancestry. Together, they <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-old-roots-and-new-horizons/">figured out a branch of her family tree</a>.

<div style="float: right; width: 300px; padding: 15px; margin-left: 15px; margin-top: 5px; border: 1px solid #ccc; background-color: #ffc;">
For a quick Ancestry primer, check out:
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/genetics-101/ancestry-at-23andme-what-can-you-learn/">Ancestry at 23andMe: What Can You Learn?</a>
Follow Sheridan’s journey from the beginning:*
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-introducing-sheridan/">Introducing Sheridan</a> 
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-sheridans-global-origins/">Sheridan’s Global Origins</a> 
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-sheridans-got-relatives/">Sheridan’s Got Relatives</a> 
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-finding-connections/">Finding Connections</a> 
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-old-roots-and-new-horizons/">Old Roots and New Horizons</a>
*Sheridan and her story are works of fiction and any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.
</div>
<h6>Using DNA Relatives</h6>
For Sheridan, learning about herself on 23andMe did more than just kindle a love for the Irish. By combining the information she learned about her ancestral origins with information from some of the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">DNA Relatives</a> she found, she and Brian were able to fill in the first pieces of her genealogical history.
Since then, Sheridan’s filled in even more of the family tree on her mother’s side.
Her second cousin Mike, identified through 23andMe as a DNA Relative, was able to track down the name of his grandmother’s sister &#8212; a woman very likely to be Sheridan’s own grandmother. To Brian’s delight, Mike also found the name of his grandmother’s sister’s husband, a Fitzpatrick descended from the same Irish ancestors as Brian.
<h6>Neanderthal</h6>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-17249 size-medium" title="Neanderthal-friends-sheridan" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-272x300.png" alt="" width="272" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-272x300.png 272w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-768x849.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-927x1024.png 927w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-796x880.png 796w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-1068x1180.png 1068w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan.png 1192w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 272px) 100vw, 272px" />
Brian always kept her in the loop on 23andMe, though. Some more mutual friends joined and they quickly started sharing on 23andMe. Sheridan remembers when the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/labs/neanderthal/">Neanderthal Ancestry feature</a> came out. There was an unofficial contest over who had the most <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/find-your-inner-neanderthal/">Neanderthal DNA</a>; Brian was disappointed that he was solidly average for a Northern European person. Sheridan tried to cheer him up by pointing out that he still had the most caveman of their friends with mostly European ancestry.
“Besides,” she said, “I only have 2.2 percent Neanderthal!”
“That’s because Neanderthals were never even in Africa to begin with,” he snorted, but he seemed mollified.
Sheridan, far from feeling shortchanged, found it fascinating that even a small percentage of her DNA could be traced back to these prehistoric “cousins.”
<h6>Ancestry Composition</h6>
But Brian’s Stone Age enthusiasm paled in comparison to his excitement over Ancestry Composition. A new and improved replacement for the popular Ancestry Painting feature, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/23andmes-newest-feature-explores-your-ancestry/">Ancestry Composition</a> gives a much more detailed breakdown of a person’s genetic ancestry. Brian called Sheridan at two in the morning when it came out.
“It’s here!” he exclaimed when she groggily answered the phone.
“Unghh wha&#8211;?” she mumbled.
“Ancestry Composition! Like Ancestry Painting, but way better. Remember? Your Ancestry Painting was cool, but your Composition is even cooler. Mine’s still kind of boring, though. But you should look at yours! And I can see it split it up by which side I got from my mom and which side from my dad and you can zoom in and out and change the thresholds&#8230; hey, you still there? Sheridan? Hello?”
So maybe two in the morning wasn’t the best time for Brian to tell Sheridan about Ancestry Composition. But the next day they met up at the coffee shop to explore the new feature together.
Brian quickly explained that 23andMe had updated its main ancestry feature with lots of examples of people with full ancestry from different parts of the world &#8212; like South Asia, France, or Finland. Some of these people were part of research studies and their genetic data is publicly available. But many of the people 23andMe used to develop its ancestry analysis are 23andMe customers themselves.
“Of course, you can only learn what, say, ‘Welsh DNA’ looks like if you have some examples of it,” he said. “The more examples you can learn from, the better your analysis will be. And 23andMe has a lot of different types of examples.”
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17254" title="Brian-composition" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Brian-composition-700x421.png" alt="" width="350" />
Brian clicked on the ‘+’ symbol in the “Resolution” bar to zoom in. “It’s still all European for me &#8212; no surprise &#8212; but now it can break it down into sub-regions.” The list of ancestries on the right of the screen expanded as he clicked and when he hovered the mouse pointer over the darker blue ring the map zoomed in to the British Isles.
“See? 99% British and Irish!” he said, puffing out his chest, which today was sporting, perhaps not accidentally, a green “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” t-shirt.
Sheridan rolled her eyes.
“Ok, ok, you were saying mine was cooler, though, right?”
“Oh, right. Yeah.”
Sheridan scooted him aside and pulled her Ancestry Composition up on the screen. The rings quickly morphed into concentric stacks of bright colors with a rainbow-colored map in the middle.
“Ooh,” she breathed. “Yeah, that’s pretty cool.”
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17299" title="sheridan-composition" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/sheridan-composition-700x500.png" alt="" width="700" />
According to the new analysis, Sheridan’s DNA was about 62% European, 37% Sub-Saharan African, and 1.2% East Asian or Native American. The rest of her DNA was unassigned, meaning it couldn’t be mapped confidently to any specific population.
&#8220;Africa isn&#8217;t broken down into sub-regions yet the way Europe is,&#8221; Brian said, pointing to the pink stripe, &#8220;but 23andMe is going to update this soon.&#8221;
&#8220;Hm, I guess I can wait a little longer,&#8221; said Sheridan. &#8220;It&#8217;s nice to see all the European populations, though. Look, there’s the Irish ancestry for me, too!”
She already knew that she probably had some Irish ancestry based on the fact that she and 99% Irish Brian were 4th cousins and they’d traced their Irish family connection through her second cousin Mike, but it was somehow gratifying to see it spelled out so clearly on her screen. She could also see that she had some Eastern European and even a bit of Native American ancestry.
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-17257" title="Miguel-composition" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Miguel-composition-300x161.png" alt="" width="350" /> 
<img decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-17258" title="Mesut-composition" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Mesut-composition-300x154.png" alt="" width="350" /> 
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17262" title="Ancestry Composition Native American" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Ancestry-Composition-Native-American-700x331.png" alt="" width="350" />
There was also a small dark blue band in her Composition labeled as “Ashkenazi”.
“That might actually be interesting,” Brian mused, “Let’s look into that later.”
For now, Ancestry Composition kept them busy as they explored their friends’ results. Miguel had a colorful Composition like Sheridan, except it had much more Native American and much less African. Mesut, Sheridan’s Turkish friend, was mainly Middle Eastern and European.
“Did Camille know she has Native American ancestry?” she asked, pointing to the 3.3% Native American in her Ancestry Composition.
“Not before she did 23andMe,” said Brian. “When she saw that result she did some digging and it turns out that her paternal grandfather was one-eighth <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_people">Chippewa</a>!”
He went to the drop down menu and selected another friend of theirs, Jamie. “This is pretty cool, too. Jamie’s half Askhenazi Jewish, and since her parents are also on 23andMe you can use the ‘Split View’ setting to see which side of the family it’s from.”
The map in the middle disappeared and the labels “Father” and “Mother appeared on either side of a vertical line splitting the colored rings in half. Sheridan could see that the Ashkenazi ancestry was clearly from Jamie’s mother’s side.
“Wow, that’s cool,” said Sheridan.
She thought for a second.
“So if I do end up learning who my mother is, and if I’m able to find her, and if she wants to do 23andMe&#8230; would this be able to tell me more about my father’s side, too?”
Brian nodded.
“That’ a lot of ‘ifs’, but yeah, I think so. You just need one parent for it to tell which half of your DNA came from that parent. Then by default, the other half came from the other parent.”
“Whew.” Sheridan sat back. “This whole genetic ancestry thing just got even more interesting.”
To be continued&#8230;

Ancestry at 23andMe: New Insights for Sheridan

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11797" title="CeCephoto" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/CeCephoto.jpg" alt="" width="114" height="162" />
December was a busy month for 23andMe and in the midst of the hubbub we put out <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry_composition_guide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ancestry Composition</a>, an amazing feature that gives finer detail of an individual’s heritage going back generations.
Since its release, we’ve heard some great feedback saying the feature has set a new standard in the industry. Yeah, we think so too, but don’t just take our word on it.
Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore recently reviewed the top genetic ancestry tools on the market. Her conclusion after looking at them all? 23andMe’s Ancestry Composition is “the most informative and flexible” of the lot.
CeCe hasn’t been the only one to review the new feature favorably, particularly for its ability to return meaningful results for people of mixed ancestry, but as always she does so with a lot of insight into how to use these tools.
In the review, CeCe notes that she has relationships with all the services she reviews, including 23andMe, where she advocates on behalf of customers as one of our volunteer Ancestry Ambassadors.
Her popular blog Your Genetic Genealogist has become a go-to site for anyone interested in using both traditional genealogical search tools along with genetics. CeCe, who also works as a television producer and is a Southern California Regional Coordinator for the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, has a lot to say about Ancestry Composition and even has a few nits about the feature. We will address many of them over time.
Take a look at CeCe’s review and see what else she has to say about the wonderful world of genetic genealogy.

23andMe’s Ancestry Composition Driving Circles Around the Rest

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17038 size-full" title="Mike &amp; Eric" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric.jpg" alt="" width="1721" height="1190" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric.jpg 1721w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-300x207.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-768x531.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-1024x708.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-880x608.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-1180x816.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1721px) 100vw, 1721px" />Mike and Eric
Our team rolled out a new feature called<a href="https://www.23andme.com/about/press/ancestry_composition_2012"> Ancestry Composition</a> last week that will tell you more about what you’re made of, or more precisely, the geographic origins of your DNA.
Principal Product Scientist Mike Macpherson, former Research Scientist Chuong “Tom” Do, and Computational Biologist Eric Durand led the team that spent many months developing an innovative and accurate tool to determine your ancestry going as far back as 500 years.
One of the stunning aspects of Ancestry Composition is that it&#8217;s based on the newest advances in machine learning and thus will get better over time.
“Ancestry Composition is truly innovative. Not only does it use public-genetic databases for reference, it also uses the data set from 23andMe, so as more people join 23andMe, the more powerful and more accurate Ancestry Composition will become,” Mike said.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17039 size-full" title="European and Native American Ancestry" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Native-American.jpg" alt="" width="807" height="468" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Native-American.jpg 807w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Native-American-300x174.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Native-American-768x445.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 807px) 100vw, 807px" />
The feature can very accurately detail the mosaic of your ancestral background, distinguishing British and Irish ancestry, for instance, or telling you the breakdown of your Scandinavian or Italian ancestral origins. It’s also a powerful tool for finding Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.
Right now, Ancestry Composition is particularly interesting for people of mixed ancestry: individuals who have Native American, Latino, African American or mixed European heritage.
It’s a great tool already and promises to keep getting better.
An update is planned in the near future to add more detail for people with African and Asian ancestry.
This will give a finer level of detail and help customers zero in on the regions of their ancestral origins.
But the feature can be enlightening for people of any background offering a view of an individual’s genetic ancestry, breaking down the mix of ancestry by percentage and putting it all into an intuitive visualization.
There are several other bells and whistles for those who want to dive in and find a few fun surprises.
One of those is the Split View, which gives great detail for customers who have at least one parent also in the 23andMe community. If at least one parent has been tested and is linked through the Family Tree feature, Ancestry Composition’s Split View will tell you what mix of your ancestry comes from your mother and <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">what mix of your ancestry</a> comes from your father.
Another add-on to the feature is a Chromosome View, which “paints” the ancestry on each of your 23 chromosomes.
If you’d like to see more detail on how this has done you can look both at a<a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry_composition_guide/"> white paper</a> put together by Mike or a recent<a href="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/20121027_ancestry_painting_methods_poster.pdf"> poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics</a>, which outlines the technique.
The new feature replaces 23andMe’s “ancestry painting” and “global similarity,” two tools that were equally pioneering when they were first introduced.
But with Ancestry Composition 23andMe breaks new ground and sets a new standard for determining genetic ancestry.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17041 size-full" title="split view" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view.jpg" alt="" width="1744" height="911" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view.jpg 1744w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-300x157.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-768x401.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-1024x535.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-880x460.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-1180x616.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1744px) 100vw, 1744px" />

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