During the series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.</a> &nbsp; on PBS, The Blog &nbsp; featured posts from 23andMe’s Ancestry Ambassadors. This is the last of their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry.
By Tim Janzen, M.D.
For over 30 years I have been trying to determine the ancestry of my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Youngman (b. ca Aug 1823, d. 24 May 1903).
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-13392 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Jacob-Youngman-214x300.jpg" alt="" width="214" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Jacob-Youngman-214x300.jpg 214w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Jacob-Youngman.jpg 353w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 214px) 100vw, 214px" />Jacob Youngman 
I used traditional genealogical research techniques for much of that time, but not long ago I realized that DNA testing at 23andMe could help me solve this decades old puzzle. No one in our family knew who Jacob Youngman’s parents were, but his son Charles Youngman (b. 1872) left a tantalizing clue in his autobiographical sketch that was published in the book &#8220;History of Harrison County, Missouri.&#8221;
Charles Youngman said that Jacob Youngman&#8217;s father &nbsp;lived in &nbsp;Kentucky, &nbsp;moved first to Indiana, and later settled in central Missouri where he died. &nbsp; Not too many Youngmans fit this description. In the past two years, I have developed a theory that Jacob Youngman’s father was John Youngman (b. ca 1793), who is listed in the 1840 Census in Clay County, Missouri but is not listed there in the 1850 Census.
I know that my ancestor Jacob Youngman is listed in Shelby Co., Indiana in the 1850 Census but the man I presume to be his father, John Youngman isn’t. &nbsp; Instead, I recently discovered that John Youngman didn&#8217;t die prior to 1850, but instead moved to Denton Co., Texas where he is listed in the 1850 Census with his younger children.
This genealogical puzzle is 
complicated by the fact that John Youngman was married 3 &nbsp;times and was divorced from his second wife Elizabeth Reeves, his first wife had apparently died by 1822.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-13394 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Youngman-graveston1-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Youngman-graveston1-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Youngman-graveston1.jpg 461w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Photograph of the gravestone of Jacob Youngman (b. ca Aug 1823) and his second wife Rachel Cart.
Census records from 1820, 1830, and 1840 indicate that he had children by all three wives, but only his 5 youngest children who were living with him in 1850 are named in the census records.
Another clue is that Jacob Youngman’s granddaughter Louise Youngman (1893-1988) said that her grandfather often referred to “Uncle Stacy Reeves”, suggesting that Jacob Youngman’s mother could have been Elizabeth Reeves, the second wife of John Youngman. &nbsp; A Stacy T. Reeves (b. ca 1823) is listed near Jacob Youngman and his family in the 1860 Census and may be the “Uncle Stacy Reeves” that Louise Youngman was referring to. By the fall of 2010 I had many promising hints, but I still hadn’t solved the puzzle and then I established contact with several other Youngman researchers, Debbi Youngman and Susie Brewer. Both are related to descendents of John Youngman by his first and third wives. I decided to pursue confirmation of my theory that Jacob Youngman was a son of John Youngman by his second wife Elizabeth Reeves through autosomal DNA testing done by 23andMe. Troy McCoy, a great-grandson of John Youngman and his third wife, was the person most closely related to John Youngman who was tested. &nbsp; Below is a summary of the DNA data showing the amount of autosomal DNA in centimorgans (cMs) that Troy McCoy shares in common with each of the five great-grandchildren of Jacob Youngman who have been tested by 23andMe. &nbsp; The comparison between Troy McCoy and Jacob Youngman’s great-grandchildren is the most important because in theory they should share the most autosomal DNA in common since they are the most closely related among all of the Youngman descendents in the project. &nbsp; A centimorgan is a unit of crossover frequency used to measure how often DNA segments are split up by recombination as they pass through the generations. The proper way to analyze this data is to create an average of the amount of DNA shared between Troy McCoy and Jacob Youngman’s five great-grandchildren. (See table 1.)
<div style="float: right; text-align: justified; width: 275px; background-color: #eee; padding: 15px; margin-left: 10px;">
John Youngman and Family Reconstructed
John Youngman (b. ca 1793 in Kentucky) married his first wife Elizabeth Marton (b. ca 1798 in Kentucky) on 23 Feb 1816 in Campbell Co., Kentucky. Elizabeth Marton appears to have died ca 1821. John and Elizabeth had three children: 
1. John M. Youngman (b. 10 Jan 1818 in Kentucky) 
2. William Youngman (b. ca 1818 in Kentucky) 
3. Susanna Youngman (b. ca 1821 in Kentucky)
John Youngman (b. ca 1793) married his second wife Elizabeth Reeves (b. ca 1802 in Kentucky) on 20 Jul 1822 in Campbell Co., Kentucky. They were divorced on 29 Apr 1830. They had two children: 
1. Jacob Youngman (b. ca 1823, KY) 
2. Unknown female (b. ca 1825-30)
John Youngman (b. ca 1793) married his third wife Priscilla Clark on 10 Jun 1830 in Clermont Co., Ohio. They had seven children: 
1. Sarah A. Youngman (b. ca 1830, IN) 
2. Nancy Catherine Youngman (b. ca 1832,IN) 
3. James C. Youngman (b. ca 1835, IN) 
4. Mary Jane Youngman (b. 1835, IN) 
5. Louhany Youngman (b. 1843, MO) 
6. Thomas Jefferson Youngman (b. 1844, AR) 
7. Joseph Youngman (b. ca 1844, AR)
</div>
It is reasonable to assume that all of the matching segments over 5 cMs in length came from a shared common ancestor. &nbsp; A threshold of around 4 to 5 cMs is necessary since it is common for random people of European ancestry to share segments that are less than 4 cMs in length even if they don’t have any ancestry in common in the past 300 years. We would expect that on average half third cousins should share about 27.8 cMs of DNA. &nbsp; The above averages support of &nbsp;my theory that Troy McCoy’s great-grandmother Mary Jane Youngman (b. ca 1836) was a half sibling to my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Youngman (b. &nbsp;ca Aug &nbsp;1823).
It is reasonable to assume that all of the matching segments over 5 cMs in length came from a shared common ancestor. &nbsp; A threshold of around 4 to 5 cMs is necessary since it is common for random people of European ancestry to share segments that are less than 4 cMs in length even if they don’t have any ancestry in common in the past 300 years. We would expect that on average half third cousins should share about 27.8 cMs of DNA. &nbsp; The above averages support of &nbsp;my theory that Troy McCoy’s great-grandmother Mary Jane Youngman (b. ca 1836) was a half sibling to my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Youngman (b. &nbsp;ca Aug &nbsp;1823).
A Stacy T. Reeves (b. ca 1823) is listed near Jacob Youngman and his family in the 1860 Census and may be the “Uncle Stacy Reeves” that Louise Youngman was referring to. By the fall of 2010 I had many promising hints, but I still hadn’t solved the puzzle and then I established contact with several other Youngman researchers, Debbi Youngman and Susie Brewer. Both are related to descendents of John Youngman by his first and third wives. I decided to pursue confirmation of my theory that Jacob Youngman was a son of John Youngman by his second wife Elizabeth Reeves through autosomal DNA testing done by 23andMe. Troy McCoy, a great-grandson of John Youngman and his third wife, was the person most closely related to John Youngman who was tested.
Below is a summary of the DNA data showing the amount of autosomal DNA in centimorgans (cMs) that Troy McCoy shares in common with each of the five great-grandchildren of Jacob Youngman who have been tested by 23andMe.
The comparison between Troy McCoy and Jacob Youngman’s great-grandchildren is the most important because in theory they should share the most autosomal DNA in common since they are the most closely related among all of the Youngman descendents in the project. &nbsp; A centimorgan is a unit of crossover frequency used to measure how often DNA segments are split up by recombination as they pass through the generations. The proper way to analyze this data is to create an average of the amount of DNA shared between Troy McCoy and Jacob Youngman’s five great-grandchildren. (See table 1.) &nbsp; It is reasonable to assume that all of the matching segments over 5 cMs in length came from a shared common ancestor. &nbsp; A threshold of around 4 to 5 cMs is necessary since it is common for random people of European ancestry to share segments that are less than 4 cMs in length even if they don’t have any ancestry in common in the past 300 years. We would expect that on average half third cousins should share about 27.8 cMs of DNA. &nbsp; The above averages support of &nbsp;my theory that Troy McCoy’s great-grandmother Mary Jane Youngman (b. ca 1836) was a half sibling to my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Youngman (b. &nbsp;ca Aug &nbsp;1823).
It is reasonable to assume that all of the matching segments over 5 cMs in length came from a shared common ancestor. &nbsp; A threshold of around 4 to 5 cMs is necessary since it is common for random people of European ancestry to share segments that are less than 4 cMs in length even if they don’t have any ancestry in common in the past 300 years. We would expect that on average half third cousins should share about 27.8 cMs of DNA. &nbsp; The above averages support of &nbsp;my theory that Troy McCoy’s great-grandmother Mary Jane Youngman (b. ca 1836) was a half sibling to my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Youngman (b. &nbsp;ca Aug &nbsp;1823).
<table border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Comparison</th>
<th>4 cM threshold</th>
<th>5 cM threshold</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Frederick Mock and his 1/2 3rd cousin Troy McCoy</td>
<td>16.2</td>
<td>12.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Raymond Youngman and his 1/2 3rd cousin Troy McCoy</td>
<td>5.1</td>
<td>5.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Marilyn Bannister and her 1/2 3rd cousin Troy McCoy</td>
<td>4.6</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Darryl Youngman and his 1/2 3rd cousin Troy McCoy</td>
<td>72.4</td>
<td>67.9</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Norman Youngman and his 1/2 3rd cousin Troy McCoy</td>
<td>71.6</td>
<td>67.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Average:</td>
<td>34.0</td>
<td>30.5</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
*Expected amount if the relationship is a half 3rd cousin: 27.5 

But I didn’t stop there. I also found results that are very close to the expected average for a comparison like the one shown above between Troy McCoy and six great-great-grandchildren of Jacob Youngman. &nbsp; Thus the DNA data suggest that Mary Jane Youngman and Jacob Youngman were half-siblings based on these comparisons. &nbsp; I am likewise seeing results that are very close to the expected average for the comparisons between two descendants of William Youngman (b. ca 1818), John Youngman’s son by his first wife, and the descendants of Jacob Youngman. &nbsp; The DNA
The DNA data, therefore, suggest that William Youngman and Jacob Youngman were also half-siblings based on these comparisons. In summary, autosomal DNA analysis has provided the key evidence to solving the genealogical puzzle of the parentage of Jacob Youngman.
I now feel confident that Jacob Youngman was the son of John Youngman and Elizabeth Reeves. &nbsp; This project demonstrates how autosomal DNA can be used as an adjunct to traditional genealogical research to confirm or refute theories about possible genealogical relationships.
Tim Janzen is a family practice doctor at South Tabor Family Physicians in Portland, Oregon. His interest in genealogical research goes back 35 years and he has particularly focused on Mennonite genealogy for the past 15 years. He has a web site that summarizes many different sources available for Mennonite genealogical research found at <a href="http://www.timjanzen.com/">www.timjanzen.com</a> and has given many presentations about Mennonite genealogy in the United States and Canada. He is the co-administrator of the Mennonite DNA project at <a href="http://www.mennonitedna.com/">www.mennonitedna.com</a>. He also serves on the ISOGG Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree Committee. Tim is married to Rachel Janzen and they have four children.

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Who Were the Parents of Jacob Youngman?

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-12716" style="border: 1px solid #ccc;" title="DNA USA.indd" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/DNA-USA-197x300.jpg" alt="" width="197" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/DNA-USA-197x300.jpg 197w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/DNA-USA.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px" />
Bryan Sykes, the evolutionary geneticist at Oxford University and the author of<a href="../2008/08/14/recommended-reading-the-seven-daughters-of-eve/"> The Seven Daughters of Eve,</a> is adding to his oeuvre of popular work on genetics with his new book,<a href="https://www.amazon.com/DNA-USA-Genetic-Portrait-America/dp/0871404125%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAIXFKFJI6IH6DO5KQ%26tag%3Dkirkus-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0871404125"> DNA USA, A Genetic Portrait of America.</a>
As with his previous work, Sykes breaks down some of the complicated aspects of genetics in ways that are easily understood. This book is both travelogue and a snapshot of the genetic melting pot that is the United States of America.  As Sykes writes America is the place “where the genes of the three great continents converge.”
The book offers some intriguing, although mostly anecdotal, observations. During his journey Sykes meets people who agree to have their DNA tested anonymously. He then creates DNA portraits of these individuals, using 23andMe to create ancestry paintings of each individual. From that he drew conclusions about early America and the rich mixing of European, Asian and African people in America. The book also offers Sykes a chance to discuss the history of the earliest Americans.
Last week, our own senior director of research Joanna Mountain – who along with 23andMe scientist Mike Macpherson acted as consultants for some of the genetics in the book – introduced Sykes at a lecture he delivered at Berkeley Arts &amp; Letters.
He got a good response from the audience and his book has some buzz including a<a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/bryan-sykes/dna-usa/#review%20http://www.oxfordancestors.com/"> thumbs-up</a> from the Kirkus Review. 
We’re offering two signed copies of the book &#8212; simply submit the form below for a chance to win!

DNA USA

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-12577" title="Stock Photo" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mexican-Heritage-300x197.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="197" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mexican-Heritage-300x197.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mexican-Heritage.jpg 427w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Today is Cinco de Mayo. This day commemorates the Mexican army&#8217;s 1862 victory over France in the Battle of Puebla (not Mexican independence day as is commonly believed), but is more widely observed in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride.
There are different ways to celebrate Mexican culture – <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fiesta" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fiestas</a> around the country host <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mariachi" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">mariachi</a> performances and a trip to a taqueria shouldn’t be missed. Another way to celebrate Mexican heritage is through DNA.
I reached out to my good friend Miguel who hails from the state of Jalisco in Mexico to see what he’s discovered about his ancestry through <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">23andMe&#8217;s Personal Genome Service</a>.
<h6>Native American Ancestry</h6>
Like many Mexicans, Miguel learned through family stories that he has both Native American and European ancestry. It turns out that roughly 69% of his DNA traces to Europe, 28% is suggestive of Native American ancestry, and about 3% traces to Africa.
He’s been told that his Native American ancestry comes from his maternal side and this was confirmed by investigating his <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/haplogroup/maternal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">maternal line</a>. Miguel’s maternal lineage (C1c) is very old and typically found in Native Americans and native Asian populations. This data contributed to 23andMe’s Native American Ancestry Finder feature proclaiming, “Yes Miguel, it looks likely that you have Native American ancestry”.
His European ancestry comes from his father’s side and this was confirmed by investigating his <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/haplogroup/paternal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">paternal line</a> (R1b1b2a1a2f), an offshoot of the most common line in western Europe (R1b1b2) and found at high frequency in Basque populations. This fits with what Miguel’s been told about his European roots.
<div style="width: 600px; padding: 5px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: float: justify; 10px; border: 1px solid black;">
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-12616" title="Miguel Maternal Line" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Miguel-Maternal-Line-1024x470.png" alt="" width="600" height="280" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-12627" title="Miguel Paternal Line" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Miguel-Paternal-Line-1024x499.png" alt="" width="600" height="280" />
</div>
<div style="width: 200px; padding: 10px; float: right; margin-left: 15px; border: 1px solid black; font-style: italic;">
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12163" title="small_23andMe_logo" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/JRBgdIBXKIeVIdETJrxYIw_ttam_logo.jpg" alt="" width="24" height="40" />
23andMe customers can learn all about their ancestry in <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">their account. 
</a>
Not yet a customer? <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Visit our store</a>!
</div>
<h6>Ancestry Finder</h6>
Perhaps the most eye-catching part of Miguel’s DNA voyage is found in his Ancestry Finder profile (see figure below). This feature combines DNA matches (segments of DNA you share with other 23andMe customers) with self-reported ancestry data obtained from our Where Are You From? survey. Based on his results, he shares DNA with several other 23andMe customers who have Mexican and South American ancestors.
Even if you don’t have Mexican ancestry like Miguel, we wish all of you a happy Cinco de Mayo. Go get your taco and toast to Miguel for helping us discover that DNA can help you “cinco” in on your ancestry!
Miguel&#8217;s Ancestry Finder Data 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-12645 size-large" title="Ancestry Finder Miguel" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Ancestry-Finder-Miguel-1024x400.png" alt="" width="1024" height="400" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Ancestry-Finder-Miguel-1024x400.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Ancestry-Finder-Miguel-300x117.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Ancestry-Finder-Miguel-768x300.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Ancestry-Finder-Miguel-880x343.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Ancestry-Finder-Miguel-1180x460.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Ancestry-Finder-Miguel.png 1502w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Interested in ancestry? Read about how <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/ancestry-at-23andme-introducing-sheridan" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sheridan got up to speed</a> on her ancestry and <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/ancestry-at-23andme-what-can-you-learn" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">get an overview</a> of the breadth 23andMe’s ancestry features. DNA can also offer clues about <a href="../2012/03/16/did-you-know-dna-can-offer-clues-about-irish-ancestry" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Irish ancestry</a>.

Zero in on Mexican Ancestry on Cinco de Mayo

As the series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.</a> begins its 10-week run on PBS, The Blog will feature posts from 23andMe’s Ancestry Ambassadors featuring their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry.
By Andrea Badger
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-12315" title="Andrea's Tree" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-Tree-226x300.jpg" alt="" width="226" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-Tree-226x300.jpg 226w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-Tree.jpg 442w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px" />
There has been a legend in my family, passed down from generation to generation, about my third great-grandfather Nathaniel Lewis. According to family folklore, his name wasn’t originally Nathaniel Lewis, but rather, Nathaniel Levi. As the story goes, our Lewis ancestors were Jewish people who converted to Christianity and changed their name from Levi to Lewis.
I had always wondered if this family story was really true. Everyone in our family has been told this legend but no one really had any conclusive evidence — just small clues. My grandmother and her siblings remember their mother singing Jewish songs to them as children. We also have an old newspaper article about our ancestor that states in passing ‘Nathaniel Lewis has lived in Scotland for many years but has no Scot’s blood’. Many of my relatives have speculated that this statement reveals that although Nathaniel was of Scottish nationality, he had a different ancestral background — Ashkenazi Jewish. However, conclusive evidence about this hypothesis was lacking until I joined 23andMe.

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-12316" title="Andrea's Community Response" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-Community-Response-300x249.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="249" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-Community-Response-300x249.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-Community-Response.jpg 368w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
When I first joined 23andMe in 2009, Relative Finder was just being introduced and the Ancestry Finder feature did not yet exist. As I corresponded with my Relative Finder matches, I noticed that many of my potential relatives said that they were of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. I wondered if this high number of Jewish Relative Finder matches was typical for someone with Northern European ancestry, so I turned to the 23andMe community for help and posted my questions on the community forums. I communicated with fellow 23andMe users and quickly realized that my genetic profile wasn’t typical for someone without any Jewish background. Instead, my DNA confirmed the old family story and indicated that it was highly likely that I do have Jewish ancestry.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-12318" title="Andrea's GAunt and Uncle Ancestry Finder" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-GAunt-and-Uncle-Ancestry-Finder-300x164.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="164" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-GAunt-and-Uncle-Ancestry-Finder-300x164.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-GAunt-and-Uncle-Ancestry-Finder-271x149.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-GAunt-and-Uncle-Ancestry-Finder-372x204.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andreas-GAunt-and-Uncle-Ancestry-Finder.jpg 469w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Here is my Ancestry Finder, with the settings focusing on the Ashkenazi Jewish segments. The blue spots are regions where a 23andMe customer shares a segment of DNA with me AND has stated that he or she has Jewish ancestors.
I decided to get my great-aunt &amp; great-uncle from that side of the family tested to see if they also had <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/ashkenazi-ancestry-and-health">evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish</a> admixture. Around this time, Ancestry Finder, which has a specific section dedicated to Jewish ancestry, was introduced. This feature was also beneficial in my quest.
As I expected, my great-aunt &amp; great-uncle also showed significant Jewish ancestry — more than I have, because they are two generations closer to our Jewish ancestor than I am.
Thanks to DNA testing, we have clear evidence of a Jewish ancestor in our past for the first time. Without 23andMe, I might never have known if there was any truth to this family legend. Why did the Lewis family feel the need to convert from Judaism to Christianity and change their name? I am actively searching to uncover this information, but much of Nathaniel Lewis’s life story has likely been lost to history. However, his DNA lives on in his descendants and provides clues about his background. Often, when traditional genealogy methods fail, you can turn to DNA to uncover more about your ancestral heritage. You never know what sort of surprises can be uncovered!
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-12325" title="andrea 23andMe pic" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/andrea-23andMe-pic-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/andrea-23andMe-pic-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/andrea-23andMe-pic-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/andrea-23andMe-pic-372x372.jpg 372w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" />
When she is not performing genetic comparisons on Family Inheritance Advanced or answering questions on the 23andMe community forums, Andrea Badger attends college at the University of Washington and will be receiving two bachelor’s degrees in June of this year. She writes the genetic genealogy blog at www.andreasancestors.com.

Finding a Family’s Jewish Ancestry

This month, 23andMe published a new article in PLoS One entitled “<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0034267">Cryptic Distant Relatives are Common in both Isolated and Cosmopolitan Samples</a>.&#8221; Authored by former 23andMe scientists, Brenna Henn and Lawrence Hon, along with current 23andMe scientists and 23andMe advisor, Itsik Pe’er, of Columbia University, the article describes the nuts and bolts of the method behind our innovative Relative Finder tool. In this post, Brenna discusses what the findings mean for our notion of “relatives” and explores the many special features of the 23andMe customer database.
By Brenna Henn
You probably know how many siblings you have or the number of first cousins. But do you know how many 2nd cousins you have? Does 38 sound reasonable? What about the number of 3rd, 4th, or 5th cousins?
The answer may surprise you.
<h6>What&#8217;s a Fourth Cousin?</h6>
Under a simple model where a family has 2-3 children, you would have 190 third cousins, 940 fourth cousins, and a whopping 4,700 fifth cousins.
Going back to 8th cousins (or 9 generations back to a common ancestor), the model we developed predicts you would have over half a million 8th cousins!
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Now, this model is a simplification because some families have a dozen children and some have none; but this model does help illustrate just how many potential distant cousins are out there.
<h6>Relative Finder Tool</h6>
Finding a relative in the 23andMe database, however, rests on two other important conditions. First, the relative has to be a 23andMe customer. Second, you and the relative need to share a long identical segment of DNA. The more distant a pair of cousins, the less identical DNA they share. Very small fragments of DNA can be hard to detect with our algorithm.
So although you might have thousands of 6th cousins, we think we can only detect about 4% of them with 23andMe’s current technology.
Our detection success is much higher for more closely related cousins, though — we can detect about 46% of 4th cousin pairs and 90% of 3rd cousin pairs.
<h6>Connections Among Those with Ashkenazi Ancestry</h6>
Our ability to detect a person’s distant cousins is also influenced by the ancestry of the individual. If you are Ashkenazi Jewish, you may have noticed that 23andMe’s Relative Finder feature shows you over a thousand cousins.
This is because Ashkenazi Jews are more closely related to each other than a random sample of European-Americans. Over the past several hundred years, a cultural tendency to choose marriage partners of the same ethnicity (also known as endogamy) means that Ashkenazi individuals are more likely to share the same ancestors.
In fact, we estimate that any two randomly chosen individuals who identify as Ashkenazi is on average the genomic equivalent of 4th-5th cousins because they share many recent common ancestors.
This phenomenon doesn’t just occur in the Ashkenazim.
<h6>Looking at Different Populations</h6>
We looked at 121 populations, many from the 23andMe customer database. Pairs of individuals in Iceland, Finland, or South Africa are more closely related than pairs of individuals from Italy or Japan.
<div style="float: right; text-align: left; width: 200px; padding: 10px; margin-left: 15px; border: 1px solid black;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-12163" style="float: left; margin-right: 5px;" title="small_23andMe_logo" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/JRBgdIBXKIeVIdETJrxYIw_ttam_logo.jpg" alt="" width="24" height="40" />Connect with 23andMe members who share DNA and ancestors. Not yet a 23andMe customer? <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store">Visit our store</a> or <a href="https://www.23andme.com">learn more</a>!</div>
In our analyses, we also looked at DNA data for over 5,000 individuals with just European ancestry in the 23andMe database. The DNA indicated that in this sample there are over 5,000 3rd cousin pairs and 30,000 4th cousin pairs. This result is important beyond thinking about genealogy.
It means that large disease association studies that sample thousands of individuals will have many pairs of distant cousins in the dataset. By identifying cryptic (or non-obvious) relatives in databases, researchers can see if certain disease mutations occur more often in different extended families.

Brenna Henn

The method behind the Relative Finder tool

As the series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.</a> continues its 10-week run on PBS, The Blog will feature posts from 23andMe’s Ancestry Ambassadors featuring their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry.
By Shannon Christmas
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-12107" title="shannon's gp" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shannons-gp.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="278" />
African American genealogy remains a challenging jigsaw puzzle where half of the pieces seem irrevocably lost. Many families scarred by chattel slavery buried their pasts to distance themselves and their progeny from the horrors of bondage.
<h2>A Fractured History</h2>
Now, advances in genetics and Internet technology have unearthed some of the long-buried pieces of our significantly fractured history.
Uncovering some of those missing pieces for my family required an open mind. One of my paternal great-grandmothers, Katie Lee Davis of Warren County, North Carolina, inherited a revisionist version of our family’s past.
In her correspondence with one of my cousins, Grandma Katie identified her ancestors, wrote lovingly of her paternal aunts, and recalled never having known a former slave among her relatives. Yet in 2010, 16 years after her death, revelations about Grandma Katie’s ancestors began to tell a different story. 

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-12109" title="gravestone" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/gravestone-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/gravestone-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/gravestone.jpg 453w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Marriage and death records from Warren County list Grandma Katie’s paternal grandparents as Henry and Lucinda Davis, an African-American couple about whom little else is known.
<h2>A Pedigree</h2>
However, in the summer of 2010, Ray, the husband of one of my father’s first cousins, emailed me a pedigree outline that omitted Henry’s name and replaced it with a Peter “White” Davis. The glaring conflict between the government documents I had examined and this new email raised questions.
Who was Peter “White” Davis? Was he really Grandma Katie’s grandfather?
The answers to those questions only heightened my curiosity. Ray reported that Peter “White” Davis, a slave owner formally named Peter Randolph Davis, allegedly sired many mulatto children with his slaves. According to one of Katie’s elderly distant relatives, Grandma Katie’s father, Richard D. Davis, was one of those mulatto children.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-12108" title="erasmuschristmas" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/erasmuschristmas-222x300.jpg" alt="" width="222" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/erasmuschristmas-222x300.jpg 222w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/erasmuschristmas.jpg 225w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px" />
Tracing Peter Randolph Davis’ lineage yielded another discovery. Peter’s maternal great-grandparents included a couple I had encountered in previous research: Captain William Green and Mary Elizabeth Christmas. Captain Green and his wife, Mary, were indirect ancestors of my great-grandfather, Richard Christmas.
<h2>A Warren County Planter</h2>
Richard Christmas’s paternal grandfather, Lewis Yancey Christmas, a wealthy Warren County planter and attorney, took two slaves as common-law wives. The first union produced 12 children, including my great-great-grandfather, Erasmus Christmas.
If the Peter Randolph Davis story was accurate, then my great grandfather Richard Christmas and my great grandmother Katie Lee Davis were not only husband and wife for 60 years, but 4th cousins once removed.
The possibility of a consanguineous marriage, though initially unsettling, provided an opportunity to verify this new paternity claim using DNA testing. Web-based DNA analysis tools allow one to search an individual’s raw DNA data file from 23andMe for runs of homozygosity and DNA segments indicating one’s parents shared recent common ancestors.
<h2>Cousin Test</h2>
Since my grandfather, the son of Richard Christmas and Katie Lee Davis had tested with 23andMe, the truth sat just a few keystrokes away. GEDMatch.com’s “Cousin Test for Parents” identified nine runs of homozygosity among my grandfather’s 22 autosomal chromosomes, amounting to more than 55 centimorgans (cM) of DNA, an amount that suggests his parents were at least 4th cousins.
A similar tool created by mathematician David Pike (<a href="http://www.math.mun.ca/%7Edapike/FF23utils/roh.php">http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/FF23utils/roh.php</a>) replicated the results. Richard Christmas and Katie Lee Davis shared a bloodline, proving that Peter Randolph Davis was Katie’s paternal grandfather.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-12111 size-medium" title="shannondoc" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shannondoc-218x300.jpg" alt="" width="218" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shannondoc-218x300.jpg 218w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shannondoc.jpg 473w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 218px) 100vw, 218px" />
In early 2012, I obtained a slave inventory from an estate file for Dr. Stephen Davis (Peter Randolph Davis’ father); the family of Henry and Lucinda Davis appears among the slaves listed.
Like so many former slaves, the paternal relatives with whom my great-grandmother spent her earliest years clearly sought to conceal their dark history to embrace a brighter future. But DNA illuminated how that past proved prologue.
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you find or identify relatives or family members.
When not updating pedigree charts or mapping his chromosomes, Shannon Christmas is the founder and Chief Market Advisor/Design Strategist of The Christmas Collective, a strategic real estate and land use consulting atelier.

Shannon Christmas

The Missing Pieces in an African American Family History

As the series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.</a> begins its 10-week run on PBS, The Blog will feature posts from 23andMe’s <a href="../2012/01/22/new-23andme-ancestry-ambassadors-group/">Ancestry Ambassadors</a> featuring their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry.
By Tim Janzen, M.D.
My father, Robert Janzen, comes from a long line of hardworking Low German Mennonite farmers. But when 23andMe developed the feature to identify <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry">Ashkenazi Jewish</a> heritage, I really wanted to determine whether his data suggested any Jewish ancestry. Let me explain.
His Mennonite ancestors were persecuted in the Low Countries – in what is now the Netherlands and Belgium – and in the 1500s they fled to a safer haven in what is now Poland.   After Catherine the Great opened Russia to settlers, his ancestors migrated to South Russia between 1789 and 1819 where they established small villages of Mennonites on the Russian Steppe.   After many
After Catherine the Great opened Russia to settlers, his ancestors migrated to South Russia between 1789 and 1819 where they established small villages of Mennonites on the Russian Steppe.   After many hardships they eventually prospered and developed thriving agricultural colonies that helped transform South Russia into the “breadbasket” of the world before about a third of the Mennonites immigrated to the United States in the 1870s.
The Mennonites who lived in Poland and Russia were an endogamous religious group, meaning they rarely married others who were not adherents to their faith. But there were
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-11779 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jacob-Peters-and-Helena-Bergman.jpg" alt="" width="221" height="319" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jacob-Peters-and-Helena-Bergman.jpg 221w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jacob-Peters-and-Helena-Bergman-208x300.jpg 208w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 221px) 100vw, 221px" />
many exceptions to that practice, and over the centuries a significant number of non-Mennonites joined the Mennonite faith.   Relatives on my father’s mother’s side have said that one of our ancestors was Jewish. My father&#8217;s great uncle Johann Peters conveyed that we descend from a Catholic priest who married a “redheaded Jewess” sometime in the distant past. Who this was we do not know.
According to the historical record between 1750 and 1790 26,000 Jewish followers of Jacob Frank converted to Christianity in Poland. Perhaps my Jewish ancestor was among them. Traditional genealogical tools and family stories helped to identify some possibilities. There was Joseph Nowitzky (1776-1844), whose ancestry is cloaked in mystery.
The Nowitzky name is found among Ashkenazi Jews, and family stories from relatives in Canada said that Joseph Nowitzky was a traveling Jewish salesman whose daughter Maria Nowitzky lived with a Mennonite family and eventually married a son from that family.   But written records from South Russia suggest that Joseph Nowitzky had become a Mennonite by 1801.   He and his family are listed in the major Mennonite censuses from 1801 to 1816. Another relative has heard that we are descended from a woman of Jewish background named Justina von Liechtenstein. So I was faced with a problem many genealogists confront – an end to the paper trail and conflicting family stories. This is where using DNA can help. While any two people’s genomes are 99.5 percent identical, that small bit of difference is incredibly important. It’s what makes each of us unique and it allows genetic genealogists to find relatives and map out information about our ancestry. Fundamentally this comes down to making comparisons, either between individuals to see how closely they are related, or comparing an individual to groups of individuals to determine common ancestry.
The closer two people are related, the more similar their DNA. The more shared ancestry a person has with a group, the more segments of DNA he or she shares with that group of people. 23andMe compares individuals in their database with its Relative Finder tool and finds potential matches. Using an advanced tool called “Ancestry Finder,” you combine Relative Finder matches with ancestry survey information about the country of origin of their grandparents. This can help tell you more about your ancestry.
You can also tweak the controls and increase or decrease the length of the matching segments, measured in a unit called centimorgans (cMs). When I set the minimum segment size to five cMs, set the number of grandparents from the same country to one and clicked the box to show Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, Ancestry Finder indicated that between 2 percent and 3.8 percent of my father’s DNA is of Ashkenazi Jewish origin.
Results for my father&#8217;s sisters are similar and the average amount of DNA that is of <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry">Ashkenazi Jewish</a> origin for my father and his four sisters is 2.27 percent.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-11785 size-full" title="Ancestry Finder Display" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ancestry-Finder-Display.jpg" alt="" width="468" height="362" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ancestry-Finder-Display.jpg 468w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ancestry-Finder-Display-300x232.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 468px) 100vw, 468px" />
I also have data from two distant relatives who descend from my father’s great-great-grandparents, Jacob Peters (b. 1823) and Helena Bergmann (b. 1826).   Helena Bergmann’s mother was Justina Nowitzky, who was a daughter of Joseph Nowitzky.   The Ancestry Finder results indicate that my father’s relatives have an average of 4.35% Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   This would be consistent with each of them being approximately 1/32 Ashkenazi Jewish in origin.   The Ancestry Finder results for my father and his sisters would suggest that they are about 1/64 Ashkenazi Jewish in origin. I reviewed the 23andMe results of 33 other Mennonites, as well as the data from my father’s paternal cousins to see if they show any evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   None of them show more than 1 percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   These results confirm that my father indeed has Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry on his mother&#8217;s side.   I cannot prove at this time that the Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry came through Joseph Nowitzky, but that is a strong possibility.   If the Jewish ancestry wasn’t from Joseph Nowitzky then it could have come from one or more of Jacob Peters’ and Helena Bergmann’s great-grandparents. In any
The Ancestry Finder results for my father and his sisters would suggest that they are about 1/64 Ashkenazi Jewish in origin. I reviewed the 23andMe results of 33 other Mennonites, as well as the data from my father’s paternal cousins to see if they show any evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   None of them show more than 1 percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   These results confirm that my father indeed has Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry on his mother&#8217;s side.   I cannot prove at this time that the Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry came through Joseph Nowitzky, but that is a strong possibility.   If the Jewish ancestry wasn’t from Joseph Nowitzky then it could have come from one or more of Jacob Peters’ and Helena Bergmann’s great-grandparents. In any case the Ancestry Finder results from 23andMe confirm that my father does have Jewish ancestry as related in the family stories told by his great uncle Johann Peters.   Whether that ancestor was truly a redheaded Jewish woman may never be determined, but the 23andMe Ancestry Finder results certainly provide fascinating confirmation of an interesting family legend!

Tim Janzen is a family practice doctor at South Tabor Family Physicians in Portland, Oregon.   His interest in genealogical research goes back 35 years and he has particularly focused on Mennonite genealogy for the past 15 years.   He has a web site that summarizes many different sources available for Mennonite genealogical research found at <a href="http://www.timjanzen.com/">www.timjanzen.com</a> and has given many presentations about Mennonite genealogy in the United States and Canada.   He is the co-administrator of the Mennonite DNA project at <a href="http://www.mennonitedna.com/">www.mennonitedna.com</a>. He also serves on the ISOGG Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree Committee.   Tim is married to Rachel Janzen and they have four children.

Our Redheaded Jewish Grandmother

Data from the 2010 census showed that about 13% of people living in the United States self-identify as African American, but from a genetic point of view, ethnicity isn&#8217;t so black and white.
Most African Americans have genetic ancestry tracing back to both Africa and Europe but the exact proportion can vary widely. And conversely, many Americans who consider themselves of completely European descent may actually have some African ancestry as well.
A<a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/107/2/786" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> study</a> published a few years ago found that the <a href="../2010/01/11/large-study-reveals-details-of-african-american-genetic-ancestry/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">average amount of DNA in an African American’s genome</a> that could be traced back to West Africa was about 77%, but ranged from as little as one percent to as much as 99%.
At 23andMe, researchers have looked at the genetic ancestry of about 78,000 customers likely to consider themselves as entirely of European ancestry and found that somewhere between three to four percent of those people have <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/hidden-african-ancestry" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">“hidden” African ancestry</a> ranging from 0.5 to 0.75 percent. These findings suggest that this group of customers have an African ancestor who lived about six generations, or about 200 years, ago.
The United States is often referred to as a “melting pot” and although African Americans comprise the largest racial minority, this country is also home to many other genetically mixed groups. Indeed, Americans with ties to Latin America typically have DNA deriving from <a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1000037" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Native American, European and sometimes African</a> populations.
By studying genetic ancestry, researchers can break down the proportion of a person’s DNA that traces to different parts of the world and learn more about our unique and interconnected histories.
February is<a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history-month" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Black History Month</a> – stay tuned for more posts!
Did you know? provides tidbits of information about genetics (in humans and in other animals) and explains how DNA relates to both ancestry and health.

Did You Know? Ancestry is Not So Black and White

They had bigger brains and muscles, but for some reason Neanderthals died out about 30,000 years ago, while we modern humans survived.
Why we, Homo sapiens, flourished and our <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/neanderthal-fade-away">Homo neandertalensis cousins died out</a> after thriving for hundreds of thousands of years is an evolutionary mystery biologist are trying to unravel.
In the last few years, scientists have uncovered clues what the <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/why-23andme-love-neanderthals-and-you-should-too">lives of Neanderthals may have been like</a>. And those clues also tell us more about what it means to be a modern human.
(Discover if you have Neanderthal DNA with 23andMe&#8217;s <a class="waffle-rich-text-link" href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">DNA Ancestry Service</a>, or sign-up for a <a class="waffle-rich-text-link" href="https://www.23andme.com/membership/">membership</a> to unlock even more ancestry insights.)
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-3359" title="neanderthaler_278" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/neanderthaler_278.jpg" alt="" width="278" height="206" />
<h6>Ancient DNA</h6>
Most interesting of all is that, although Neanderthals disappeared long ago, their DNA lives on in all non-African people.
23andMe now offers a <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/labs/neanderthal/">lab</a> allowing customers to connect with their prehistoric roots.
The lab, developed by one of our resident computational biologists Eric Durand, compares two modern human genomes with the Neanderthal genome. It can then determine what percentage of your own DNA is Neanderthal. Before coming to 23andMe, Eric worked on the <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/neandertal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">first draft of the Neanderthal genome</a> and on analysis of <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7327/abs/nature09710.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Denisova genome</a>, another of our early human cousins. The lab uses the same method Eric helped develop while working at the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
See Eric’s white paper for a technical explanation of the methodology.

<h6>Modern Humans</h6>
Most people have <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">Neanderthal DNA</a>, on average about 2.5 percent. But there are outliers, who have much more.
What it means to have a higher percentage of Neanderthal DNA – whether you’re hairier, or brutish or short, for instance – isn’t known.
There are some theories, however, of how Neanderthals contributed to modern humans. One is that interbreeding 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.
At the very least research appears to support the theory that at some point during the tens of thousands of years Neanderthals and modern humans lived side by side, a few of them may have<a href="../2010/05/06/new-evidence-suggests-interbreeding-between-humans-and-neanderthals/"> shacked up</a>.
Or as Elizabeth Kolbert deftly phrased it in the<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_kolbert#ixzz1fPOs2vp2"> New Yorker</a>: 
“Before modern humans ‘replaced’ the Neanderthals, they had sex with them.”
Provocative to say the least, but it’s actually an idea that’s floated around for some time.
Anybody who ever read Jean M. Auel’s saucy prehistoric romance books beginning with<a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Clan_of_the_Cave_Bear.html?id=4gOtkoiJIjEC"> “Clan of the Cave Bear”</a> could tell you that. But the notion that modern humans and Neanderthals got way past first base. They hooked up and even had children together still doesn’t tell us much about what it means now to have a smidgen of Neanderthal in your DNA.
<h6>Neanderthal Genome</h6>
Svante Paabo, the Swedish geneticist behind the sequencing of the<a href="http://www.eva.mpg.de/neandertal/index.html"> Neanderthal genome</a>, explains that from an evolutionary point of view. Comparing the modern human’s genome to that of the Neanderthal has great value, Paabo said.
Humans and Neanderthals share a common ancestor with chimpanzees – our next closest mammalian relative – that goes back between five and seven million years.
Comparing the human genome with that of chimps tells us a lot about evolution over millions of years. But by having the Neanderthal genome sequence – now 55 percent completed – and comparing that with modern humans, we can learn much more about evolutionary changes over the last 30,000 years.
It may be that the DNA of other prehistoric human groups also are intermixed in our own DNA.
<h6>Other Ancient Cousins</h6>
Much like with Neanderthals, scientists extracted ancient DNA from the skeletal remains of another ancient cousin known as the<a href="../2010/03/24/analysis-of-ancient-dna-suggests-the-existence-of-previously-unknown-type-of-extinct-human-ancestor/"> Denisovans</a>. The remains – a finger bone – were found in a cave in Siberia and showed that Denisovans were cousins of Neanderthals. They lived in Asia and disappeared about 40,000 years ago. Their DNA is found today in Melanesians.
As for the comparisons with the Neanderthals, so far, Paabo’s team has found almost 80 genetic variants that are unique to modern humans. The function of these variants could help us understand what distinguishes us from Neanderthal.
Apparently Paabo’s work has also resonated beyond the scientific community as well.
At a talk late last year, Paabo told a group of neuroscientists that for months he’s been keeping emails from people who have<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/nov/16/dear-professor-husband-neanderthal"> claimed that they were Neanderthal</a> and should be included in his study. Several women have written to him volunteering their husbands as subjects for study.
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Got Neanderthal DNA?
23andMe customers can find their inner Neanderthal or at least how much Neanderthal DNA they have at <a href=" https://www.23andme.com/you/labs/neanderthal/">23andMe Ancestry Labs</a>. Not yet a customer? <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store">Visit our store</a>!
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