<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-15595 size-full" title="DNA-bases" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DNA-bases.png" alt="" width="607" height="457" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DNA-bases.png 607w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DNA-bases-300x226.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 607px) 100vw, 607px" />
Can 23andMe sample my dead relatives and why do you use spit to extract my DNA?
Inquiring minds want to know, or at least a lot of our customers do. 
There really are no dumb questions and if you have something to ask, we’ve probably heard it before. 23andMe has a lot of resources for folks trying to learn the basics; from<a href="https://www.23andme.com/user/claim/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> how do I register a kit</a> to<a href="https://www.23andme.com/gen101/snps/"> what’s a SNP</a>.
While we like to write about interesting genetic breakthroughs and compelling stories about people using 23andMe in unique ways on the blog, there’s something to be said about just covering the basics.
Like why we use spit and can’t sample your dead relatives.
Leave it to two science teachers to attack these pressing questions and many more.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17508" title="Lab Out Load Logo" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Lab-Out-Load-Logo.jpg" alt="" width="204" height="198" />
Dale Basler and Brian Bartel, who when they’re not molding young minds also have a podcast and blog called<a href="http://laboutloud.com/"> Lab Out Loud</a>, spent some time with 23andMe scientist Emily Drabant talking about science and some of the<a href="http://laboutloud.com/2013/02/episode-90-looking-at-our-dna-with-23andme/"> basics of 23andMe</a>.
Dale and Brian asked about spit samples and dead relatives along with questions about how our Relative Finder determines how closely related someone is to you or the relative importance of your individual risks for a particular disease or how that risk compares to the average.
Check out the Lab Out Loud’s<a href="http://laboutloud.com/2013/02/episode-90-looking-at-our-dna-with-23andme/"> podcast</a>.

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Some Basics About Using 23andMe

<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="aligncenter wp-image-16670 size-full" title="Mayim's connections" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Mayims-connections-e1674589980933.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="435" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Mayims-connections-e1674589980933.jpg 450w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Mayims-connections-e1674589980933-300x290.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" />
We plead guilty to occasionally geeking out on genetics, so it’s nice to see when someone else does it too.
In September, Moment Magazine got all nerdy and wrote about their<a href="http://www.momentmag.com/the-moment-magazine-great-dna-experiment/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Great DNA Experiment</a>, in which they look at the 23andMe results of 15 notable Americans of Jewish ancestry and make some interesting genetic connections. It’s a good illustration of how our DNA can tell us about our interconnectedness.
The piece shows it’s not “six degrees” that separates these individuals from each other, but, in all but one case, no degrees of separation. This means that these individuals are all directly related to one another, albeit in most cases distantly. This was also news to the 15 participants.
All but one of the individuals has Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. The one exception is Linda Chavez, the political commentator, who descended from Conversos, indivduals of Jewish and Muslim ancestry who converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition. Her ancestors eventually settled in New Mexico. But even in her case, although she isn’t directly related to any of the group, she is connected to each of the others individuals focused on in the piece by just one other individual in the 23andMe database.
The connections shown in the article are what prompted The New York Times columnist David Brooks and NPR “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel to joke about learning they were distant cousins, sharing a common ancestor several generations back. Brooks kidded that he was “most surprised that our ancestors worked together on National Schetl Radio, on a program called ‘All Pogroms Considered.’” (Maybe the line needs a drum roll to work.)
The article shows the genetic connections between people like Mayim Bialik, the actress on the Big Bang Theory, and Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics. Or the connections between NPR’s Siegel, and Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, or his connections to 23andMe’s CEO’s mother Esther Wojcicki, a journalist and teacher. The magazine shows the connections and the amount of shared DNA, measured in centimorgans (cMs), to illustrate the “relatedness” of any two individuals. More closely related individuals share more DNA.
So why is all this interesting?
It is a very specific example of unexpected connectedness. We&#8217;ve written about this <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/news/make-that-three-degrees-of-separation/">interconnectedness before</a>. We’ve even seen unexpected connectedness <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/23andmes-three-degrees-of-separation/">among 23andMe employees</a>. Even in cases with people who have vastly different backgrounds and experiences, one can use genetics to create a short chain of people to connect any two individuals to each other. A little geeky, yes, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Using 23andMe to Make Connections

Three Degrees of 23andMe

Over the last week 23andMe customers got a different view of their ancestry.


Since we launched our new<a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/ancestry/"> Ancestry Overview</a>, customers now get a quick and comprehensive summary of what their DNA tells them about themselves and their ancestors.


This new dashboard summary gives you a quick outline of where your ancestors likely came from, the number of relatives you’re matched with in our database and how closely they’re related to you, as well as other hard to find ancestry gems like our Neanderthal Lab or the just added feature that tracks the top surnames for your Relative Finder matches.
These changes help you dig deeper into your ancestry by giving you more tools and making the ones we already have easier to use.
For example, our very popular Relative Finder tool now includes a turbo-charged upgrade that displays your matches on a world map.

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-14614" title="RF Map" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/RF-Map-300x181.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="181" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/RF-Map-300x181.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/RF-Map.jpg 526w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
It’s not just a cool visualization; it’s also incredibly helpful for anyone on a genealogical hunt for ancestors. It can help you focus your search and triangulate between multiple sources of information by showing where in the world your relatives cluster.
You can also filter the results by how closely related to you the matches are. Beyond that it’s just a great way of telling you more about your family history, where you and your family are from and the places where your connections remain.
Another new feature we’ve added, but are still testing, is a Family Tree. The Family Tree is easy to share with others and offers customers a way to track a lot of family facts beyond just dates, such as major life events, occupation and health information.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-14629" title="family tree form" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/family-tree-form-300x172.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="172" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/family-tree-form-300x172.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/family-tree-form.jpg 498w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Because it’s sharable you don’t have to just rely on your work, but can pool the collective wisdom of your family members to fill in blanks in your tree.
Customers who’ve already done the work of creating a family tree elsewhere can import their GEDCOM data into 23andMe’s Family Tool. There is more to come. A few of our scientists are putting the final touches on a new Ancestry Painting analysis, which we believe will provide the most accurate breakdown of your genetic ancestry now being offered anywhere.
Our new Ancestry Painting will soon draw from approximately 20 different world regions, creating much finer detail of your genetic ancestry and a break down of European ancestry as well as a clear differentiation between Native American and Asian ancestry. We’ll keep you posted on when this new tool is ready.
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Take a look at your ancestry overview<a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/ancestry/"> here</a>. Not yet a customer? <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store/cart/">Visit our store!</a>
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23andMe’s New Look at Ancestry

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-13970" title="Screen Shot 2012-06-19 at 2.08.37 PM" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Screen-Shot-2012-06-19-at-2.08.37-PM-300x163.png" alt="" width="300" height="163" />
The dance is sort of a gnome-like jig – all knees and elbows and no hint of cool – but where Matt Harding gets you is in his pure unabashed release of happiness.

As you watch, a smile creeps across your face. You can’t help yourself.

For almost a decade, Matt has cobbled together the most unlikely of careers – making a video series in which, as he says, he “travels around the world dancing badly.”

The series, called<a href="http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> “Where the Hell is Matt?”</a>, started innocently enough when he was backpacking through Vietnam in 2003 after quitting his job as a video game programmer. On a lark, his buddy suggested that Matt, “do that stupid dance you do.” His friend videotaped him doing his silly shuffle next to a busy traffic circle with people walking by. There was no intent to share it with anyone but the video wound up on YouTube and went viral.

Fast-forward nine years, and Matt’s quirky videos have attracted almost 78 million views. More than 40 million people saw his last one, and over the last two years, he’s traveled to dozens and dozens of countries shooting his next video that he released <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&#038;v=Pwe-pA6TaZk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this week</a>. 
<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zlfKdbWwruY" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

As he was putting together the final touches on this latest video, Matt partnered up with 23andMe for another short little film. (Editor&#8217;s note: This video is no longer available online.)
In this one he’s meeting and dancing with strangers like in his other videos, but this time each person he’s dancing with – in Tucson, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis and San Francisco – has something in common with Matt. They each share some DNA.

Using 23andMe’s Relative Finder, Matt connected with distant cousins around the country. A few wanted to meet him in person so he crisscrossed the country in a very few days, and was introduced to relatives he never knew he had. Then, he danced with them.

“Having these people who I’ve just gotten to go around and meet, whom I’m related to, is really amazing,” said Matt. “Somewhere back on our family tree we have a common ancestor… I would’ve never known that without the DNA.”

For Matt this is where he sees the overlap with what he’s been doing over the years.

“It’s all about connectedness,” he said. “It’s all about seeing what we have in common. With 23andMe you realize that we all share the same roots, the same origin if you go back far enough. And yet we are all unique.”

Dancing with 23andMe

<img decoding="async" class="alignright size-large wp-image-13569" title="threedegrees_wtitlelegend" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/threedegrees_wtitlelegend-1024x400.png" alt="" width="625" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/threedegrees_wtitlelegend-1024x400.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/threedegrees_wtitlelegend-300x117.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/threedegrees_wtitlelegend-768x300.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/threedegrees_wtitlelegend-880x344.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/threedegrees_wtitlelegend-1180x461.png 1180w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />(Click to enlarge)
While the PBS series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/">Finding Your Roots</a> made only passing reference to connections between guests, the truth is that each guest is genetically separated from other guests by at most three degrees.
<h2>Interconnections</h2>
The graph above shows a simplified view of just some of the connections between guests on Finding Your Roots. We’ve cut out most of the interconnections because otherwise, it would look like an unintelligible ball of yarn.
In actuality, every guest is connected to every other guest, and in fact, any two people who have been genotyped by 23andMe&#8217;s <a href="https://www.23andme.com/">Personal Genome Service</a> can be connected to each other &#8212; or to a Finding Your Roots guest &#8212; through one or two 4th or closer cousins.
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The connections in the graph reflect 23andMe Relative Finder matches between individuals, which are based on segments of shared identical DNA. <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/relfinder/">Check out your own Relative Finder</a> to see who you’re related to in 23andMe’s database.
Not yet a member? <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store/">Check out our store!</a>
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<h2>Harry Connick Jr. to Robert Downey Jr.</h2>
By tracing paths through related individuals in 23andMe’s database, we learn that Harry Connick Jr., Robert Downey Jr., and Barbara Walters are all direct cousins, that Martha Stewart and Samuel L. Jackson have a mutual cousin, and that Condoleeza Rice, Cory Booker, and Geoffrey Canada each share a mutual cousin with Kevin Bacon.
This concept of &#8220;three degrees of genetic separation&#8221; results from increased human migration across the globe. Over the last 500 years, as people from different geographic regions traveled and mixed, the genetic distances between people also shrank. Go back in time, and the corresponding distances between two people may have been more like eight or nine genetic degrees.
From the graph, we can see that Angela Buchdahl represents a genetic &#8220;bridge&#8221; between her Korean and Ashkenazi Jewish heritages, linking people like Margaret Cho to Barbara Walters. Barbara Walters must have also had many ancestors that spanned different regions and populations, as she represents common links between Angela Buchdahl, Kyra Sedgwick, Robert Downey, Jr., and Harry Connick, Jr.

Three Degrees of Genetic Separation

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-13549" title="ancestry dashboard" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ancestry-dashboard-265x300.jpg" alt="" width="265" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ancestry-dashboard-265x300.jpg 265w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ancestry-dashboard.jpg 422w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 265px) 100vw, 265px" />
Over the next three days, a crack team from 23andMe will be at the annual<a href="http://www.scgsgenealogy.com/Jamboree/2012jam-home.htm"> Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree</a> in Burbank, to inject even more fun into the event while also offering tips on using genetics in genealogical searches.
Most exciting for us is that the team is offering a sneak peek to a host of cool new ancestry features that we’ll be launching in a test format in the coming weeks. We’ll be signing up attendees at the conference to do beta testing of the new features as we make them ready for a broader release in the near future.
But you can get a look at what’s to come here.
The first thing that will change is how we surface the collection of ancestry tools we offer users. Now when you click on My Ancestry Page, you’ll get a dashboard summary giving you a quick overview of things like your overall maternal and paternal line ancestry, a summary of recent changes to your Relative Finder matches and sometimes hard-to-find ancestry gems.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-13551 size-medium" title="Ancestry Painting" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ancestry-Painting-232x300.jpg" alt="" width="232" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ancestry-Painting-232x300.jpg 232w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ancestry-Painting-768x994.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ancestry-Painting-791x1024.jpg 791w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ancestry-Painting-680x880.jpg 680w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ancestry-Painting-911x1180.jpg 911w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ancestry-Painting.jpg 1275w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px" />
To dig deeper into your ancestry, a few of our scientists have overhauled the Ancestry Painting V2 analysis, which we believe is the most accurate breakdown of your genetic ancestry now being offered anywhere. Previously we “painted” individuals ancestry by displaying their Asian, African and European ancestry. Our Ancestry Painting will soon draw from approximately 20 different world regions, creating much finer detail of your genetic ancestry and break down European ancestry and differentiate between Native American and Asian ancestry. Here’s an example of the results from our friend Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who is also the host of the recent 10-part PBS series Finding Your Roots.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-13552 size-medium" title="Relative Finder Map View" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Relative-Finder-Map-View-232x300.jpg" alt="" width="232" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Relative-Finder-Map-View-232x300.jpg 232w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Relative-Finder-Map-View-768x994.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Relative-Finder-Map-View-791x1024.jpg 791w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Relative-Finder-Map-View-680x880.jpg 680w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Relative-Finder-Map-View-911x1180.jpg 911w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Relative-Finder-Map-View.jpg 1275w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px" />
Another enhancement includes a turbo charged upgrade of how results are displayed in our popular Relative Finder tool. A new Relative Finder Geographic Map View offers you the chance to display your matches on a world map. This can be incredibly helpful for anyone on a genealogical hunt who must triangulate between multiple different sources of information about their ancestry. In this case we show how your relatives cluster on a world map, which in turn can help you target your search for relatives.
Finally, we’ve added another essential tool for those interested in ancestry with a new Family Tree.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-13553 size-medium" title="Family Tree" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Family-Tree-232x300.jpg" alt="" width="232" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Family-Tree-232x300.jpg 232w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Family-Tree-768x994.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Family-Tree-791x1024.jpg 791w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Family-Tree-680x880.jpg 680w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Family-Tree-911x1180.jpg 911w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Family-Tree.jpg 1275w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px" />
The beauty of this the new tree is that it offers a easy to use and intuitive way to store a profusion of family history. For those who use other ancestry services, they can import their GEDCOM data into 23andMe’s new family tree tool.  You’ll be able to enter into the Family Tree relevant dates, life events, professions and other data.
We believe that these new features and enhancements will be both helpful and fun in your exploration into your own ancestry with 23andMe. Stay tuned for the release and if you’re in Burbank this weekend drop by our booth (#706 and #707).

A Sneak Peek at 23andMe’s New Ancestry Features

Check out <a title="Three Degrees of Genetic Separation" href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-2/three-genetic-degrees-of-separation/">this post</a> for an illustration of the three degrees of separation between guests on Finding Your Roots.
When we learn about our ancestors, who they were, and where they came from, the discoveries become part of how we define ourselves and understand ourselves as unique. The PBS series Finding Your Roots has taken this further, showing us how much we share with others and how interconnected our stories are.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-13441" title="MikeandSkpforBlog" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MikeandSkpforBlog-300x250.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="250" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MikeandSkpforBlog-300x250.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MikeandSkpforBlog.jpg 393w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />23andMe Scientist Mike Macpherson going over connections between guests with Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and a Finding Your Roots producer.
<h2>Finding Your Roots</h2>
This has been a theme of the 10-part series, something that the show’s host, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has repeatedly repeated—that despite our differences, whether racial or cultural, Americans are more interconnected than we know.
It isn’t just that our stories share parallels but that the connections run deep and can be seen in our DNA. It’s ironic that as the world’s population has grown exponentially in the last 500 years – from about half a billion to now seven billion – we are closer and more connected.
During the show&#8217;s filming, Professor Gates visited 23andMe and talked to scientists Mike Macpherson and Joanna Mountain, both of whom served as consultants.
<h2>Connecting People</h2>
At one point, Macpherson taped up photographs of the roughly two dozen guests who appeared in Finding Your Roots. Then, he sketched out the genetic connections that linked this seemingly random collection of people.
This was the first time someone demonstrated the genetic connectivity of any two people on Earth. Macpherson made some surprising links that connected, for example, Martha Stewart to Samuel L. Jackson and Barbara Walters to the Imam Yasir Qadhi.
Unlike previous examples that relied on social connections – friends of friends of friends – this connection is through cousins matched within 23andMe&#8217;s database of over 150,000 people.
<h2>Social Connections versus Genetic Ones</h2>
This wasn’t just a parlor game. Indeed, Stanley Milgram first wrote about the notion that any two people—a cop in New York and a street vendor in Mumbai, say—could be connected through five other people based on experiments he conducted in the late 1960s. It’s a little more complicated than Milgram theorized, but he got the gist right.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13443" title="MikeInterconnection" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MikeInterconnection.jpg" alt="" width="414" height="167" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MikeInterconnection.jpg 414w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MikeInterconnection-300x121.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 414px) 100vw, 414px" />23andMe scientist Mike Macpherson sketching connections between the guests on Finding Your Roots as Prof. Gates looks on.
These previous theories of connectivity focused on social connections, the idea that we are all – all seven billion of us – linked to each other by six degrees of separation.
This connectivity theory even spawned a game named after one of Gates’ guests,  <a href="http://oracleofbacon.org/">“Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”</a> The game links any actor to Kevin Bacon by five other performers. Bacon – whose wife Kyra Sedgewick was also on the show – said for a long time he<a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/video/#%21/news/business/Kevin-Bacon-Explains-Six-Degrees-Story/131838958"> hated that his name was the punchline for a joke</a>. But he has since embraced it and is using the idea of social connections <a href="http://www.sixdegrees.org/">to link people to worthy causes</a>.
More recently, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/technology/between-you-and-me-4-74-degrees.html?_r=3&amp;scp=1&amp;sq=4.74&amp;st=cse">Facebook</a> and LinkedIn have shown that just four “connections” could link any two people together.
Macpherson connected the Finding Your Roots guests via a much shorter genetic chain. Any two people are connected through just one or two other individuals.
<h2>Why is this a revelation?</h2>
It’s new because this isn’t the notion that you are connected to someone else because of who you know. It’s the notion that you are connected to someone because of who you are related to.
This is a manifestation of human history and human migration over the last 500 years. 
<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F-zRXHAo4-U" width="420" height="315" frameborder="0"></iframe>
People are no longer isolated by geography and so the differences between people are smaller than in the past .
Perhaps in no other place has the convergence of people of different cultures and histories been as dramatic as the Americas. And while the clash of cultures and histories has been both painful and brutal at times, it is what forged our history more than anything else, Gates argues.
“I’ve always thought that it was that story of America,” said political commentator Linda Chavez in the last episode in the series.
People came here from all over the world, some voluntary and some involuntary, and mixed, she said, “and that’s made us stronger.”
This post by 23andMe Content Editor Scott Hadly and 23andMe Senior Director of Research Joanna Mountain first appeared last week on <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">PBS&#8217;s Finding Your Roots website</a>. It was one of a series of posts by 23andMe. Dr. Mountain was a consultant for the the 10-part series.

DNA Relatives — Page 13