Many of us know our family history through the stories that grandparents, parents, and other close ancestors told us. But what’s beyond those last hundred or two hundred years? If you are curious to dig into your most remote family history but have doubts about what you can find in the ancestry test results, keep on reading. Let’s reveal what can a DNA test tell you about your ancestry!
What can you find in our ancestry test results?
With an ancestry test, you can get results that will tell you where your ancestors were thousands of years ago. To extract this information, we sequence your DNA and use more than 700,000 genetic markers that will give us all the data we need to make your ancestry test results as accurate as possible. We then analyze your DNA sample and compare it with our entire database of reference samples. Thanks to the differences and similarities that we are able to extract from this comparison, we will be able to determine your ancestry.
The ancestry test results will provide you with a wealth of information so that you can learn about your most distant ancestors. At Ancestrum, we divide this information into a series of sections to go deeper into your ancestral history in the most complete way. This way, you won’t only know in which areas your relatives were but you’ll be able to discover many more interesting facts about them. These are the sections you’ll find in your ancestry test results:
Geographic ancestry
You will know your origins at a geographical level. You’ll know where in the world there is DNA similar to yours, indicating the presence of very remote relatives in that place at some point in history. Geographic ancestry test results are based on the current context and go back about 800 years, which is about 30 generations.
For example, your geographic ancestry test results may indicate a high percentage of your DNA presence in European countries. Also, within Europe, our analysis can indicate your percentages of belonging to different regions. Sometimes we can even find out, within a country, the provinces through which your ancestors have passed at some point in history.
Ethnic ancestry
The analysis of your ethnic ancestry will allow us to identify the ethnic groups that are associated with your DNA in different parts of the Earth. In this way, you’ll not only know which areas you belong to but also which different ethnicities have been shaping your genetic heritage over the centuries. This is a good way to understand the cultural, social, and historical characteristics of all your ancestors.
The Ancestrum database has over 300 different ethnicities from around the world so you can get another perspective on your ancestral lineage. This analysis is perfect for completing the geographic ancestry test, as regional ancestry is often not 100% consistent with current geopolitical boundaries, which have been altered by various circumstances throughout history.
In this respect, an example of the ancestry test results is the percentage of the Iberian race, which would place your ancestors in a very specific area of Europe. Your DNA could also have matches with other ethnicities from many other parts of the world, although most commonly all of these ethnicities are concentrated in the same geographic area.
Neanderthal DNA
But if you still want to go beyond the geography and historical stages that our ancestry test analyzes, you can also discover the percentage of Neanderthal DNA in your genes. In the 400 centuries that modern humans coexisted with Neanderthals, enough genetic admixture occurred that we continue to find traces in today’s DNA tests. You’ll simply know a percentage, if any, of how much is still left of Neanderthals in your genes.
Maternal and paternal haplogroup
Thanks to this analysis within the ancestry test you’ll be able to know your maternal and paternal lineage through mitochondrial haplogroups. With this data, your ancestry test results will provide information about who your ancestral parents were, that is, which would be the first human in which your lineage began.
Celebrities
Finally, thanks to haplogroup analysis and as a curiosity, we can also get to know with which celebrity you share maternal or paternal lineage. This means that, at some point in history and with a high probability, your family trees were intertwined and you could share some common ancestor.
Historic ancestry
The historic ancestry test results delve into a more distant period of history than that detailed in the geographic ancestry one. Thanks to the samples extracted from some archaeological sites, a very important database have been generated with which we can compare your DNA and determine in which historic period it was present.
From the Upper Paleolithic, before 10,000 BC, to the Middle Ages between 1,000 and 1,300 AD. You’ll know if your DNA is present in the genetic traces of eight historical stages that also include the Mesolithic, the Neolithic, the Metal Age, the Ancient Age, Classical Antiquity, and the High Middle Ages.
This would be an ancestry test results example in the historical area: it might appear that within the Paleolithic, your highest percentage of DNA relates to German hunter-gatherers. Or that in the Middle Ages, your genes are mostly among those of Medieval Spanish. There are so many historical eras to which we go back with our history test and the number of groups within them that you are sure to discover surprising results from your ancestry test.
Ancestry test results from Ancestrum
This wealth of information and curious facts is what Ancestrum’s ancestry test results can provide you with. If you are curious about where you come from, trust the professionals. At Ancestrum we have the best technology and the best experts who will treat your data anonymously and securely. So you don’t have to worry about anything and enjoy sharing the ancestry kit results with your family and friends.