The DNA sat nav: find your ancestor's home from 1,000 years ago

[rug]

•Geographic Population Structure can locate the village your ancestors lived 1,000 years ago.
•Breakthrough has massive implications for life-saving personalised treatment.
•Previous tools were only accurate to within 700km.

1 May 2014

Tracing where your DNA was formed over 1,000 years ago is now possible due to a revolutionary technique developed by a team of international scientists led by experts from the University of Sheffield.

The groundbreaking Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool, created by Dr Eran Elhaik from the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences and Dr Tatiana Tatarinova from the University of Southern California, works similarly to a satellite navigation system as it helps you to find your way home, but not the one you currently live in – but rather your actual ancestor's home from 1,000 years ago.

Previously, scientists have only been able to locate where your DNA was formed to within 700km, which in Europe could be two countries away; however this pioneering technique has been 98 per cent successful in locating worldwide populations to their right geographic regions, and down to their village and island of origin.

The breakthrough of knowing where the gene pools that created your DNA were last mixed has massive implications for life-saving personalised medicine, advancing forensic science and for the study of populations whose ancestral origins are under debate, such as African Americans, Roma gypsies and European Jews.

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/dna-sat-nav-gps-tool-find-your-ancestors-home-1.370846

[AverageJoe90]

1. Mine were probably mostly all in the British Isles, France and the Low Countries at this point.....

....with some left over in Germany and Scandinavia, and maybe even a few other places(one of my ancestral lines via England might ultimately have been of Italian origin, amazingly enough.).

[xchrom]

2. du rec.

[Louisiana1976]

3. Excellent post. K&R

I wonder where my DNA's origins would be. I have British, French, German, Italian, and Filipino blood.

[Sunlei]

4. amazing. Not just to a country anymore, the original home village in that country.

And the team created a free tool with GPS for everyone to upload their previous DNA test results.

"This technique also means that we can no longer easily classify people's ethnic identities with one single label. It is impossible for any of us to tick one box on a form such as White British or African as we are much complex models with our own unique identities. The notion of races is simply not plausible."

[Jenoch]

5. This sounds interesting.

I would be interested in this sort of information as long as my DNA, and resulting information is passed along to me and any DNA and test results in possession of the company conducting the tests be destroyed.

[Brother Buzz]

6. I would love to plug into this and have a look see

I know a few family threads that go back 400 and 1200 years, but there are a couple of maverick lines I would love to know more about.

[Bosonic]

7. Wouldn't ones family tree be rather broad going back 1000 years?

50ish generations worth of ancestors must be a big population to select from.

[Ron Obvious]

13. Mitochondrial DNA, I suspect

Previously this has only been possible with mitochondrial DNA which is inherited through the maternal line, so that you would trace a single unbroken line to your ultimate great grandmother through your mothers and grandmothers.

I didn't see anything in the article to contradict that.

[mainer]

18. Yes, it must be just maternal

Because of your mother's from China and your dad's from Scotland, what village would it specify?

[Vincardog]

8. Would that village be in Scotland? or Ireland? or France? or Italy? Or would it lead to my Mother's

side of the Family tree? I don't have to go back 100 years to be in 5 different countries much less villages.

[rickyhall]

9. Maybe could trace me to several countries,

Not just one. I have ancestors from Germany, France, England, Scotland, Iceland, Oklahoma, Mississippi & points west. Really complicated. Can't see how that would work out, for me anyway.

[sakabatou]

10. Eastern Europe most likely

[Wolf Frankula]

11. I know where my ancesters were 1000 years ago.

My father's people lived in the eastern borders of Scotland and England, which means we are Saxons, Celts and Scandinavians, a group of horse thieves (the family crime) and small herders. My mother's people were standing the long vigil (zaintzea luzea) against the Moors and Africans in Ibai Herria.

Wolf

[Ron Obvious]

12. Mitochondrial DNA?

I'm guessing this applies to mitochondrial DNA which is inherited through the maternal line only. Still an interesting thing to find out, mind.

[MannyGoldstein]

14. Can they pinpoint to a specific jail?

I'd love to know that.

[greiner3]

15. I did the National Geographic 'Geno 2.0;

A DNA test that traces your heritage for a lot longer than this one.

But it only gives a broad background rather than the one mentioned.

For instance, I have less Western European, more Eastern European and Western Asian (read Indus valley) than what I'd have thought from having 3 grandparents from Germany and 1 from Ireland.

Also, I have a bit less Neanderthal, 1.3%, than what is indicated from my heritage mentioned AND also 0.9% Denisovan which indicates I have a larger than indicated Eastern Asian than what is indicated also.

From this information, I would think this line may have come from Ghengis Khan's invasion of Eastern Europe in the 13th century (the gypsies are said to have a large portion of their DNA from from this invasion).

Just another mutt of the race called HUMANS.

[paleotn]

17. Possibly, you have some Hun genetics.....

...as in Attila the Hun. Late comers to eastern / central Europe from east Asia, circa 4th century AD.

[MisterP]

16. here's the general genetic groups

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup
of course for most Europeans it'll be R or I from the men's side and Ukraine-Kuban from the Indo-Europeans