From Vikings to Beethoven: what your DNA says about your ancient relatives

Tautalus

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Ethnic group
Portuguese
Y-DNA haplogroup
I2-M223 / I-FTB15368
mtDNA haplogroup
H6a1b2
MyTrueAncestry identifies ancient relatives through DNA segments (IBD), although the SNP chains are small in my case it indicated an old sample (CL63) from a Lombard cemetery, with an ethnic composition stemming from the Frankish region. But what exactly does this mean? Am I a direct genealogical descendant of this individual ?

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There is an interesting article in Nature that discusses how scientists are using consumer-genomics databases to connect living people to ancient ancestors.
The article explains the difference between genealogical and genetic ancestry, noting that while genealogical ancestors include everyone in a family tree, genetic ancestors are those with whom someone shares DNA. This distinction is crucial for interpreting the significance of ancient DNA matches.

It highlights the use of Identical by Descent (IBD) segments to find connections between modern individuals and samples from ancient individuals. Companies like 23andMe and MyTrueAncestry are involved in this research, but the relevance of these connections can be misunderstood.

IBD segments are used to match relatives, but their significance diminishes with time. These IBD segments can reveal connections between modern individuals and ancient people, providing insights into genealogical relationships and historical migrations but the relevance of these connections can be misunderstood, and not all genetic matches are genealogically meaningful or informative, especially for genomes older than a few hundred years. These segments may not be genealogically significant due to the random nature of DNA inheritance across generations, each of us has fewer genetic ancestors than genealogical ones.

Misinterpretation by consumers can lead to misunderstandings about the significance of these connections. Sharing DNA segments with an ancient sample does not mean that he is our direct genealogical ancestor, but that you and this sample may have a distant ancestor in common.​

 
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