Ever wonder what it was like for our ancestors living hundreds of years ago. We can read their wills and the census records for our not too distant ancestors to get an idea how they lived, but what about way back and where they lived. That information is available and out there for you to discover, but it does take some extra effort. So where does that type of DNA come from? It comes from archeology dig sites all over the world. Archeology DNA is an entirely other science. It has to be proven in the archeology world and papers have to be written on each of the locations where ancient human bones were found.
"For the purpose of genetic genealogy the focus is on detecting large IBD (identical by descent) segments within a genealogical timeframe (effectively within the last ten generations) where there is a possibility of identifying the common ancestor through documentary records. In general terms the larger the segment the closer the relationship."
"In a study of a European subset of the Population Reference sample (POPRES) dataset it was estimated that for the most part IBD blocks longer than 4 cM come from 500-1,500 years ago and blocks longer than 10 cM are within tht last 500 years."
Meaning autosomal DNA & the Y-DNA is representative of the last 500 years - or about 10 generations & that is considered a genealogical timeframe. Documented genealogical records only go back about that far.
Provable DNA starts with about 5 cM to 7 cM. All the cM numbers smaller than that represent IBD (identical by descent) - or how and where people descended from other groups of people - not descended from identifiable individuals.
There are some companies advertising to do this research for you if you send them your DNA and some $.
GEDmatch has this same feature in their database. If you have autosomal tested with one of the major DNA companies, you can download your raw data and upload it into GEDmatch where you can compare your DNA chromosomes with people that tested from various companies. GEDmatch has a free section as well as a section that you can purchase use of. Under the free portion you can click on "Archaic DNA Matches" and it will give you a list of the proven numbers and some of the names of the sample locations. This is not a one on one results of your ancestors, but it gives you a list of the GEDmatch numbers for those sites. If you take the GEDmatch archaic numbers and match them against against your own GEDmatch number with the cM size of 3, you can find out of you have had ancient ancestors at that location. It is time consuming because you have to do each match separately. I made up my own analysis sheet and did just that.
Below is a sample of my and my husband's Ancient Ancestor DNA. This is not representative of all the locations represented in GEDmatch, but is only those with matches for the two of us. It was a lot of work, but if you are interested of knowing more about your earliest ancestors and have the time, it can be worth it. There are living people that match some of these ancient ancestors and the information can tell you if that is the case.
You will see below in the 2nd match down that we both match with an Anzick Amerindian and my mtDNA has also indicated that was correct.
