9 Important Details About Your Heritage Ancestry.com Can Uncover

This is a sponsored post, all opinions are my own.

Before I dive into 9 Important Details About Your Heritage Ancestry.com Can Uncover, I just have to say this has been an enlighting experience for many reasons. Doing the research for this post has given me so much light into my ancestry and clarity as well. I truly recommend everyone learn about their past as far back as possible.

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It’s a fun thought: to know who our ancestors were not just 50 years down memory lane, but centuries back. We may uncover lineage and secrets about our ancestors we could have never even imagined. You can find long-lost relatives on another continent, or discover a distant aunt living next door.

That guy at the office who always seems a little familiar, even though you’ve never met before? It may turn out he is actually a cousin, six times removed. That little girl whose eyes look just like your mom’s? You never know! She may be that niece you’ve never met.

That’s not all. An AncestryDNA test is the perfect way to know a lot more things about your heritage: ethnicity, geographical location, living relatives, lineage, and many more.

So, what secrets can you uncover through an Ancestry test?

9 Important Details About Your Heritage Ancestry.com Can Uncover

1.    Know your true Ethnicity

Although you may look a 100% Caucasian, Scandinavian or African, you might be surprised to find random percentages of a surprising ethnicity in your DNA. Your great-great-great-great-grandfather might have married a Chinese princess at one point, which would explain the 1% Chinese ancestry in your DNA. Most people who get this test done are usually flabbergasted by the results. They see percentages of a heritage they never knew they were a part of.

AncestryDNA tests come with a detailed description of all the ethnicities you belong to, sometimes dating back hundreds of years. For an old family, the members may turn out to be a combination of different ethnicities – Irish, Indian, Latino, African or Scandinavian. It just takes one person in your lineage to add that extra heritage in your blood.

2.    Know other members of your Lineage

AncestryDNA.com has a database filled with DNA samples from millions of people over 350 different regions. Your DNA sample can be cross-matched with all these people to find the ones related to you by blood. Living in the United States your whole life, you might suddenly come up you had a Nigerian cousin or were related to a member of the Russian Royal family from their database.

However, most ancestry tests come up with a geographical region rather than a country name, because the names of some countries have changed a lot over the centuries.

3.    Get the whole information with Autosomal DNA Test

The Mitochondrial test only takes into account the female side of your lineage; it calculates your family thousands of years back, but only via the female side. AncestryDNA.com, on the other hand, uses the Autosomal test, which takes into account both the male and the female members of the family. You can trace back your family through both your father and mother and both sets of grandparents, great-grandparents and beyond.

4.    Find out Recent Relatives Around the World

AncestryDNA.com will not only match you to your past but also look for living people who share your DNA around the world. They may be your cousins or aunts removed 13 times living on another continent, but they are living people with real lives, not just someone from the past you can’t reach out to. Who knows, that might help you plan your next family vacation, too – going to a new country your extended (to the power n) family lives. I’m sure they’ll be just as happy and surprised to find you, too.

5.    Create your Family Tree

If you hadn’t known your family’s identification beyond your grandparent’s last name, this is the perfect opportunity to create a complete family tree. The database at AncestryDNA.com can match you up with all the names they have and give you the ones who belong to your family, hereby making your family tree go back decades or centuries. You can create a clean, compact Family Tree with a score or so people you would like to know, or you can create an elaborate one that will be a mile long.

6.    Find your Family

If you are adopted or an orphan with no biological family in sight, AncestryDNA.com is the perfect way to find out if you are related to someone. Many people who have never had a biological family have actually found out they have a brother or a sister somewhere close to them, or even a grandparent in another region. Parents can be found out via these tests too, but not always encouraged if the adoption had been anonymous.

7.    Find out if you are a part Irish

Surprisingly, two out of three people who take an Ancestry test find out that they have at least 5% of Irish heritage in them. Amusing, yes! You might find out you are 7% Irish too because a great-great-great grandparent was. The Irish have spread out throughout the world so much their legacy continues throughout the map, especially in the European nations.

8.    Know for Sure how you are Related to Someone

If there’s someone you know or think you are related to but aren’t exactly sure, the AncestryDNA.com can tell you exactly how they are related to you, or not related to you. They can be a distant 6th cousin but you can get that information from your test. So, the next time someone looks familiar but you can’t really place them, all you have to do is to check your DNA matches to see if they are a relative.

9.    Find out if your Siblings have a different lineage than you

Parents don’t give out the same chromosomes to all children, so there is a good chance your own biological brothers and sisters might be carrying different lineage in themselves. Just like you look different from your siblings, they may end up having completely different percentages of ethnicity than you. Living in Ireland and descendants from an Irish family, you may only be 22% Irish while your sister or brother may carry more than 50% Irish DNA in their body.

AncestryDNA.com is a great way to know more about your heritage, find out more about your ancestors than you ever thought you can know, and to know just how diverse you are as a person. You may turn out to be some part Asian when you’ve always known you are European, or there might be a hint of Indian in you that you never knew.

Anyways, it sure is a fun technique to understand yourself more! All you need to do is to order an Ancestry kit home and send them a sample, and you’ll find all your answers on their website.

My Results

I did my own test with their home kit, I received everything in the mail with detailed instructions. Basically, you spit in a test tube and mail it back to a secure lab. I got the results back in about 4 weeks (emailed to me).

The above image shows my two-part DNA origins. I can now build my family tree and research family members, distant cousins, location and learn so much more from these results.

What will you find out with your AncestryDNA results?

Order your own AncestryDNA kit for $99, currently on sale for $59 until December 24th, 2018.