Automated hints that can help you discover your common ancestors

What are the challenges of the most recent common ancestors? So first of all in the agenda we're talking about finding common ancestors with DNA testing and what the challenges are. We will talk about the methodology that we're using in order to identify most recent common ancestors and common ancestors. So that's MRCA, most recent common ancestors and common ancestors. We also briefly talk about what's the difference between the two. And then the third section which is a relatively short one is why in my opinion actually second cousin are the best. So you might just gonna argue with that but we will see at least from the point of DNA genealogy second cousins are the sweet spots in there. And then we discuss the area of hidden gems at 23andMe which is something that I feel a lot of people are not aware of. Mostly people that haven't tested at 23andMe obviously but even people that have tested at 23andMe they have some difficulty in really just unlocking all the good things that are there.

So hopefully I will give you some examples where you can learn something new and use it in your research if you have tested at 23andMe. And then there's a common perception that 23andMe is not as good as for example Ancestry or MyHeritage which I think is the up and coming testing company. But there are some advantages that 23andMe definitely has and we will talk about that as well. And then last section is some real life examples where I'm gonna show you how you can actually shortcut everything in the application itself in the UDNA family app. So we will do basically the manual slow way before and then I'm gonna show you how to do the fast way and how everything has been automated and the hints are just, you know, being presented to you on a silver tablet. Another question but Carlani actually has a very, very good remark. It was the empty DNA haplogroup that Diana by another relative that linked her to South Asia.

Okay, thank you for that Carlani. That's very interesting. I didn't know that. Okay, let's start with the common ancestors and their challenges in finding them. So the first is very, very often I hear the kind of reaction from people who are these DNA matches and how are we related. I even get messages from some people that are saying like I have no idea how we are related. For your information what I do is I contact every single of my DNA matches on 23andMe. I reach out to them. I asked to share the ancestry report and I send them actually depending if they are on my maternal or paternal site. I send them a link to my grandparents family tree onwards. So that should give them all the information and a lot of people are still gonna say like I have no clue how we are related. Then what I hear also very often is I don't recognize any names and locations and I know that we are being a bit fixated on surnames especially and people have been saying like well, don't know any of your surnames but we tend to forget that females usually at least in the past every generation were been changing the surnames because they took over the surname of their husband.

And if we think into certain kind of ethnic groups like for example the Frisians in Germany, they have changed their surnames. Even the male have changed their surnames every single generation. So that is extremely difficult just to look at surnames only. Then the closest DNA matches I have are distant and that is actually been true. This is my biggest problem being 85-86 percent German in my ancestry that most of the users obviously it doesn't even matter 23andMe ancestry. They are in the US as you know or in North America and they are rather distant than close. So my closest is actually a third cousin. Then nobody is responding to my messages or I know nothing about my family. So people that have been adopted obviously don't know much about their family and that is definitely a challenge if you are going to ask them about family trees. And I think not responding to messages is a bit of a misconception.

It all depends on how well our message is. If we reach out to people I get about a 5 to 10 percent rate of responses in 23andMe. If you deliver information and very precise information, interesting information to that then the chances are that some people are going to respond. And then the last point I think that is something that is a problem for all of us which is I only have limited information. I only have limited time for genealogy. Right. And this is actually that was the point where I started to think about I need to I need to write this DNA app because my time was being limited. And there is so many matches there. I have almost 3000 matches on 24andMe. Same amount for my mom. And I tested it at all the big companies. It's just manually doing it in a spreadsheet is impossible to do. Okay. I pause here. And are there any specific questions or comments on this slide so far?

Okay. We have a comment from Carol. She's helping a second cousin who has an NPE event. I think Carol, we all have NPE events. We're just unsure where that happens. I think actually that on my old male line, which is actually Basso, not West. I think I have an NPE there and probably relatively early because if I compare my YDNA to other male descendants with the Basso surname, it turns out to be we're completely different Hublot groups. I'm EV13. And yeah, the other groups are just I, for example. So looks like it might be on my side. Okay. Thank you for that, Carol. Carol, very good comment. Good. Let's start with the methodology we use. And I would just like to start with this chart that I found from the University of Berkeley. That is explaining how distant or close actually people are related to each other. And there's a bit of a misconception around it.

So if you look over here, you can see on the, what is marked in the blue line that the triangle and this oval that we have over here. Not sure. Now you can see my mouse because I'm presenting on the, on the iPad. Sorry for that. But the triangle and the oval, they are being closer related than the circle and the triangle. Right. Because that's the red line and it's much further away. So that means like going into the past that they are being related to each other. Right. So this is, it's basically an inverted family tree. And that's something that we have to keep in mind. And obviously everybody would like to have first cousin, second cousin and so on. But reality is we have thousands of fourth cousins and, and probably equal number of fifth cousins that have been mislabeled as, as fourth cousins or distant cousins. Right. So keep that in mind.

Okay. Bruce, Bruce, your question is actually more about Hublot groups. So I'm not going to touch that on this presentation, but maybe that's a good idea to discuss in one of the future webinars about Hublot groups. So I'm just going to publish Bruce's question that is there. And we're going to go to the next point. And most people that probably do a DNA test. Doesn't really matter. This screenshot is obviously from 23andMe. They just look at their matching list and you see, I have three third cousins up here, Deanna, Karl and Raymond. And all three of them are over 1%, right? And I was just wondering, and there's a couple underneath as well. So the first six for me are all three, a third cousin. And then the fourth cousin already start very early on. And I was wondering, how do I go from a list of DNA matches from names that I honestly never have heard to actually putting them into a family tree and also identifying the most recent common ancestor, which is the couple up here that is in the, in the top square.

So, you want Peter, Martin Stammen and Magdalena Remmers. Right. And the three cousins that we have is actually on the, on the bottom right is Raymond, Karl and Deanna. Okay. Yeah, we have a, we have a comment from Regina there who has many first cousins and second cousins due to endogamy. And I know for example, that Irvin has the same kind of, well, let's say challenge. So endogamy. Yes, absolutely right. You have a lot of first cousins, second cousins who have been probably related to you in more than one way. So endogamy is very, very difficult, but again, probably a topic for one of the next webinars. Okay. So how did I manage to go from the list to this one? And we will use this example, this family tree, and we will specifically look at these people here in order to figure out what is the methodology that we're using. Okay.

Good. So in this methodology, there is, there is basically, well, three and a half steps, right? The fourth step is really rinse and repeat. So the first step is we need to build triangulated groups, ideally automated, right? Why automated? Because, well, I know that, that some people have been saying there's up to 300, 400 triangulated groups, at least for 23ME. It looks with their threshold that they're applying. It goes to the number of 256 triangulated groups. Like I said, Irvin from, from our user is, is the one that actually has the most triangulated groups there. But again, endogamy usually gives you, gives you more than, than the average person. But if we don't build these triangulated groups who are basically representing a very, very old ancestor. And by old, I mean, if it's 256 groups there, and we can assume that they're basically at the sixth great grandparent level. So eight generations into the past, or even the seventh or eighth great grandparent level.

So that would be one or two generations even further back, right? And you have to keep in mind that even if we target, for example, a sixth great grandparent, right? And we can actually name it. So we have written sources about that person. The, the trouble is that that DNA is actually coming from the ancestors of that person, right? So we will definitely have a look back further into the past. And the, um, analysis that is out there in the research paper says that if you're just looking at seven centimorgan threshold and above and bigger, you're basically looking at the last 500 years. Okay. So we go very, very far back. Then step number one, we have to look at the last 500 years. Then step number two is, uh, we want to identify all the relations among each and every member within the, uh, the triangulated group. Well, it, because as you could see earlier on, right, they are all, uh, third cousin to my mom.

But the question is really about what about the relationship amongst themselves. Are we finding any kind of relationship that is closer than third cousin? And it's going to help us to identify an early, most recent common ancestor. And I was just answering, um, uh, uh, post on another, uh, Facebook group right now. Uh, and that person, um, yeah, had a bit of a misconception about, yeah, focusing too much on, on its own, or the DNA testers family tree. We have thousands of family trees out there, or we could build theoretically thousands of family trees of all our DNA cousins. And it's very, very important. And I cannot stress that enough is that we need to spend the majority of our time. On developing and building out the family trees of our DNA cousins, those verified by DNA. So please don't waste your time and avoid the step of triangulation. And you're trying to build out, uh, the family tree of somebody who is not triangulating with you.

And maybe it's been related with you 800 years back, 900 years back. So no chance to actually find the common ancestor. Okay. And once we have done that, we really always want to focus on the closest two relationships, the closest relationship between two people, right? If you're lucky. And if you, if you have a lot of close relationships, like I said, first cousin, second cousin, second cousin, uh, once removed, for example, yes, definitely you start with these relationships. But if you are like me, there is no reason to give up. Those, uh, relationships exist, but within your DNA cousins, they are equally good as actually you matching one of them. Yes. You might argue that it's not going to help me much into fitting them into my family tree, but it gives you at least an information about. Maybe a great grandparent or a great, great grandparent as a starting point. And then you can develop, uh, the, the family tree from that person onwards.

And, and usually once we go into the, uh, 1800s, for example, there is lots of resources online on ancestry, for example, family search, uh, genie.com and other websites that we can look up. Okay. And we want to build out the family trees from those, uh, most recent common ancestors onwards. Right. We want to go further into the back. And once we have done that, we just going to find other kinds of, uh, family trees that have been matching with us. Right. So this is actually the example, how I found this over here. Um, and we will go into detail into, into the next slide, but, um, yeah, just from the three, uh, third cousins that I had, it was actually two separate family trees that I could develop. And then see how they were overlapping at a specific person. And that person just immediately, uh, ring a big bell because I knew the surname was a surname that I was researching as well.

Right. So that is, is a bit of luck, um, because it was still one generation further away until it matched on my side, but we, we will see that in detail. And then last step is really then once you have, uh, built up these, um, from the highest, uh, most of the level of the family tree. highest most most recent common ancestor you also want to build up the descendants lines which is usually what we're not doing as genealogists usually we just focus in going further and further back into the past right we all want to get that kind of gateway custom a gateway ancestor in order to find for example uh yeah our entry into a noble family right everybody likes that but equally important is if we want to identify common ancestors and mrca's further generations back is to do the descendants of them because then we are going to identify those dna cousins that we have in the triangulated group how they fit into this family tree that we just built up into the modern times okay and then the process is really a rinse and repeat and it means like we're going one generation at a time and developing it and then just going upwards and then from the new mrca onwards we're going downwards again and having new side arms that we can then build out okay then let's look at the real example here so this is um the relatives in common section which is uh no down one of the very very good things about 23me so so relatives in common is is basically a list of people that are triangulating you can see it in the last column which says dna overlap they they recently just uh renamed that and i know uh roberta esters and some other genealogists actually found an error in there when they did it and they quickly actually changed it again but if you're looking at somebody and that person like in this case dna um and raymond and n they all have a yes in the column there um that means like that they are triangulating with the person that i've selected here so this is actually the chart i clicked on carl who is a third cousin to my mom and it shows then how carl and these people on the left so me uh diana for example raymond uh who is his brother right it's the brother of carl how are they being related to each other which is which is the column that is named carl and you can also see how they related to you and already this chart shows you very very nicely even though this is this is really the best and the closest ancestors that i have on 23me as sad as it is but you can see that carl has not only a brother he has uh diana who is a second cousin he has rebecca who is the first cousin he has n who is a second cousin so this is just the first page there is a couple of pages after that so if you want to find those close relatives this is the way to do use the relatives in common method right so you have to go and click on all your triangulated cousins which you have to use spreadsheets for in the manual way and then go into relatives in common and look at all the pages and and see who has actually been uh having the yes in the column there dna overlap and then note the relationship until you find somebody that has for example ideally a first or second cousin relationship

so you can see the second cousins have a great grandparent obviously the brother has the parents as the mrca and the first cousin rebecca has the grandparents okay so we're going to go to the next slide where we have a graphic representation of this so here you can see carl and raymond they are brothers to each other so obviously they share the two parents but they also share the four grandparents okay i only showed two here but but obviously there is most likely four grandparents as well okay let's look at uh rebecca into it so remember rebecca is a first cousin to carl but because carl and raymond are being brothers it automatically means that rebecca is also a first cousin to raymond okay who do they share in common they do share in common a grandparent couple okay keep this in mind it's a couple at this moment we don't know if it's on the paternal side or the maternal side if it's the paternal grandparent or the maternal grandparent up here in the middle okay we cannot say that so usually when we talk about most recent common ancestors it is actually a couple there are cases where we can identify a single person which is if there are actually descendants coming in from two different spouses right so if we have this case then we can identify a single person as a most recent common ancestor which is which is very very helpful

okay next slide is then looking about deanna so deanna is a second cousin right and if we go up obviously then we are one generation forever back so deanna carl raymond and also rebecca the other one generation is a second cousin they share a great grandparent couple okay so that is very very very clear that's why in this case actually i put put two grandparents there now the question is how can i find them right and this is just more to illustrate the way how we identify those goldilocks this low hanging fruits that we should go after and then the way to do is to contact these people directly via messaging system, the internal messaging system that basically all testing companies offer and ask them for family trees, ask very specific questions as I mentioned early on. So in this case, I would say, hey, Deanna, I see that you were second cousin with Carl and Raymond and I mentioned their full name and I say, do you know how you're being related to them?

Do you know them personally? Have you heard about them? Is the name any name that you maybe have heard in your family and so on? And if people respond, then usually I'm asking for a family tree as well, if they have one. If not, I just go with the birth dates and marriage dates and death dates and locations and just build out the family tree for these people myself, obviously free of charge. And I'm offering then afterwards the results to the people themselves. and that's how you get a relatively good response rate.

Okay. So any questions so far on this method, how are we going to use it? Right. We're building up. So we're contacting Carl, Raymond, Rebecca, Indiana, and we're trying to figure out who is actually going to be the great grandparents, how they've been related to each other so that we can then build out the family tree upwards, the ancestors from that great grandparents couple onwards, but also downwards. Think about all the sidelines in order to identify if we can actually add more DNA cousins from the triangulated groups to it.

Okay. No questions. Good. That's good. So why are second cousins actually the best, in my opinion? So first of all, as we just said, they share the great grandparents and most people, they know their grandparents, right? Obviously adoptees, they have, or somebody else with an unknown parentage, they don't know their grandparents, right? Or at least maybe for one side, they know their grandparents. But what we need to do is, if we know our grandparents, if Deanna knows her grandparents and Carl knows his grandparents, we can just ask for the names of the grandparents, even if they don't know each other. But because their grandparents are siblings, we can then identify the great grandparents.

So if we're going to do this actually on the first cousin level, it won't make so much sense because the first cousin only give us the grandparents, which we already know. So there is not really, there's a bit of guessing work, then who are the great grandparents that they're actually matching. And third cousins, because they're just one generation further back, that would be great, great grandparents. This is where it gets really tricky. And usually you need some hints or family tree to start building out, or at least the great grandparents kind of names and birth locations. And then you can just, at least for North America, go into the 1940 census and find some information about that.

Okay. Let's start with the hidden gems at 23andMe that not everybody's been aware of. So we have about 3% of people, based on our research, based on the more than 100,000 DNA tests that we have at our app, that have a family tree URL being posted on their profile. Right? So I will show that later on in the app itself. But if you go to the profile of a match, right, you click on it, it will be listed there. Right? If there is a lot of people that actually have a MyHeritage link there, because there was, at least for a short period of time, a cooperation from 23andMe with MyHeritage. So this is obviously the easiest one. Right? We want to find them first. And then there is DNA cousins, like I mentioned earlier, who have close relatives, second cousins, first cousins, first cousins, once removed, and then half second cousins, whatever combination is there in that range, around, for example, 400 centimorgan upwards.

Right? They are very, very good for us. Then we have DNA cousins who have posted four or more surnames. What I can observe is that a lot of people are actually posting four surnames. And my assumption is that based on when I ask them, most people are actually saying, yes, indeed, these are all four of my grandparents. And this is an ideal starting point. Even if somebody is not replying to your messages, take those four surnames and look them up at FamilySearch, look them up at Ancestry. And most likely you can find either a marriage certificate, in some cases also you can find some wills, or you can find some divorce papers as well, if there was a divorce that was happening, with those surnames. You just have to go through every possible combination of those two surnames that there is. Okay? And then when we come to the point that nobody's been responding, there is some DNA cousins who have responded to the PMs.

Like I mentioned earlier on, I'm reaching out to every single match that I have, and I'm close. I'm at 2,800, close to 2,900 now. A lot of people are responding to me as well. And even if they say like, well, I'm adopted, I have no clue, but I would love to find out about my birth parents, for example, right? In this case, I try to help them as good as I can. So people that have responded in the past, right, if you come with very specific questions and so on, and FamilyTree examples on your side, so insights, for example, about a second cousin that they have, or specific surnames that are not surnames in your FamilyTree, but that come, for example, from automatic surname matching, they can say, yeah, yeah, this is the surname of my great-grandparent, and he was from, he was an immigrant coming into the US at whatever, 1885, and that's all I know, right?

And I know maybe, for example, he's from Poland, or Ukraine, or Italian, or German, or Dutch, or whatever country that moved over. And then we have the surname matching, as we just explained. That is obviously manually very, very difficult, because it would require you to go into all the profiles, note down, all the surnames that the people have been listing in your Excel file. But I know a lot of people who have these spreadsheets are actually doing this.

And then lastly, the location hints. So 23ME gives the locations for the four grandparents, if people have filled it out. Not all the people obviously fill it out, but if they fill it out, they can go down to a specific location, because at least since more than a year, 23ME is using an official API, I think it's from Google, in order to identify the hierarchy. So that means it goes from the location itself, to the county, then to the state, and then to the country, right? So the locations are, even if they have, let's say, for example, it's Paris, right? Differentiates between Paris in France and Paris in the US. Okay.

And then the last thing is something that very, very few people know about. 23ME is the only company, the only DNA testing company that is delivering their ethnicity prediction for a common ancestor. Why is that so? Because they have one chart where they, where they show a chromosome map, and on that chromosome map, they're putting, they're overlaying their ethnicity prediction.

But this is not only just a visual display on their website, but you can actually download that file. And if you look into it, it's just a normal text file, right? And it has, it has just one line for each and every predicted ethnicity. And it says, it says the chromosome, the start and end position. And it also says, what is the, the ethnicity that is being presented as, as a best guess from them. And this is something that no other company is offering right now. And it is very helpful. If, for example, you have foreigners that come from, let's say, like I said earlier on from, from the Czech Republic nowadays, so former Czechoslovakia or Poland or Ukraine and so on. Right. And, and a lot of your matches would just say, well, 90% of my matches are from, from the UK. Right. United Kingdom in general. So you can pinpoint that. And they say like, yeah, yeah, I have, I have one person there.

And immediately you can just cut out all the noise and concentrate on that. Okay. Just a question. Has anyone, any, any feedback on these hidden gems, anything from this list that you have successfully used in the past? Okay. No comment. Good. Then very, very quickly we come to the point of, um, yeah, why I personally think that 23andMe isn't as bad as people think. Uh, the, the number one reason is it has a very unique pool of DNA matches because a lot of the, and I think it's probably the majority of people, they are testing for health reasons only. They are not interested in genealogy, but if for example, you're looking for a non-paternal event, uh, even the first generation or second generation, the chances to find somebody who has only tested at one testing company, it will be 23andMe in this case, right? Because these people, like I said, are not necessarily interested in genealogy.

Okay. Thanks, Karen. Um, so Karen has used several of that. That is good. Thank you for that comment. And, and also, uh, Regina is saying she loves the relationship of the 23andMe, um, which is definitely helpful. Yes, that they're going to show the relationship of people in that relatives in common, uh, model that they display. Um, then we have 12, 12 million plus. So I know the 12 million is a bit old. And, and as you probably know, uh, 23andMe just had an, at an IPO. So it's now been, uh, at the NASDAQ, um, and definitely they have a lot of fresh money. So we can expect that their, their database is continued to grow massively. And they're the second largest database by far, right? So, uh, I think the numbers for my heritage, which is number three is about 5.5. Most likely they will have crossed 6 million so far, but that is still only half of that, what 23andMe has.

And like I said earlier on, it's the only company to predict ethnicity. And, which is a very important point. It shares the information with you, not like ancestry and FTDNA. So we all know that, um, ancestry is, is, is not going to tell us where exactly on which chromosome and start and position the match is. FTDNA tells us this information, but FTDNA doesn't tell us the B versus C match, right? Because it, it, it says this is violating privacy.

Okay. And we have a comment from, from Greta. And she says that the DNA overlap is very helpful. I think Greta, you're referring to the, uh, the segment view or the DNA triangulation, uh, tool where you can just, um, use one person and compare up to five, uh, people against that person. And then you see over all the 23 chromosomes, you can see where the people are overlapping, uh, with that one person. That's indeed a, a very, very nice, uh, tool. And it is just coincidentally my next point, right? So, um, 23andMe gives us a pretty cool triangulation tool so that we can just do all these steps on our own. Right. And ancestry, uh, as you, as you're probably well aware, it has been for years been said, no way are we going to give that to you. And, and FTDNA, like I said, had a tool there, uh, but it's, it's not going to tell us the B versus C relation.

So we cannot, cannot really look at that as well. Okay. Good. Now we come to the, uh, real life examples, uh, probably enough of PowerPoints. So I will try to switch over. If you have any kind of, uh, uh, okay. So greater is just saying, uh, she's referring to the relatives in common list. Okay. Thank you for that.

Good. So let's see. So this is actually, um, our app and this, this is live data. So, so like I said, this, this is, um, my data itself. Uh, you can see here is my, my mom as well. Uh, like I said, uh, only my mom and myself have tested at 23andMe. Um, I have, I have more, uh, person, my, my father and, and some first cousins, uh, have tested at FTDNA. Um, but on 23andMe is just the two of us that have tested over there. And, and in case if you haven't seen the app, um, just how we organize the data is in these, uh, colorful cards. Um, maybe they, they just remind you a little bit on a certain kind of board game because that's where the idea comes from. Um, you probably know which one I mean. So, um, just, uh, disregard probably all the names on here. Um, this one, I couldn't hide away.

Um, but this is how we do. We've, for example, all the metrics have been organized on these, uh, possible triangulation cards, right? So if we click on, on this, this card, um, actually you can do that and I can show you how, how quickly it does. So what it does now for you, it automatically does the DNA triangulation. Um, so this card had a one on it. So it means it only has to check, uh, one specific match between two people, right? Um, so it reaches out to the 23andMe server. And as you can see, it waits for, for the response over there. And then we'll shortly display the answer here. If these people have been matching and if they're matching, then, then we would have a new triangulated group or otherwise we probably don't have.

And then on the next card, for example, uh, here we see the match is no longer sharing with me. So that happens. Uh, you, you're probably aware of the 1500 people, uh, limit. So, um, despite my best effort, I lost, uh, some people in here, but what our app does, it, it saves all the data for you in the cloud, right? So it's always there, uh, anywhere in the world where you go, where you have a laptop, for example, and an internet access, you can just access your data, right? It, it, it can be on a very remote Island as long as you have internet access there. And the advantage is that 23ME maybe takes away that name that we just saw there, Tanya, but the information has been stored in our app and we're not deleting that information, right? We are, we're not saying like you have to pay more in order to see more than 1500 people like 23ME is doing.

So that's definitely an advantage that we have there. Okay. So we wanted to look into the, um, example that we've had for earlier on. So first of all, what I'm going to show you is, um, in the same kind of way as we did earlier on with the cards, uh, that have been there for running, uh, DNA triangulation automatically here, we see, um, all the, all the groups that we have. This is actually just my chromosome 13, uh, but you can see I have, uh, 201 triangulated groups, groups right now. Um, which is, which is okay. Uh, it is, it is, uh, I think I'm at 46% of my, uh, total genome that has been, being covered. Actually, we can see that I can show you this here. So what we do, it's 45.1%. You can see it over here. Uh, 45.1% of my total genome is covered by these, uh, triangulated groups. And if we just go over them, you can see the start position and position.

You can see the, uh, the predicted ancestry. So this one is British and Irish for 67% and Southern European for 33%. And then, uh, MC actually stands for, for my mom. It's, it's a maiden name, right? So I know it's, it's, it's a maternal one. Anyway, I can see that from the color here as well. But obviously if we would have a, a most recent common ancestor, that's further back into the past, it would be displayed here as well. So I know, for example, my Italian ancestry is, it's been up here. Uh, you can see a hundred percent Italian, a hundred percent Italian. This one is a hundred percent Italian. And this one is European. So I'm not sure if it's Italian as well. And this one Italian as well. So I have a lot of Italian, uh, on the, on the first chromosome. I don't know why that is because we know it's been random, but somehow it, it, it, it tripled down there.

Okay. We go back to our chromosome 13. And, uh, well, actually not chromosome 13. We're going to concentrate on chromosome four, where I have 11 of them. And then we're going to look into the one from 72 onwards. 72. This should be the one. Yes. 70. Okay. So this is obviously the position that we have in million base pairs, 70 to 90. And this immediately brings us into the segment view, which is very, very similar to the segment view that you probably have seen at, um, my heritage, I think office it as well. Um, definitely 23andMe office it, the ancestral segment. And so all of these people, maybe I'll show you first the cousins itself, right? All of these people here. So we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. This is my mom. So I can show you, right? Uh, we have all the information here. For example, this is the family tree that we have pointing to, to Vicky tree, um, her birth base, uh, all her, her grandparents are actually from Germany.

Um, and because I am selected up here, you see the, the total shared, uh, uh, centimorgan is within what we're expecting there, right? Um, we can look at, uh, KL. So, uh, KL, uh, KL stands for Carl, uh, that we had earlier on, who is her third cousin once removed to me, right? Again, we're looking at him from, from my perspective. If I switch over here, and I go back into the same triangulated group, you see now the color is gone because we don't know from my mom, mom's point of view, uh, on which side it is. But if we go back into the triangulated groups and cousins, and we go into Carl, we see he's a third cousin to my mom up here, right? And we just collect all the information here. For example, you see the locations that Carl has been named. We see his last name there. Sorry for that. Switzerland, uh, Delaware, United States.

Uh, that's the information that's been given and how much DNA they've been sharing. has been shown here as well. Okay. So if we go back into the segments, so the proportion that is orange here is, as you can see, if it goes down, right, we see, um, four people. This is my mom. The first one is my mom and myself. and, and DG versus KG is also a, a parent child relationship because they have a matching segment that goes the full length of the chromosome. We are chromosome four, and you can see it starts at one and 190 goes to full length. Okay. These two are also relatively closely related to each other. So you can see that this is the segment that they inherited, but it might be that the proportion left of it and right of it, it might be actually from the common ancestors as well. We are not a hundred percent sure.

It could be actually two segments, maybe on the left side, but with this small little, um, green part on the right side, most likely they inherited more DNA. So that means like they are, they are being, um, their common ancestor was being closer to the CA. And here we can see that some people actually inherited the first part of it. And then these people down here inherited rather the second part of it, which is indicating to us that this orange part is, if we look further back from the common ancestor, who has given that DNA to all these, these people is then going into two different ancestors of them. right? So the further we go back, we know the smaller the segments are getting, right? The smaller segments are definitely going to be older. So this is a younger segment, this one here than this segment, meaning it comes from a person that is much closer to current time than we have over here.

So a couple of other points that we have here. So we talked earlier on about, um, just, just getting additional information in here. So for example, we, we can look at the surnames and what our app does automatically. It, it has all the surnames in there. And obviously, uh, the big bulb in the middle is, is the surnames that I put in there. So, um, it takes some time to, to organize. You can move it around here and you can look at the surnames that people have. Uh, so for example, TS here, which is kind of important because the last name that he gives here is the same last name, uh, of the common ancestor. That's how I knew, um, I had a hit, uh, a jackpot here. Um, here we have Phillips and Barnes. Uh, we have green between two people here, DG and KG. I have the last name, uh, green in here.

And if this is just too confusing, you just click on this one here and it only shows you the matching surname. And this is the solution. So if we move TS over here, okay, we wait until it has stopped. We can see that my mom and me and TS, we share the surname Stammen, which is indeed German origin, uh, is, is even coming from a very, very small town, uh, about a half an hour drive away from my birthplace where my, um, my maternal grandfather comes from, right? He was a farmer. There is a very, very small town with just, uh, less than a thousand people. And we can see that that piece of DNA there was being inherited to, uh, to a lot of people that are currently living all over the world.

Okay. Talking about the world, we can just look at, uh, the map as well. So we ignore this for a while. Uh, what we can do here is just assign locations to, to, uh, let long, but we can see for example, that the majority of my ancestors are all coming from Europe. Uh, this is, this is over here where you can see how they've been related. So this is some individuals here, uh, my Italian ancestors, they are all coming from here, as you can see from that region. If we zoom further in, it's actually going to be Asiago. Okay. And if we zoom out again and maybe look into the, uh, the U S so here we have six people, here, and we can see it is the North Dakota state. And it is near, uh, Minot. I think Minot is the county, if I'm not mistaken. And if we look inside of it, there is actually two, uh, there is four of them over here and two here.

So this should be Bertolt, which, which is a German first name, by the way. So we can see that this location was being named by Johan Hubert Stammen. And his, his American name was John, John Stammen. He was the gateway ancestor who moved from Germany over to the U S with his first German wife. And then after she died and he had about five children with her, he married another, uh, German wife again in the U S and he had another six or seven child's children with them. And that's why we have so many DNA ancestors from him. And you lived a very, very long life as well. Right. And this information is, is, is, is not manually entered by us. It's been taken automatically from the family tree, uh, that I imported into there. Right. So the family to information had, uh, Bertolt, uh, is actually Watt County, North Dakota, United States, which is his death date.

And here we see, uh, well, he was birthed in, in, in, in Foxholm, uh, so this is, and his residence was there as well. St. Mary's Watt County. All right. So this is, this is another way to display the information. And most likely you get a clue there. Then we talked about it earlier on segments. If you look to the top rights of segments, here we see another hint that, like I said, only 23andMe gives, uh, it tells us that the ancestor is most likely French and German, a hundred percent, which is true. Uh, it is most likely, uh, German, uh, but, uh, as you most, uh, as you probably know, it's very difficult to distinguish French and German DNA. They're, they're very, very similar, right? So, um, hence 23andMe says, uh, French and German in one, one category that we have there.

Okay. And lastly, and we have one feature in here that is really damn cool that I want to show you in, in two ways, which is about the hidden gems that we have. So if we go into to do, so first of all, we could do, uh, locations here, like I said before, but we want to look at tasks that we have. So a lot of the triangulated groups that we have, they have outstanding tasks. And the number four here says we have four tasks. And if we click on it, actually we can see what is the task and it gives us some illustration here. It says that Carl Weible and Ann Bittstian, probably wrong pronunciation, are closely related to 102 centimorgan, right? So they're most likely third cousin once removed. And the hint here is to ask them to get into contact with them and then develop the family tree from the most recent common ancestor that the two of them have.

And it says the same here for Carl and Deanna who have 260 cm. It tells us that Carl and, uh, and Raymond are actually brothers. And if I say, okay, I already have that in my family tree. I just click here and we will see right now it doesn't show, but if we just refresh the screen, it will vanish, right? So for every, every user like Irvin, please keep in mind, as soon as you check the setting mark, the check mark there, the hint has been gone and you can never look at it again. And then lastly, uh, we have, uh, Timothy here who posted four or more surnames. And the question is, are they his, his, his grandparents? And the suggestion is to ask for a get com file or, or research for marriage records. So if we click on it, we automatically been taken to Timothy's, uh, uh, profile that we have there.

So for example, we can send him a message, uh, in the app and we can invite him to the app itself. So there's one feature that I haven't, uh, discussed yet, but, um, we have a discussion forum in here. So each and every triangulated group has a discussion forum and we can just post information in there, like in any other forum. It's just saved there. So you can pull in your, your, your cousins, like in this case, uh, Timothy, and you can work together on identifying, uh, those common ancestors. So if your time has been limited and you, you probably say, Hey, Timothy, can you, can you just work on, let's say, Diana's family tree and just see if you can just extend it. A couple of, uh, generations. And I work on, for example, LP's family tree, right. Or on the name that that person has posted. And coming to the name, you see that he has been posted five names, Dempsey, lawyer, shuffer, stammen, and Billy Vicentio.

So we are related through the, through the stammen, sure name, as I, as I showed early on. Okay. Uh, maybe just one last point that we have up here, which is how this is just one method. So every triangulated group, how we can find it, we go to to do in the triangulated group, which is where we are in right now. And we have three tasks left. So remember the tasks that I checked off is now being lost. Okay. I can show you if I go to any larger group, like for example, this group over here, we have 16 tasks in here, 16. Okay. So there's a lot more to do. And, and these tasks are just specific to this group here. Okay. That's one way to organize. But the second way is if we click on this, we're getting this list and take a look at that. This is how much work I still have to do.

Right. Lots and lots of hints. So we have groups like for example, this one with 25 tasks in here. And, and definitely I can go in there and just look at all of them and, and, and select what is interesting. But there is a second way we can go up here. And instead of just saying all types, we can say, Hey, show me only those triangulated groups where at least one of the DNA cousin. Remember there we've done the DNA triangulation automatically, where just one person has a family tree URL. And you can see that the list is much smaller, but still impressive.

You're probably not aware of that. Like I said, 3% of the people. So I, I'm getting to, to, to 3,000, 3,000 people there. And you can see this is definitely more than 10 groups, right? So it's more than the 10 people that statistically would have a family tree there. And let's say, we take a small one like this and we can say, okay, Mary Ann Lossos Kossmeyer, she has, has a link to a family tree, right? And I can just click on it. And here is her family tree. Very, very easy. Just copy over and, and paste it in there, right? In, in, in this case, I, I know how we are related, but it's very, very easy to see. And by the way, it is not through the Italian grandmother that we have. It is through a German relationship there. And likewise, um, if, if for example, you're only interested in, in, in people that sent you a message.

Okay. So that's another kind of group. Let's see, we go in here and we have somebody in here who has exchanged messages. So this is a clear sign that somebody has been very, very interested in working with you. And what I can do is I can reach out to Melissa and say, Hey, why don't you just join me here in this, in this triangulated group? And together, if you have some time, we're working on identifying the common ancestor in that discussion group. And we are pulling in other users. And by the way, that will be free of charge. Right. So paid customers can invite guest users, which is the feature that we're talking about free of charge. It's, it's, it's only a feature that paid users can do. Okay. And then maybe look at the other messages that we have. We could look at close family, which is always very important. And here, for example, yes, we have, uh, Carl and Deanna.

We had that earlier on here. We have somebody that 2,800, if I'm not mistaken, that is most likely in the generation of, uh, brother siblings, right? So we will change that. Uh, we will use a relationship predictor here in the future in one of the next releases on updates that we're going to have. Okay. Good. That was probably everything, uh, that I wanted to show. Maybe just, yeah, for the fun of it, I'd show you that there is actually a family tree in here as well, which is, which is rather large. Um, um, and let me just turn off the demo mode so that you can see this is real people that are behind that. Um, yeah, I have, I'm doing this for 25 years. So there's, there's a lot of names that we have up here, right? Uh, yeah, a large representation of, of the family tree as well. And we also have search feature in there.

So if you search for a specific kind of person, uh, like for example, we had Stammen earlier on, um, like I know this is a surname that probably is a good fit. I immediately know how we are related. You can click off Timothy and you see when he's been born. Um, you can see that he's in two triangulated groups and we haven't exchanged any messages. So I can immediately write a message to him here. And with one click, I can just jump into this group and see, for example, the, the people that are in there, I can look at the, the surnames and, the surname matches over here. I can look at the segments that we have. And the last point that we probably haven't looked at, I can look at how we, these are all the connections that are in here. so we can see, for example, that, um, is not connected to me.

There is no error that goes to me. We are not, uh, probably that was being lost because she still has a connection to my mom. Uh, or no, she doesn't have in this. Okay. So that was probably it. Um, going through the, uh, features that we have on the app just rather quickly, but I would like to, uh, open up the, uh, the comments and question and answers. So I'm going to switch over and I'll keep it on the app. Maybe most likely, but if you have any kind of questions, um, please go ahead and ask right now, but you can also ask later on in the Facebook group that we have, uh, under your DNA dot family. And by the way, I haven't mentioned it. Uh, if you go to the website, HTTPS, and then, uh, those two backslashes and then your DNA dot family, it's not.com. It's dot family. Uh, you can just start your free trial is a, is a seven day trial and, uh, all the data will be automatically deleted after the trial is over, unless you decide to become a paid customer, right?

So you don't have to worry about that one. Okay. Thank you, Karen. Uh, thanks for that. And, uh, yeah, really, really not. It's, it's a bit of a problem. So we have over 1000 followers on the, on the Facebook page, but every single time I post an update there, it's, it's mainly shown to 80, 80 to 90 people. So, so Facebook is really definitely just holding me ransom and says, if you don't pay for an advert, uh, I'm not going to show it to all the Facebook members. That you have, even though I'm pretty sure all of you said, we want to follow your DNA family so that we get updates, but Facebook isn't giving you the updates, right? Most people don't know that. Okay. Melanie, uh, that's a very good question. So she's asking, she came in late. will there be a recording of this posted? Yes. Uh, unless everything, something technically went wrong, Melanie, um, there should be a, uh, posting probably, uh, tomorrow to our, uh, YouTube group.

So I will post that definitely in the Facebook group, a link so you can watch it on YouTube. Um, and, and obviously everybody else, or even download it, uh, forward it to, to a genetic group that you have, or maybe even show the video in your, in your local, uh, genetic group, right? Everything like that, um, sharing and so on would definitely help us. Thanks, Pamela. Thanks, Irvin.

Thanks, Michelle.