Ancestry's Genetic Communities

Last week ancestry.com came out with a new tool in conjunction with the DNA test - Genetic Communities.  In summarizing, this is where it looks at all the millions of DNA samples and finds where there are geographically lots that match.  It does not look at the names in the accompanying family trees of the DNA samples only the locations from roughly 1800-1850.

To understand the concept of the communities I did a one and a half hour webinar (free till April 6 2017) and then went to explore my communities.


I had two communities that showed up; Southern English and Scots in North East and Central Scotland.  I will break each one down individually and share information below.

Southern English
The picture below shows the area the denotes this area.  The larger darker circles show the area where there is a higher concentration of DNA samples from.  It also gave me the information that out of my total DNA matches there were 44 matches that also shared this community.

The picture below shows a subset of this area - English in East Anglia & Essex

Based on the above pictures and my research the southern area would cover my paternal Marlow linage and the English in East Anglia & Essex would cover my paternal Baker lineage.  However in saying that, it could also cover any Palin cousin that could be in the area from 1800-1850.

Scots in Northeast & Central Scotland
The picture below shows the area the denotes this area.  The larger darker circles show the area where there is a higher concentration of DNA samples from. It also gave me the information that out of my total DNA matches, 17 also shared this community.

This area would cover my mother's mother's line as she hailed from Peterhead, Aberdeenshire (the smaller dot just above Aberdeen on the coast).   As stated previously, this area could also cover any Palin cousin that could be in the area from 1800-1850.

So where are the Palins?  I went to check what communities would cover the Cheshire area.

As you can see in the above picture there are 3 areas included; North Walians, South Walians and English in the West Midlands.  So why did this community not show up as one of mine?  According to that great webinar I took it explained that a genetic community would only show up if you were at least a 20% match - so if you were a 19% match it would not show up.

The greatest thing about this new tool is the room for growth.  As more and more people do a DNA test with ancestry and agree to share it - the communities will grow and subdivide.  This time next year we could perhaps have communities broken down in shires and even large cities and the eligible percentage could drop.

What a great Mother's Day gift or even Father's Day gift!!! (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, wink, wink!)