In the past, customers waited with bated breath for ethnicity updates which were labeled with version numbers. Not anymore.
That old weather saying applies – “if you don’t like the weather in <insert location here,> wait 5 minutes.”
Today, there are a lot more vendors today offering ethnicity (who doesn’t?) and the updates often don’t come in a sweeping change, but gradually with smaller partial updates – so it seems like some vendor is always updating something. That’s a good thing and keeps us checking back, which means we can check on new matches too.
Recently, 23andMe made ethnicity changes and today, it’s Ancestry’s turn.
Ancestry now divides their ethnicity results into 500 regions which combined with your matches and where your ancestors were found comprise Genetic Communities.
Genetic Communities
Obviously, Genetic Communities are most accurate if you know where your ancestors were from and lived at any given point in time – but even if you don’t, Genetic Communities are useful, nonetheless, providing hints.
My overview is shown at right, with the regions and communities shown on the map. A timeline shows below.
Clicking on 1750 shows the migration pattern from Europe to the US and the communities in the US where the people from Germany settled, for example.
At right, you can see the region stories, but of more interest is the list of my ancestors who were alive in those locations at that time.
Enlarging the map continues to show my ancestors more granularly. Clicking on a pin shows that or those ancestors in the pane at right.
Probably not useful for breaking down brick walls, but quite interesting.
Increased African American and Afro-Caribbean Communities
Today’s ethnicity update from Ancestry includes 94 new and updated communities for people of African American and Afro-Caribbean descent.
If this means you, check out your ethnicity results and see what or who might be waiting – at Ancestry and the other vendors too.
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