We know for a fact that we’re products of intermixing and racial mingling, but have we ever yearned for proper scientific evidence that leans towards a specific tribe? While most of us can trace our family history, to say, our great-great grandparents, we still want to look back to a thousand years and find out which tribe we hail from. Luckily, there’s a way to trace down our cultural leanings and find out our ancestry.
Roots for Real offers DNA tracing service to the general public!
Roots for Real is the brainchild of leading geneticist Dr. Peter Forster, mathematician Dr. Arne Röhl and members of Fluxus Technology Ltd, who’ve combined their own findings with the DNA sequences published in scientific journals worldwide. Together, they’ve built up the world’s most comprehensive database having over 45,000 samples.
An easy-to-use home saliva test helps them analyse your mtDNA (for maternal ancestry) or Y-DNA (for paternal ancestry) by matching it with their database that contains DNA samples from all over the world.
A closer look at the map above shows us exactly where the person’s ancestry hails from.
The most plausible being Ireland, followed by England and Iceland.
The company claims 95% success rate!
Roots for Real will send results in the form of a map that’ll show where in the world you have matches, in order to estimate the location of ancestral origins. (The map printed digitally in the A3 size.)
Here’s how the service works:
Step 1: Saliva test
You’d be sent a clinically sterile home saliva test (like a cotton bud) and you’d be required to brush the inside of your cheek so that the cotton soaks up your saliva. The DNA contained in the saliva would be enough for analysis.
Step 2: Lab analysis
Roots for Real scientists will carefully scrutinize the sample and filter out all other particles from the brush in order to obtain a few molecules of DNA. The molecules will then be ‘amplified’ or grown in order to prepare them for analysis. The analysis will be done by a machine which will produce a unique DNA code.
Step 3: Matching
Your DNA code will then be input into the database to produce matches. The matches will be plotted on a world map, from where you can trace your true ancestral origins.
Who knows, you might even have Maori roots! How cool would that be!
