New DNA Tools and Features on MyHeritage

SESSION: S452, TIME & DATE: Saturday, 11 May 2019, 4:00 p.m.

SPONSOR: MyHeritage

Daniel Horowitz

Today’s affordable, easy-to-use DNA home testing kit can reveal valuable family history information and tell you more about your origins.

The DNA Matching service from MyHeritage enables those who have taken a DNA test from almost any company to enjoy exceptional matching capabilities for their family history research. For every DNA Match, you get the possible relationship between you and the other person. If your match has a family tree, you’ll also be able to view it and gain insight into how you might be related by reviewing the ancestral surnames and places common (or not) in both trees.

“Shared Ancestral Places” refer to towns, U.S. states, and countries appearing in your family tree as well as in the trees of your DNA Matches, where birth or death events of your ancestors (and those of your DNA Matches’ ancestors) took place. These places, if known, are identified going back as far as 10 generations. They play a vital role in family history research.

MyHeritage offers a chromosome browser that maps a person’s chromosomes graphically. Use it to visualize shared DNA segments you have in common with other matches. These shared segments indicate that you and your match likely both inherited DNA from one or more common ancestors. By studying those shared segments and testing the DNA of additional relatives, it is possible to determine who the segments originated from and in turn, determine the relationship between the two people who have taken the DNA test.

The “Theory of Family Relativity” is based on personal MyHeritage trees, historical records, and other shared trees, to enable finding the relationship between two DNA matches.  The common ancestor of the people in the DNA matches, with a few individuals in their tree, can frequently be found using a combination of all the information on the trees and the records.  This helps you understand the relationship and may spark an interest in family history research on the part of the DNA match person.

BIO: Daniel Horowitz is the Genealogy Expert at MyHeritage, liaising with genealogy societies and media, lecturing, and attending conferences around the world. Dedicated to genealogy since 1986, he taught and edited the family history project “Searching for My Roots” in Venezuela for 15 years. Daniel is involved in several crowdsource digitization and transcription projects and holds a board level position at the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA).