It’s all the rage. There are TV shows about it. There are numerous commercials and advertisements about it. DNA testing to find out about your ancestry is an amazing development in the science of DNA. If you want to find out more information about who you are, who your relatives are, and how you relate to the world, DNA testing might be something that will work for you.
Learn Your Ethnicity
You may think that you know your ethnicity, since your parents have told you. But, genetics is so amazing and random that you may have received DNA from a long-lost genetic relative instead of the relatives that your family remembers. Even siblings can get very different genetic results.
Learn Things You Can’t Find Out Any Other Way
If you’re adopted, for example, and you’re trying to locate your birth family, there is a small possibility that you will find them if you do a DNA test – if they have also completed the same test and agreed for it to be open in the registry. You may also find other relatives, distant cousins and so forth. But try to remember they are still strangers if you’ve never met them.
Leave Behind Something for Others
In some ways, the idea of leaving behind your genetic information means that you’re leaving something behind for all your relatives after you. You may help close some information for someone else who is looking for information. Being part of a genetic genealogy database means your information will live on forever.
Connect with Distant Relatives
A fun aspect of genetic DNA testing is that you can connect with others who are genetic matches to you that you don’t know. You can find cousins overseas or even down the street if they’ve also conducted the test and signed up to be in the database. If you’re adopted, you might even meet siblings.
Find Out Something New about Yourself
You probably have many assumptions about who you are but before DNA testing was available, your ancestors only knew the genetic makeup of any child based on what the mother was willing to reveal. So, when you think of it this way, until DNA people could only realistically follow their maternal heritage accurately.
If you want to find out this type of information, then genetic genealogy testing might be something you want to try. You never know what type of answers you might get or how it will open your world until you do it.
It’s important to remember that right now the science of genetic genealogy is still expanding. It can be very exacting if you spend enough money. But, for the basic testing that you hear about, it can be wrong or misleading. Your mileage may vary, but it’s a good place to start to get some answers to questions you may have.
