This is my history passed down, whether or not we have identified the ancestors it came from. The DNA is complete by definition; the tree below is not — so where they disagree, the gap is in the paper trail.
| Population | Tree predicts | DNA measured |
|---|---|---|
| British & Irish | 75.0% | 89.1% |
| French & German | 14.8% | 6.9% |
| Scandinavian | 3.1% | 2.6% |
| Broadly Northwestern European | 0.0% | 1.4% |
| Unresolved in the tree | 7.0% | — |
Bar opacity scales with how much of each generation we actually know — generation 18 is 2 people out of 262,144 slots, so it is nearly invisible on purpose. Continental origins take over at generation 9, which is already too deep to reliably pass DNA down.
The strip below classifies by birthplace, not by genetic population, so it also shows Cape-born settlers (whose birthplace carries no DNA signal — see above) and generations where the birthplace is simply unrecorded, neither of which appears in the population table.
Cape-born ancestors carry no genetic signal. They were European settlers, and 23andMe has no population for "born in South Africa" — they register as British & Irish or French & German by descent. That is the single biggest reason the map's pins and this composition look mismatched.
An upside-down pyramid: me at the bottom, each generation of ancestors doubling above me, all the way up to the 16th great-grandparents. Hover a card for its name, hover empty space for the generation, and click a card to open it in the tree.