Imagine if you could pinpoint the exact placement of your surname line on a massive family tree that covers all of humanity by submitting a cheek-swab sample for DNA testing.
The global, genetic family tree would expand to accommodate the insights from your test results, and your part of the tree would be further refined as more distant relatives test. Additionally, archaeologists and geneticists would be working together to uncover ancient history from all over the world, and as those results are published, they would be added to this family tree so that you could see how you are all related.
This concept is now becoming a reality through high-resolution single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) testing of the Y chromosome using its unique properties of direct patrilineal inheritance and a large database supporting the largest genetic family tree of its kind—the Y-DNA Haplotree.
FamilyTreeDNA has a long history with Y-DNA testing, being the oldest direct-to-consumer DNA testing company in the industry. FamilyTreeDNA has provided Y-STR (short tandem repeat) testing for patrilineal genealogy for over 20 years as well as many other DNA testing products.
FamilyTreeDNA’s phylogenetic specialist Michael Sager has analyzed over 67,000 high-resolution Big Y results, 7,000 results from academic studies of present-day individuals, and 4,000 ancient DNA results from archaeological remains; and he has manually reconstructed and curated the world’s most elaborate global Family Tree of Mankind by far—the Y-DNA Haplotree.
Details may be found in the FamilyTreeDNA Blog at https://blog.familytreedna.com/y-dna-haplotree-reaches-50000-branches/.