ancestry

What is a haplogroup, and what it is not

Your maternal and paternal haplogroups trace deep ancestry, but what do they actually tell you?

What the science says

A haplogroup is a branch on the human family tree defined by shared mutations passed down one unbroken line: mother to child (mtDNA) or father to son (Y chromosome). It marks one ancient thread of your ancestry among the thousands of lines that all contributed to you.

What Aimosti would show you

Aimosti reads the defining markers in your file and places each line on the maternal and paternal trees, restating PhyloTree's clade definitions with the deepest supported branch and the markers that support it: one thread, named plainly.

What we won't claim

A haplogroup is one maternal and one paternal thread among thousands of ancestral lines: never your ethnicity, nationality, race, or a 'percent ancestry' figure. We won't turn a deep lineage marker into an identity or a heritage claim it cannot support.

Covered in: Ancestry. Restated from: PhyloTree.