Today is World Population Day. Did you know that there are more than 7.2 billion people living today? The five most-populous countries are:
- China, 1.39 billion
- India, 1.27 billion
- United States, 333 million
- Indonesia, 253 million
- Brazil, 202 million
So how did all these people end up living where they live? Population geneticists are researching this very thing. Think of your own personal migration. I currently live in the United States. How did I end up where I am today? Where were my people before? I can trace back from Idaho (where I was born) to my ancestors who were born across the U.S. — Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. But those ancestors came from somewhere. I can follow certain lines back to England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. So those are populations that I will be celebrating this year. But that’s only what the written record says.
What does the record of my DNA say? In addition to those populations/countries I already know from written records, my DNA indicates that I also have Scandinavian roots. What does that mean? It means that if we go back 500+ years, I probably had ancestors living in Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) or people from the region came into the British Isles and mixed with the population there.
It doesn’t necessarily surprise me that I have Scandinavian roots, but it is something I didn’t know before. As I learn more about this particular population, I can turn to history (which I can find on my AncestryDNA ethnicity results page after clicking the region of Scandinavia) to learn more about the many voyages of the Vikings. The map below charts Viking travels and territories between 793 A.D. and 1066 A.D.
This gives me some perspective into a migration and a population in my personal history that I didn’t know much about until my DNA discovery. Scandinavia, Ireland, and Great Britain all show up in my results, but there are other populations that come up in my parents’ DNA results that didn’t show in mine, including Russia, Western Europe, and Italy/Greece. Most individuals who get tested will have three or four different ethnicity regions represented in their DNA results, depending on their background and which DNA was passed down. (You can read more about how you inherit from each parent in this blog post.)
This map shows the 26 different ethnicity regions in the AncestryDNA database:
To celebrate World Population Day this year, take another look at your own DNA ethnicity results. Click on the ethnicity region and read more about the history of the people who you share DNA with. If you have Scandinavian DNA like me, read about the history of the Vikings. After I learned about my Scandinavian ancestry, I shared some of what I read with a few of my nieces and nephews. My 8-year-old nephew decided, “Well, that must be the reason I am very good at navigating on the water.” (He was referring to his paddle-boarding and canoeing skills.) Must be in his DNA because he think he is ready for his own voyage across the waters.
What have you learned from your DNA results? Share with us on Facebook or in the comments below.
Don’t have results yet? Don’t wait. Find out which populations you connect with through your DNA. #wpd2014