What’s In Your DNA At MyHeritage – Theory of Family Relativity™ (Updated)

This is a companion post to the video I created on my YouTube Channel.

If you read my blog last week then you know I’ve started a new series (playlist) on my YouTube Channel called “Let’s Explore DNA“. This week I added another video and it’s all about MyHeritage, Theory of Family Relativity. You can watch it HERE.

Theory of Family Relativity™ was launched by MyHeritage in 2019. What it does is it analyzes billions of data points from across all of MyHeritage’s family trees and historical record databases to calculate plausible theories about how you might be related to your DNA matches. Pretty cool huh?

On June 29th MyHeritage did another update to the theories and it had a huge impact. The MyHeritage blog tells us these numbers.

• 25,636,711 Theories of Family Relativity™ were added
• 328,439 kits that didn’t have any theories previously now have at least one
• 233,297 additional users will have at least one theory following this update

These were just the new theories they didn’t update any theories that existed already.

The reason for the update is because kits are being sold and uploaded, trees are being added and millions of records are being added that make additional theories possible.

I had two previous theories, but with the update, I got one additional one.

• Dad had four and got one new one (which I didn’t get)
• Mom had three and didn’t get any new ones
• Only one of Mom’s brothers got a new theory, but I realized that between the three brothers, I had three theories that I hadn’t looked at before

The fact that each of my mom’s brothers has theories that I haven’t worked on is exciting because who doesn’t like a bit of detective work. Also, because many of my matches and those of my uncles are distant (low centimorgan matches), sometimes they each get different ones, so when I’m able to dig into the tree and the records and confirm the match, it really helps expand my tree.

When you confirm your theory, it’s a good idea to add a note to your DNA matches profile; at least, that’s what I did. It’s so important to use the tools that the website offers us to organize our matches.

To get a theory at MyHeritage, you must have tested at MyHeritage or uploaded your raw data file from another site to MyHeritage. You can do that HERE.

You also need a Premium, PremiumPlus, or Complete plan on MyHeritage OR have paid the one-time unlock fee for advanced DNA features (for uploaded DNA data only).

All of the kits that I have at MyHeritage were uploaded. When you pay that $29 US that unlocks your matches, you also get additional tools such as the Chromosome Browser, Autoclustering, and Ethnicity Map. So all the benefits are well worth either testing at MyHeritage or uploading your kit there.

I hope you take a moment to have a peek at my video HERE (I’m having a blast) and let me know what your theories look like and whether they helped you discover new lines you didn’t know about.

Note: My apologies to MyHeritage for using the term Theory of Relativity rather than Theory of Family Relativity…I find it to be a bit of a tongue twister sometimes.