For the past decade, Ancient Origins saw its mission in making science freely accessible to the public, particularly the fields of science related to human’s past. It is only appropriate that Ancient Origins would also be the first to provide Ancient DNA Origins Tests – the next generation of DNA tests.
Unlike contemporary DNA tests that report ancestry in relation to contemporary populations under the hidden assumptions that people and populations remained genetically the same over time, this next generation of DNA tests acknowledges that the past is a volatile entity that needs to be captured precisely and accurately using only the DNA of people who actually lived in the past. But comparing the ancient DNA of skeletons and mummies is not enough; our goal was to bring them back to life (figuratively speaking, of course), using all the means at our hands.
Our first line of tests includes some of the fascinating populations that ever lived: The Biblical Israelite Tribes, Medieval Iceland Vikings, Ptolemaic Egyptians, and Paleo American Indians. Our Ancient DNA Origins Tests tell the story of every group and every individual. Ancient DNA Origins Tests were designed to tell you whether you are a part of the Greatest Story Even Told, the Edda, the great civilization that rests underneath the sands, or the Mesoamerican people that once roamed the American continent.
Together with lead geneticist Dr. Eran Elhaik, who brings to Ancient Origins his wealth of experience in genetics leading past projects like the Geographic Geno 2.0 and GPS Origins, we are proud to spearhead this next generation of genetic tests. We hope that you will enjoy and benefit from them too. “Study the past, if you would divine the future” as Confucius wrote, and we now have the actual means to do so.
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"13425","attributes":{"alt":"Eran","class":"media-image","height":"163","style":"width: 148px; height: 163px; margin: 10px; float: left;","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"148"}}]]Dr. Eran Elhaik completed a Ph.D. in Molecular Evolution at the University of Houston with Prof. Dan Graur where he studied the evolution of mammalian genomes. He then completed two post-docs at Johns Hopkins University, working with Prof. Aravinda Chakravarti on population genetics and with Prof. Zandi working on mental disorders. Dr. Elhaik was appointed as an Assistant lecturer in the Bioinformatics Hub of the University of Sheffield, England, focusing on population genetics and complex disorders that he links via personalized medicine. In 2019, he became an Associate Professor at the University of Lund, Sweden. Dr. Elhaik’s research typically employs complex computational, statistical, epidemiological, and mathematical approaches to interdisciplinary fields like complex disorders, population genetics, personalized medicine, molecular evolution, genomics, paleogenomics, and epigenetics covering various organisms from ants to humans. Due to his innovative and breakthrough work, Dr. Elhaik is one of the most renowned scientists.
Dr. Elhaik’s work received much interest over the years from scholars and the public alike. We are proud to say that we covered all his research that falls within our domain. These studies include dating the most ancient human Y chromosome, “Y chromosomal Adam,” and developing a genomic GPS tool that identifies the geographic origin of modern people with extreme accuracy. A commercial version of this test is offered on our website. His extensive studies on Druze and Ashkenazic Jews traced their origins from over 1000 years ago and uncovered “Ancient Ashkenaz,” where Ashkenazic Jews formed their unique genomic signature alongside the ancestors of Druze. Elhaik’s group was the first and only group that developed the technology that identifies ancient Ancestry Informative Markers, which are used to infer the ancient ancestry in modern people accurately. This is one of the critical components underlining our new line of Ancient DNA Origins Tests.
