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World’s first ancient DNA tests

On March 1, DNA Consultants launched the first direct-to-the-consumer ancient DNA test series with an introductory offer starting at $99. Our Primeval DNA Test allows you to compare your personal genome with the DNA of real people in the past. You can upload raw data from past testing you have had with Ancestry, 23andme or other companies and see your results in a few days.

Primeval DNA is available only from DNA Consultants.

The introductory offer focuses on seven ancient peoples. It will be followed by a full rollout of over fifty ancient cultures this spring. The seven ancient peoples from which you can choose in the introductory phase are: Ancient Britons, Ancient Israelites, Chumash Paleo-Indians, Egyptian Mummies, Ice Age and Stone Age Europeans and Vikings in Medieval Iceland.

Millions of people have taken personal ancestry tests from various DNA testing services over the past few years. But these comparisons involved only living people. They were limited by where their customers came from and where the scientific groundwork was conducted. All was theoretical and extrapolated and interpreted, not observational. Direct one-on-one comparisons with ancient peoples, nucleotide by nucleotide, were not performed.

The new approach uses ancestry informative markers harvested from immense ancient genomic databases and applies powerful algorithms to analyze your genetic similarity to early human fossils, skeletons and ancient individuals. DNA Consultants’ Primeval DNA Test emerged only over the last year from cooperation with paleogeneticist Dr. Eran Elhaik of the University of Sheffield in England.

Founded in 2003, DNA Consultants specializes in a forensic population matching approach to ancestry analysis. This will be the company’s first genomic product.

Acceptable personal genome raw result providers include: 23andme, Ancestry, National Geographic Geno, Next Gen, Family Tree DNA Family Finder, My Heritage and Living DNA. The file should be zipped because the data are usually several megabytes in size.

For more information, see Primeval DNA FAQs.

New secure online account system

account system

DNA Consultants has moved to a new system that makes it easier to order, maintain personal information and see results online.

If you have an account already, you can log in by clicking on the user silhouette at the top of the page.

You can also go to https://dnaconsultants.com/my-account/.

The login page that appears next will display your email address and encrypted password if you saved it in your browser and have your cookies turned on for it to be detected. Or it will prompt you to enter your username and email address and password. If you lost your password you can recover it by selecting Lost your password and following the instructions.

If you do not have an account, you may Register for one, beginning with your email address. Note, you cannot have a second account under an existing email address in the system. You also cannot change your user name.

When you register for a new account. You immediately receive a system message in your email with the subject Your account on DNA Consultants. It tells you, “Thanks for creating an account on DNA Consultants. Your username is —-. Your password has been automatically generated: —-.”

Accounts are automatically generated for anyone ordering using our shopping cart for the first time.

If you experience any trouble logging in or creating an account, please email: amazon@dnaconsultants.com.

Accounts allow users to re-order without having to enter their personal information (name, address, etc.) anew. They also make it possible for customers to check on their order status and view their results and reports online.

In the past, all reports for DNA Fingerprint products were delivered by default to your email as a pdf attachment. If you ordered a download product, this was accessible in your order notification email. Now, all reports will be loaded in your account online when they are completed (unless you have no email or account) and you will receive an Order Completed notification in your email. Just log in to access all your results.

Your account is where you will see any orders you have placed, any raw data uploads, any ebooks you have ordered and all your results and reports. It will be critical for viewing Primeval DNA results, which are interactive, and ordering new Peoples and Sites as they are added to our lineup of ancient DNA comparisons.

Where the past meets the future

Where the past meets the future

Much interest on both a professional and a popular level has galvanized in recent years around ancient DNA. The first ancient genome was published in 2010 from a 4,000-year-old Greenlander’s hair. In 2013, DNA recovered from the 28,000-year-old bones of Mal’ta Boy in Siberia proved to be a missing link between Europeans and Native Americans. By 2018, about 6,000 DNA samples had been recovered from archeological sites. Most were unpublished.

“This is where the professional prestige and excitement for all of us lies,” says Eran Elhaik, who is the lead scientist behind Primeval DNA. “Ancient DNA is overturning or challenging many of the findings and assumptions of two generations of autosomal testing.”

“We don’t have to look at modern-day people and pretend they are accurate relics of the past anymore,” he adds. “Now, we can actually analyze ancient people and ask questions about their underlying population structure and what part of them is also a part of us.”

“Ancient DNA will necessitate wide-scale revisions of everyone’s personal ancestries and gradually rewrite the history books in surprising ways,” says Donald N. Yates, Ph.D., principal investigator at DNA Consultants. “Our company and staff are honored to be able to work with such a pioneer as Dr. Elhaik.”

Dr. Yates adds that new genomic ideas and methods from Dr. Elhaik’s laboratory is opening “window after window” in the structure, movement and admixture of ancient cultures. “It’s a complete ‘re-set’ for population genetics.”

“We really knew little about populations prior to the new technology and before being able to cut directly across time, comparing different regions and locales in the past,” said Elhaik. “The new data are game-changing and absolutely astonishing.”

“Most of the knowledge about the human past is still, so to speak, buried under our feet,” he continued. “I grew impatient waiting on others to reveal the treasures of ancient DNA, so in addition to developing the technologies that make all this feasible, I joined Professor Israel Finkelstein’s team digging in Tel Megiddo (in northern Israel) and collected samples myself … It was thrilling!”

One of the traces of descent you can now test for in your personal genome is Ancient Israelites. This has been a long-awaited product for individuals interested in Jewish genetic genealogy.

Only last year, DNA Consultants added modern-day data for Israeli Jews in its DNA Fingerprint comparisons. The company also has four Jewish markers, Jewish as a megapopulation and four other contemporary Jewish populations in its database—Hungarian Ashkenazim, Majorcan Jews, Spanish Sephardim and Ukraine.

The matches obtained from the Ancient Israelites Test correspond to the historical territories of Benjamin, Manasseh and Naphtali and could conceivably answer questions about what tribes of Israel are emphasized in one’s distant ancestry.

“We are thrilled at the synergy of our two methods,” said Dr. Yates. “We have been committed to improving modern population matching with our DNA Fingerprint family of products for years,” he explained. “We will now be refining and defining ancient population matching with a new Primeval DNA line exclusively sold by us.”

For more information on primordial peoples, see Ancient DNA Hub, a paleogenetic knowledge-base for ancient people and cultures maintained by the Elhaik Lab at the University of Sheffield.

New books by Donald Yates

New books by Donald Yates

One of the highlights of last year was the publication by Donald Yates and co-authors Jakay Jarvis and Sue Levin of Book of Jewish and Crypto-Jewish Surnames (Longmont: Panthers Lodge Publishers, May 11, 2018). The 276-page book has a long name index as well as a separate index that covers the classic genealogical trilogy of volumes by Yates and co-author Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman (When Scotland Was Jewish, Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America and The Early Jews and Muslims of England and Wales).

It is available in print version($19.95), downloadable pdf ($4.99) and Amazon Kindle ($4.99).

“Up-to-date and valuable research tool for genealogists and those interested in Jewish origins” was the assessment of the new guide by Eran Elhaik, assistant professor at the University of Sheffield, who is working on a new history of Jews.

An Amazon reviewer commented, “I love genealogy and this book is so interesting. Just like his other books, this one makes you think. If you are into genealogy you will find this one fascinating.”

Jakay Jarvis is DNA Consultants research associate and social media expert. A graduate of Stetson University with a B.A. in English, she attended the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, before embarking on a decades-long career in journalism as reporter, photographer and editor. She lives in Florida.

Sue Levin is an associate investigator of DNA Consultants. She has a B.S. from the University of Maryland and also attended Georgetown University. She lives in Florida.

Donald N. Yates is founder and chief scientific officer of DNA Consultants. This was his twenty-third book as author or co-author. Later last year he also published The Eighth Arrow: Wisdom and Storytelling from Tennessee’s Tihanama People(hardbound $29.75), Yucatan Journal: October 6 – November 1, 2007 (print $19.95, Kindle $9.99, audiobook narrated by Jim D. Johnston $6.08), an audiobook version of Merchant Adventurer Kings of Rhoda: The Lost World of the Tucson Artifacts, narrated by Jack Chekijian ($19.95), and an audiobook version of Cherokee DNA Studies: Real People Who Proved the Geneticists Wrong, narrated by Pete Ferrand.

Among Yates’s articles last year was “Emerging Views on the Hohokam and Pacific Rim Migration: From Regional to World Diffusionism,” NEARA Journal Winter 2017-18:22-26.

He also oversaw the narration in German by Richard Heinrich of the version of the traditional Cherokee national narrative translated with foreword by Christine Pellech, Die Abstammung der Cherokee-Indianer: Eine Spurensuche auf der Basis traditioneller Cherokee-Überlieferungen: Neue Ausgabe des Klassikers der Cherokee (Longmont: Panther’s Lodge, 2017). Richard Heinrich is a celebrated young voice actor and narrator of classic titles in the German language with a studio located in the picturesque village of Maroldsweisach in Bavaria. Christine Pellech is a Viennese ethnologist and author of numerous books who maintains the fascinating history website Migration and Diffusion. “It was a pleasure and honor to work with both of these professionals,” says Yates, who studied in Germany and Austria many years ago. “Few people realize it, but Europeans are often more interested in and informed about American Indians than Americans!”

Yates is currently at work on a new edition of Cherokee DNA Studies, subtitled More Real People Who Proved the Geneticists Wrong, covering the last phase participants, and a collaboration with a new co-author on Jewish physicians throughout history.

Update on the Cherokee DNA Project

Update on the Cherokee DNA Project

The third and final phase of DNA Consultants’ Cherokee DNA Project was closed in May of 2018. This mitochondrial project was begun in 2007, and Phase II testing closed on September 19, 2014. There are 62 participants in Phase III and their results will be written up in various blog posts and published in the follow-up volume to Cherokee DNA Studies, probably next year. The administrator of the project is Angela Watkins. Contact her at aew@dnaconsultants.com.

Work has been slow in organizing the mountains of files we have received, but the results will most assuredly be worth it, as this is one of the few published mitochondrial studies of American Indian DNA that has genealogies taken into consideration.

If you are a participant and we haven’t heard from you in a while, please contact Angela to make sure your information is current. The participation consent form is located at https://dnaconsultants.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CONSENT-FORM-Cherokee-project-rev.-July-2016.pdf.

Our new podcast

Our new podcast

With podcasting becoming more and more popular, DNA has introduced The Time Traveler’s Suitcase, hosted by Pete Ferrand. The premier episode was launched November 30 and was titled “Proving the Geneticists Wrong.” It featured three stories about Cherokee DNA in keeping with the theme of the series about the interface between history, archeology and ancient DNA—“Maybe My Great-Grandmother Really Was a Cherokee Princess,” “Trail of Fears” and “Nancy Cooper v. The Choctaw Nation.” It was 31 minutes in length.

The next two episodes were “The Allure of Ancient DNA” and “Vikings, Mummies and Roman Soldiers.” In them, Eran Elhaik is interviewed about ancient DNA and goes deeper into why we want to know about peoples and cultures of the remote past. Discussed are Jewish genetics, American Indian population history, the “headless Romans” of a York cemetery and the newest excavations in Israel.

The current episode marks a departure from the usual serious tone with a visit to Newmans Ridge, Tennessee. Host Pete Ferrand witnesses a mock-epic battle on an Internet forum over the meaning of the term Melungeon. “Cyberfeud on the Ridge” features the audiobook Ancestors and Enemies and is read by the incomparable Ginger Cuculo.

You can listen to and subscribe to the podcast series on iTunes or any number of other services and it is free.

Podcasts are faithfully listened to weekly by about half of all Americans for comedy, education and news. The Traveler’s Suitcase falls in the category of society and culture, or education. There are 660,000 active shows around the world, with South Korea, Spain and Sweden surpassing the U.S. in listenership numbers. People listen on their computers or smartphones, at home or while driving.

Listen to the latest now. We welcome your comments!

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