Why do I have many mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) test matches?
There are some result haplotypes that show a high number of matches. There are two possible explanations for this. Many people with the same results as your ancestors lived thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. The majority of their descendants still carry their signature.A more recent common ancestor — within the last one or two thousand years — with this haplotype had many daughters who in turn had many daughters and so on leading to you having many distant cousins. Increasing your testing level to the Mitochondrial DNA Full Genomic Sequence (FGS), the HVR1toMega or the HVR2toMega upgrade, will separate these two cases. This will allow you to focus on your relevant matches.
There are some result haplotypes that show a high number of matches. There are two possible explanations for this. Many people with the same results as your ancestors lived thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. The majority of their descendants still carry their signature.A more recent common ancestor – within the last one or two thousand years – with this haplotype had many daughters who in turn had many daughters and so on leading to you having many distant cousins. Increasing your testing level to the Mitochondrial DNA Full Genomic Sequence (FGS), the HVR1toMega or the HVR2toMega upgrade, will separate these two cases. This will allow you to focus on your relevant matches.
