23andMe Launches New Feature Connecting Customers to Historical Individuals from Hundreds and Even Thousands of Years Ago

Built upon peer-reviewed published science, the Historical Matches feature weaves customers’ ancestral connections into the story of human history and migration

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 19, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 23andMe Holding Co. (Nasdaq: ME), a leading human genetics and biopharmaceutical company, released an exciting new feature for 23andMe+ Premium and Total Health members, that uncovers DNA connections to 335 unique historical individuals, from medieval Vikings to late Stone Age African hunter-gatherers to pre-colonial indigenous Caribbean people to the great musical genius Ludwig Van Beethoven.

The advanced science used to create this feature was over a decade in the making as scientists, including those at 23andMe, leveraged new technology for extracting and sequencing ancient and historical DNA from bones found at archeological sites, and then comparing living individuals’ genomes to the historical and ancient DNA.

Among the historical genomes included in this feature are a number of enslaved and free Black and African Americans who toiled at an historic Maryland iron furnace in the late 18th and early 19th century. 23andMe scientists, along with researchers at Harvard and the Smithsonian, published seminal work in August of 2023 connecting 22 anonymous enslaved and freed African Americans buried at the site to thousands of their living relatives. The paper broke new ground, and provided a technical and ethical benchmark for future studies of similar, largely forgotten burial sites.

23andMe is the first leading DNA ancestry service to offer this level of genetic matching to relatives of historical people based on peer-reviewed, published methods and deep data analysis.

"23andMe's Historical Matches is a technical breakthrough in our ability to accurately detect genetic connections between customers and historical individuals." said Dan Chu, 23andMe's Chief Product Officer. "It uses cutting-edge science to provide customers with connections to history that can be fun, and in some cases, deeply personal and profound."

The new Historical Matches feature leverages the same science applied in a more consumer-friendly and approachable way to making these connections. The connections to historical individuals like those in Maryland or to the many others across the globe that are highlighted in the feature will help customers as they explore fundamental questions about who their ancestors and other historical relatives were, where they came from, and their place in the human story.