When your AncestryDNA or 23andMe results come back and you see "Nigeria — 28%" or "Benin & Togo — 17%" — those are not just numbers. Those are ancestral homelands. Those are the places your people were taken from, often by force, between the 15th and 19th centuries.

Understanding what your DNA results mean — and what they cannot tell you — is one of the most important things you can do as an African American genealogist. Let me walk you through it.

— ETHNICITY ESTIMATES: WHAT THEY ARE —

Ethnicity estimates are not certificates of origin. They are statistical comparisons between your DNA and the DNA of reference populations — living people from specific regions who have agreed to be tested. The more people from a given region participate, the more precise the estimates become.

This means two things:

First: the estimates will change over time as the reference databases grow. Your results from 2020 may look different from your results in 2025. This is not the company being inconsistent — it is the science becoming more precise.

Second: the regional labels (Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast & Ghana, etc.) represent broad geographic and ethnic groupings, not specific ethnic identities. "Nigeria" in your AncestryDNA results reflects ancestry from a region that includes dozens of distinct peoples: Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Edo, and many others. The percentage cannot tell you which people specifically — only that your ancestors came from that geographic region before the transatlantic slave trade scattered them across the Atlantic world.

— WHAT MOST AFRICAN AMERICANS WILL SEE —

Most African Americans with enslaved ancestry will find:

• 70–90% West and Central African ancestry, spread across multiple regional categories
• 10–25% European ancestry — the genetic legacy of the violence and cohabitation of slavery
• Sometimes 1–5% Indigenous American ancestry, reflecting Native American communities who sheltered some escaped enslaved people and intermarried with free Black communities

The European ancestry does not reduce your African ancestry. It is part of your complete story. Many researchers find it difficult to look at. That is an entirely understandable response to what it represents.

— THE TOOLS THAT MATTER MOST: SHARED MATCHES —

The ethnicity percentages are the most visible part of your results, but the shared matches are where the real genealogical work happens.

Your DNA matches are living relatives. The amount of DNA you share with a match — measured in centimorgans (cM) — tells you approximately how closely related you are:

• 1700+ cM: Parent, full sibling, grandparent
• 575–1300 cM: First cousin range
• 200–600 cM: First cousin once removed or half first cousin
• 90–400 cM: Second cousin range
• 20–90 cM: Third to fourth cousin range
• Under 20 cM: Distant or possible coincidental match

For African Americans, a phenomenon called endogamy complicates these ranges. When communities intermarried within a limited geographic area for generations — as many enslaved communities were forced to do — the shared DNA between distant relatives can appear higher than it would in outbred populations. A match showing 200 cM may be a second cousin, or may be a fourth cousin with multiple lines of shared ancestry.

— ANCESTRAL JOURNEYS (ANCESTRY SPECIFICALLY) —

Ancestry's Journeys feature identifies clusters of DNA matches who share a common regional history — showing where your enslaved ancestors likely lived across approximately 300 years. This feature is more powerful than the ethnicity estimates for genealogical research because it connects you to a specific community, not just a continent.

If you have an "Inland Mississippi African Americans" journey with an Oxford/Marshall County sub-cluster, that is a precise geographic target for your archival research.

— WHERE TO START —

1. Download your raw DNA data from whatever platform you used. Upload it to GEDmatch (free) to expand your match pool.

2. Look at your top 20 matches. Message any who have family trees.

3. Look for patterns in your matches' surnames and locations. Cluster your matches using a free tool like DNA Painter or the Leeds Method.

4. Cross-reference your clusters against your paper research. Where do the names and places overlap?

Share your results below. What platform did you test on? What regions are showing up? What questions are you trying to answer with your DNA? Let's work through it together.