Would you like to trace your genetic ancestry?

Most of us can trace our family history for a few generations - possibly down to our great-great-grandparents - but certainly not thousands of years into the distant past, when Europe and other continents were settled by prehistoric tribes and peoples.

Others of us have little knowledge of even fairly recent ancestors and suspect that they may hark from an exotic land - but until now have had no way of knowing for sure.

As we showed in the BBC documentary "Motherland - A Genetic Journey" and in the recent American PBS film "African American Lives", modern genetics shows us a way to address these questions. In the genetic material in each of us, a mass of historic information is encoded, with which experts can for the first time gain clues to our past ancestors. Over the last ten years, groundbreaking work by geneticists has shown that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA - which is passed from mother to child unaltered for many generations) and Y-chromosomal DNA (Y DNA - passed down from fathers to sons) are very reliable tools for discovering personal family history. These DNA tests can be useful in tracing African ancestry, British ancestry (English, Scottish or Welsh origins) as well as Viking ancestry or Jewish ancestry.

The Roots for Real DNA tracing service uses a small sample of your DNA - easily obtained by a simple home saliva test. With it, we match you to people around the world who share your own very specific genetic line - people who are in effect distant cousins. The Roots for Real service is based on up-to-date genetic knowledge and processes, is carried out in highly qualified laboratories, and uses what is considered to be the largest available global geographic database of human mtDNA.