Earliest Known Ancestors in the mitoYDNA.org Database

June 2021
Lianne Kruger, Team Member

The earliest known ancestor, referred to as EKA, on a genealogical pedigree chart is the ancestor with whom all of your matches and you can trace back to in that direct line. You may not know their names but they exist. They have to, they had parents. But for us they are the last one for names in our pedigree list that everyone can connect to. 

Shown below is my earliest known ancestor on a Sorensen line, Anders Sorensen. I do not know the first name of his father or his mother. Anders counts because I have a paper trail back to him but Mr. and Mrs. Sorensen, his parents, do not count because we do not have a paper trail for them. If someone in our matches had a paper trail back to Anders parents, then they could be our EKA’s.

Mags Gaulden explains, “Finding a DNA match who knows their family history can tell you about your family history.”  Finding an earliest known ancestor, shared between multiple matches, helps to confirm the genealogical paper trail.

The list below is an alphabetical listing of countries,within their regions, of user reported EKA’s for the DNA kits we have in our database. There are some countries that are defined as being located in two geographic areas such as Russia which is located in both Asia and Europe. It is included in both areas below because there are Earliest Known Ancestors from both the east side and the west side of Russia.

African Countries Algeria Egypt Morocco Seychelles South Africa Tunisia Asia China India Japan Philippines Russia Singapore Sri Lanka Central America El Salvador Eastern Europe Belarus Bulgaria Czechoslovakia Dagestan Estonia Hungary Croatia

Lithuania Latvia Bosnia Kosovo Poland Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Ukraine Europe Austria Bavaria Belgium Channel Islands Denmark England Finland France Germany Greece Iceland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Norway

Portugal Prussia Scotland Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom Wales Middle East Iraq Israel Saudi Arabia Syria Turkey Yemen North America Bahamas Barbados Canada Dominican Republic Mexico Puerto Rico United States South America Brazil

Knowing that mitoYDNA.org has EKAs from all of these countries speaks to the international DNA testers who are uploading to mitoYDNA.org. Jump in and upload your mitochondrial and Y DNA and add to the list of international EKAs in this community based growing database.