How to use MyOrigins heatmap?

[RobertaMarques]

How do I use this tool?

I clicked first on paternal and then things light up and as I move over the area it gets darker, what does that mean?

Then I click on maternal and the exactly the same places show up and when I move over an area of the map, it gets darker.

1) I don't know why it gets darker as I move over, it is not like I can't already see the area.
2) My parents are exactly the same?

I do know they are both from Sephard, could that be why? Meaning, could that be they all came from the same families?

Do anyone see difference between paternal and maternal?

I am so confused.

[keigh]

When you say you click on maternal or paternal, are you refering the the click on buttons on the right side of the screen. Those buttons should bring up the most distant male or female ancestor of your matches if you have the share option set in your account setting. If not no pins dotted orange or blue will show up. This feature doesn't refer to your maternal or paternal side. And just rolling back and forth across the colored areas merely highlights one and mutes the other. There doesn't really seem to be any purpose to that at all. The origins test doesn't show maternal or paternal lines. Those lines are mixed in the DNA and can't be distinguished.

The heat maps are standardize to for all customers. They just an artistic representation of the general area that the population described comes from. The intensity of color represents the percentage of population that a person has. My brother and I are both European Coastal Plain and European Northland. Our percents are a bit different, so the maps or blobs are identical in shape and placement in Europe, the amount of color displayed in the maps is different. The fact that his Northlands is lighter in color than mine is the only way I can tell which one of the maps that I printed off is his. His Northlands is lighter. His Coastal plain is a bit darker than mine, but at a quick glance the maps are the same.

[RobertaMarques]

Thank you. I un-clicked one button, mouse over and highlights here and there. Then I switch and mouse over the map and same thing happens. I was wondering that it means my most ancestor paternal and maternal were identical or I was doing something wrong. Apparently it is the third option.

[keigh]

Hi Again, If no pins are showing or popping up then it sounds like you have a 'don't share with matches" in the privacy settings. If you want to see your cousin matches ethnicity then you need to switch your settings.

I personally have kept mine private, as for me knowing my cousin matches ethnic background isn't important there is too much difference in our DNA for it to be really relevant. From the FF test I know that some of their DNA matches mine and that's all I need.

And where their maternal or paternal ancestor came from is based on their taking a YDNA test or a mtDNA test, it isn't from the FF test. I know that none of the people I match closely (zero step) on my FMS (mtDNA) going down my mother's line, match me on the FF test. Our mtDNA goes back much farther than the cousin's test will show. Same sort of thing with the YDNA that my brother shows. The YDNA goes back beyond the cut off point for cousins.

So the paternal and maternal descendants won't be of any value again to me as showing a place for a common ancestor.

[Applegatej1]

@ keigh
I can understand your preference to keep your MO private, but why limit your ancestry to only two of the multiple lines you have?

MO has given me a clue on what to look for and roughly how many generations back. Whether that information proves helpful in extending the paper trail is yet to be seen.

[SallImSayin]

Two major problems for me:

1. The African breakdown, if you have what they consider Niger-Congo Genesis origins that part will be in a medium dark blue that gets darker when you over and you can NOT really see the other two lower African ancestries. Even if you hover you can't see it what the boundaries are.

2. Honestly, even if the blue was removed and you could unclick an ancestry so that the map removes that element and leaves the rest, it's still so lighly shaded that I can't make it out, even when completely zoomed in.