AncestryDNA uses two different approaches to figure out the regions in your DNA Story. In one we compare your DNA to the DNA from people in a reference panel. (The second uses Genetic Communities™. Read more about communities.)

Using a Reference Panel

A reference panel is made up of people with a long family history in one place or as part of one group. To make it into the AncestryDNA reference panel, these folks need two things. First, they need a paper trail that proves their family history. Then, they must have their ethnicity confirmed at the DNA level. It is not easy to make it into the panel!

To tell your DNA story, we compare your DNA to the people in the reference panel and look for DNA you share. If some of your DNA is similar to the DNA of folks from Senegal, for example, we assign that part of your DNA to our Senegal region. And so on until we have looked at your whole DNA sample.

On your results list, regions based on the reference panel have a solid-circle icon that looks like this:

Building a Reference Panel

The current AncestryDNA reference panel has 56,580 DNA samples that divide the world into 77 overlapping regions and groups.

Here is the breakdown of how many individuals are in each of the 77 regions:

Region	Number of Samples
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander	53
Aegean Islands	366
Anatolia & the Caucasus	368
Arabian Peninsula	105
The Balkans	1,325
Baltics	245
Basque	98
Bengal	228
Benin & Togo	487
Burusho	23
Cameroon, Congo & Western Bantu Peoples	533
Central Asia-South	573
Cyprus	258
Dai	90
Eastern Bantu Peoples	167
Eastern Europe & Russia	1,454
Eastern Polynesia & New Zealand Maori	244
Egypt	252
England & Northwestern Europe	1,907
Ethiopia & Eritrea	98
European Jewish	447
Finland	401
France	3,099
Germanic Europe	3,261
Greece & Albania	482
Guam	133
Indigenous Americas-Bolivia & Peru	371
Indigenous Americas-Central	1,614
Indigenous Americas-Chile	467
Indigenous Americas–Colombia & Venezuela	3,162
Indigenous Americas-Ecuador	691
Indigenous Americas-Mexico	697
Indigenous Americas-North	2,000
Indigenous Americas-Panama & Costa Rica	475
Indigenous Americas-Yucatan Peninsula	302
Indigenous Arctic	36
Indigenous Cuba	3,408
Indigenous Eastern South America	2,671
Indigenous Haiti & Dominican Republic	2,840
Indigenous Puerto Rico	4,773
Iran / Persia	774
Ireland	794
Ivory Coast & Ghana	272
Japan	150
Khoisan, Aka & Mbuti Peoples	38
Korea	280
Levant	225
Mali	458
Malta	104
Melanesia	91
Mongolia & Central Asia-North	237
Nigeria	569
Northern Africa	287
Northern Asia	41
Northern China	340
Northern India	614
Northern Italy	1,179
Northern Philippines	210
Norway	790
Portugal	893
Samoa	96
Sardinia	75
Scotland	1,797
Senegal	168
Somalia	41
Southeast Asia	287
Southern Bantu Peoples	183
Southern China	479
Southern India	114
Southern Italy	1,365
Southern Japanese Islands	63
Southern Philippines	272
Spain	917
Sweden & Denmark	1,053
Tonga	121
Vietnam	235
Wales	764
Total	56,580