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I'm 35, female. I had a 23andMe DNA profile for the past year, and I met a 59 year old man (Jay) who shares the same maternal haplogroup, who was put up for adoption in a Brooklyn hospital and is looking for information on his birth mother. My dad just did his test and now I see my paternal haplogroup is ALSO identical with Jay.

How is this possible?

I thought that cousins rarely share the same group, and we share both. My parents are 64 years old, so they're not old enough to be his parents.

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The Y-DNA test and the mtDNA test are not very precise and can't prove close relationship. But the otherwise is working - these test can DISapprove close relationship.

Your results mean that you have one common male ancestor with that person and you have one common female ancestor with that person. These common ancestors may lived in the same time or in the different epoch. I talk about epoch like 5000 B.C. or silimar. Really, it is not very practical.

If you want to prove the close relationship with that person, you both need to pass the FamilyFinder test. It reveals the shared autosomal DNA segments and you may guess what is your relationship distance based on this amount.

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    23andMe does include an autosomal DNA test, so it would be possible to transfer the data to FamilyTreeDNA (for a fee) rather than take a new test.
    – user6485
    Commented Sep 4, 2017 at 15:03
  • @ColeValleyGirl thanks for your addition. I totally forget that 23andMe tests for all three types of DNA: the autosomal, Y-DNA and mtDNA
    – GEORG GAAL
    Commented Sep 5, 2017 at 6:46

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