Ancestry.com: Helping you trace your roots and share your exact address

There's an old lady somewhere in Brazil. She's not dying, but she's probably close, and she lives in a nursing home within sight of both Christ the Redeemer and the Atlantic Ocean. Let's call her Alice.

Alice doesn't have any close relatives, but according to ancestry.com, she shares some common ancestry with my wife's sister. In April 2015, when she took a photograph of herself, she was using an iPhone 6 Plus - a handset that had been released only six months previously. It wasn't a cheap handset, and the facility in which she's living isn't cheap either. Looking at Alice's photo (not her real name, BTW), you can see a resemblance. Despite the two centuries since they had a relative in common, and the ocean between them, they could pass for first cousins.

Your DNA is intensely personal to you, and unless you're an identical twin, it's the one thing that can pin you down and identify you as an individual.

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