Each circle is a region. The circle's area grows with the number of people who lived there at the year shown. The numbers come from HYDE, a database of estimated past populations. HYDE could be wrong by about 80 percent either way.

Every share of ancestry on this map is an output of this map's own calculation, under the assumptions listed below. It is not a measurement of anyone's actual ancestry. The map's calculation was written before the family model page, and the two use different rules and count different things, so their figures are not results from one model.

The colour shows the measure you chose. "Any descendant" is the share of the region's people who have at least one ancestor in the first man's family line. It means any ancestor, near or far, and does not mean only a father-to-son line.

"DNA from Noah's family" is the expected share of the region's DNA that came from Noah's family. Noah's family means the eight people who left the ark. This share is far smaller than the any-descendant share, because each generation carries about half as much of any one ancestor's DNA.

A grey dashed ring means no family line has begun in that region yet, so the model has no descendants there. A small dot travelling from Shinar to a region shows the first man of the line on his way.

The first man of the line is the first man of Noah's family to settle in a region. He stays with Noah's descendants in Shinar until after Peleg's birth in 2372 BC. Most of the families then leave between 2371 and 2362 BC, the farthest region first. Caphtor and Togarmah leave later, and the Oxus founder, a grandson of Elam, leaves Elam in 2264 BC. They all walk at about 400 kilometres a year. His family line begins when he arrives. The default dates follow the site's own chronology.

Noah's family reaches Shinar in about 2570 BC on this map. That year is a chosen assumption, not evidence. It sets when the map starts counting the family's contribution in Shinar.

The "any descendant" share on this map and the family model page's share of ancestry from the ark are different quantities with different denominators. This page does not copy one into the other.

Open the family model page: it works out how many of Noah's descendants lived in Shinar, and how much of their ancestry came from the eight people on the ark, with a different and later calculation

This map is an experiment. The book A Timeline of Origins does not give these numbers. The project added them, and they are one set of assumptions, not a finding.

Each coloured dot is a named person; the key names them and shows their age. A dot with a white ring is a founder still waiting in Shinar with Noah's descendants. Hover a dot for the name and age, and click it to see what survives in writing from that region. A dot travelling from Shinar with a moving label is a family line on its way to its region. The dot labelled "Noah's family travelling to Shinar" is the whole family on its assumed journey from the ark. A solid white dot is a Genesis 10 name that is written down by the date shown, and a hollow ring is a name first written down later.

The placed names are Genesis 10 names set at later-attested places. A hollow ring does not show that the name or its people were there at the date on the slider.

This map's own caveats: