World Migration Matrix, 1500-2000

The matrix gives, for each of 165 countries, an estimate of the proportion of the ancestors in 1500 of that country's population today that were living within what are now the borders of that and each of the other countries.


The matrix itself is an Excel spreadsheet. Accompanying documents are a Main Appendix, providing an overview of the information and its sources, and region appendices for Africa, Americas , Asia, Europe, and Oceania , which include a one paragraph or one page explanation of the estimate for each individual country.


The first version of the data set was completed in March, 2007. Revisions of some entries, mainly of countries in the Americas, using information from genetic studies to estimate the ancestry of large groups of mixed origin, were completed in August, 2009 and are incorporated in the new matrix version labeled 1.1. Links to both original and new versions of those files that have undergone change are found below.