New genomics analysis software developed by computer scientists at Stanford appears far more adept than prior methods at unraveling the ancestry of individuals. A new paper describes the HAPAA (HMM-based Analysis of Polymorphisms in Admixed Ancestries) project, which takes its name from “hapa,” the Hawaiian word for someone of mixed ancestry.

Going back 20 generations the software can identify what continent or broad global region an individual’s ancestors were from. But going back about 10 generations the software can be much more precise, making distinctions as fine-grained as the traditional gene pools of nearby population groups—hypothetically differentiating Greek from Italian, or Russian from German.

Specifically what the software does is compare an individual to all those in the International HapMap database to see what distinct spans of genetic snippets, called haploblocks, they share in common.