What is the meaning and significance of Gotra?

Are they your ancestors?

Source: Saptarishis by mrinal-rai on DeviantArt

One answer here claims

"The Gotra is a system which associates a person with his most ancient or root ancestor in an unbroken male
lineage. For instance if a person says that he belongs to the Bharadwaja Gotra then it means that he traces back
his male ancestry to the ancient Rishi (Saint ) Bharadwaja. So Gotra refers to the Root Person in a person’s male
lineage."
This is false. Paternal lineages can be traced through Y haplogroups. And analysis of Brahmin genetic samples
shows that a single gotra group can have multiple paternal lineages.

If you observe the following chart the same gotras are made of different Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups or
male ancestors:

Source: Professor Gyaneshwer Chaubey, BHU (GyanlabBHU)

This indicates that for early Brahmins, Gotras were probably transferred from teacher to student and not as male
lineage from a single rishi as commonly believed.

What is the significance of Gotra?

Well it discourages consanguineous marriages to a certain extent.

Kindly read