Articles
4 articles on mtdna, ancient-DNA research written up for readers who want the evidence, not just the headline.
Mitochondrial DNA is the small genome inherited from mother to child, unchanged except by mutation, so its variants place a person on a single maternal-line tree. A chip test reads enough of it for a haplogroup call, usually to a broad branch such as H, U5, K or T2 rather than a terminal one. The maternal line is one lineage among all the ancestors a person has, so an mtDNA haplogroup says little about overall ancestry and nothing about identity.
The articles explain what a maternal haplogroup is and how the tree is built, how to get a free maternal haplogroup call from a 23andMe, AncestryDNA or MyHeritage export, why most chip kits stop at a broad branch, how to explore the full maternal tree with its defining variants and tester counts by country, and what the diverse maternal ancestry of the Deep Maniots of southern Greece looks like next to their unusual paternal isolation.
Get a free maternal haplogroup call
What a maternal (mtDNA) haplogroup is, how the tree is built, what H, U5, K, T2 and the other common branches tell you, why most chip kits resolve to a broad branch, and what a haplogroup can and cannot say about ancestry.
What mitochondrial DNA records, how to get a free maternal haplogroup call from a 23andMe, AncestryDNA or MyHeritage export, why most chip kits resolve to a broad branch, and how to explore the maternal tree afterwards.
Two new free tools: browse the complete paternal tree — over 109,000 named branches — and the full maternal tree, with defining variants, tester counts by country and search by haplogroup or SNP. No account needed.
A 2026 study of 102 Deep Maniots finds unusual paternal isolation, Bronze Age-linked lineages, medieval founder effects and diverse maternal ancestry.