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Haplogroup and Cambridge Reference Sequence
In genealogy and DNA, researchers have been able to divide genealogy up into groups. Those groups help show where our ancestors were from.
First, be sure you understand how mtDNA tracing works and how it only comes down the mother-daughter line. There is no "mixing of DNA" or getting multiple threads from multiple parents. All you ever get is your mother's mtDNA - and all she ever gets is HER mothers. Sperm doesn't carry mtDNA.
Because of this, you can figure out what part of the world your mothers' mothers' mother is from by doing mtDNA testing. In essence there are only 30 or so haplogroups. Since mtDNA is passed down from mother to children with NO change, the times that mutations did occur, they were then propagated to all children. This means that researchers were easily able to see how those changes spread over time and across land masses. Take a look at this map -
Researchers have traced the changes back to Africa. They can see the migration patterns spread out from there. They assigned letter values to the groups of people who ended up in each region.
People in older generations did not move around very freely. Someone born in a town often lived their entire life and died in that town. A long move might mean going to the next town over, or maybe even the next county. While the occasional pilgrim might travel hundreds of miles and decide to stay in their new location, that was rare.
If you get a mtDNA test done, it can give you insight into where your mother's family line comes from! For example, in a test we just did, we came up as belonging to group "T". This means our mothers' mothers' mothers' family (many generations back) came from somewhere in Northern Europe. It gives us a direction to point in!
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Note - Lisa Shea wrote this content for the genealogy site at BellaOnline.com - you might still find this content there as well. That's fine :) I gave permission!
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