I am the co-administrator for an exciting Genetic Genealogy project called the Wales-Cymru DNA project.

We are tracking down the various types of Y-DNA (male) and mtDNA (female) DNA that existed in Wales.

How does this testing work?

We recruit men and women from all over the world who have traced their ancestry back to the country of Wales. For a man, he needs to have traced his direct paternal ancestor--that means his father's father's father (etc.) back to Wales.

Y-DNA is what makes a male a male. Every man who has sons passes his Y-DNA to them. "Markers" on the Y-DNA remain unchanged for many, many hundreds of years. This means that a Welsh man who lived in the 1200s would have the same Y-DNA as all his direct male descendants! This makes Y-DNA testing very useful for genealogy. So, a man who has traced his line back to Wales takes the Y-DNA test. It is very easy and just involves swabbing the inside of the cheek and mailing it in to the lab. The lab has no personal information about the man; just the kit number. The Y-DNA information is published on our Wales Cymru DNA site. Again, this is private; the person's address, phone, email, etc. are NOT published. The man is given his own personal page to track his DNA results as well as men who match up with him. If a man matches him, then that means that share the same direct paternal ancestor!

Both men and women can take the mtDNA test. A mother gives mtDNA to all her children. Her sons cannot pass along her mtDNA, but her daughters can pass it along. So, anyone testing their mtDNA would be testing their direct maternal line--their mother's mother's mother (etc.). We do not have that many people in our project who have traced their mtDNA back to Wales.

We have over 400 members in the project, but not all of them have traced their line back to Wales. In the early days of the project we allowed anyone to join. Now we only allow those who have actually traced their DNA ancestor back to Wales, or have a surname with a Welsh origin (such as Meredith).

We sort our project members by their DNA "haplogroup". Both Y-DNA and mtDNA can be grouped into something called haplogroups. Some groups are younger than others. They all descend from the oldest haplogroup that came out of Africa. For the purposes of our project, we are interested in which haplogroups dominate in Wales, and which are rare. Each haplogroup has its own origin. For example, the G haplogroup is rare in Wales, and may have been brought in by the Roman soldiers. The R haplogroup is very common, and was probably brought in by the Celtic people. The I haplogroup is fairly common, and may have been the original haplogroup in Wales before the Celts came!

We would love to have more people join our important research project. Please take a look at our website (be sure to click on each tab), and ask me if you have any questions!

http://www.familytreedna.com/public/WalesDNA/default.aspx

Susan