Hi James and all, Your question was well put. I was talking to the leader of a particular surname org's DNA study and I asked the same question in almost the same words. He said that very, very old DNA tends to break down and become unstable, so is not reliable. We can best compare one person's DNA to someone who is well evidenced to be a descendant of the ancestor in question. I think this would be great, but only if the evidence is not...hmm...full of holes. My concern is mainly that some of the surname org's do not use good gen standards so their evidence is sometimes shaky. I'd hate to see someone pay the fee and get false results. They would not know the results were false. They might be a descendant in fact but the "proven descendant" might not be. It all comes back to doing good source work to back up what we think is fact. Barb T