I suspect I am about to make myself unpopular in some quarters, but genealogy is nothing if not controversial now and then. Debate is, after all, the spice of life and of our great hobby. I am afraid I find myself unable to join in with what seems to be the general euphoria about DNA testing. I am, to put it bluntly, yet to be convinced that it is anything other than just another adjunct of genealogy and family history, moreover one that is largely untested, untried and unproven. We are talking about a supposed "science" (if that is the correct term) here that is very much in its infancy and it is my experience that new technologies tend to attract charlatans out to make a fast buck out of gullible beginners! I feel rather the same about DNA testing as I do about those shysters I call "bucket shop genealogists", i.e. those websites and little stalls you see in shopping malls that purport to sell you your "family coat of arms" or a framed "history of your surname", which those of us who have been in this business a very long time know to be utter rubbish. What evidence of any substantive consequence is there that DNA testing can actually prove anything at all? We only have the word of those who are offering it and who, therefore, have a deep vested interest in the whole subject, i.e. in making money out of it. So DNA testing might prove that your ancestor was a Stone Age caveman 20,000 years ago? I seem to recall there was a story a few years back to this effect, i.e. that a teacher in the West Country had been linked by DNA to some pre-historic man whose bones were found in a cave. So what? What does this prove? Does it fill in all the gaps and links in between? Of course it doesn't! Speaking as an "old-timer", a family historian for some 40 years and today a professional genealogist, I am interested only in what can be proven by the time-honoured, tried and tested, old-fashioned methods of documentation and published evidence, backed up by my own researches. Frankly, I do not wish to have my supposed ancestry decided by test tube experiments in a laboratory on my DNA. I prefer my own researches in the archives and my own interpretation of what those findings show. I expect some bright spark in a lab will tell me that as a Yorkshireman from way back I have Viking blood. Well, I think I knew that already. My own researches tell me, backed up by documentary evidence, that I am a (very) distant cousin of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great Antarctic explorer. Though he was born in Ireland, we both have Shackleton ancestry from Yorkshire and we both descend from a marriage at Keighley in 1581 in Elizabeth times. Frankly, I am far, far, far more interested in this than in knowing via DNA testing that I descend from unknown Vikings in Scandinavia or, even farther back, from a Hottentot tribe in Africa several thousand years ago. I have yet to be convinced of what people get out of DNA testing, other than pure speculation. Has it not occurred also to some of you that the whole thing can be totally thrown by what is known as "non-paternity " issues, i.e. illegitimacy? I rest my case and now await the flying brickbats. Talk about putting a cat amongst the pigeons, Roy.....! -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Famous family trees blog: http://blog.findmypast.co.uk/tag/roy-stockdill/ "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE