Haplogroups are a way of separating result into smaller groups, it is a way ancient populations are studied. It doesn't affect the Statler DNA project. The goal of our project is just to find out which families are more closely related. I assume the person who asked the question knew about haplogroups. R1b is the most common European Haplogroup. R1a is more popular in Eastern Europe but is found in Western Europe also. There is no way to tell where a person came from the test except in broad terms such as Europe. Sandy --- BradStatler@aol.com wrote: > > In a message dated 8/9/2006 11:41:34 P.M. Central > Daylight Time, > shall@pacbell.net writes: > > > Please excuse my ignorance..... but what are the > haplogroup R!a and R1b > ? > > "There are 5 Groups that use the Statler spelling. > > Only the origin of the Statler family of Missouri > has > been found. They are haplogroup R1a. See Group > 14 at > my website: > http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~sandrajoneshall/ > > Most of the other Groups are R1b."