However, if you have hair of an ancestor and nothing else, as is the case sometimes, it may be worth the extra money to have their DNA tested. More about that later. For our purposes here, there are two types of DNA to be concerned with. Y-DNA testing follows the paternal line back in time. Males comparing like or same surnames generally send samples of cheek cells or blood to a testing lab and find out if they are related through a most recent common ancestor.
MtDNA testing follows the maternal line back in time.
However, you should also know that male and female offspring receive their mtDNA from their mother. That means that females as well as males can have their mtDNA tested in order to follow the ancestors of their mother, their mother's mother, and so on. As a result, a male can begin a mtDNA test project, and he will try to find other people who may match the mtDNA of his maternal line, hopefully ending up with a most recent common ancestor that matches another supposedly unrelated individual. I will talk a little about each type of sample in the following paragraphs. While this is a preferred method, buccal swabs have come into their own subject to provisos set out below.