"Taken as a whole, such findings appear to verify the 19th-century designation of Melungeon ancestors as "mulattos", that is, descendants of white Europeans and Africans. The line with a variety of haplogroup with roots in Portugal, Spain and Italy is consistent with historian Ira Berlin's research showing that some of the charter generation of enslaved or servant people in the Chesapeake Bay colony were Atlantic creoles. They had Spanish or Portuguese paternal ancestors and African mothers. They were descended from African women and European men; the latter worked in the slave trade at ports in Africa run by Spain and Portugal, and took wives from the indigenous population.

Testing of haplo-types is not an exact science. They change and sub-divide regularly. Haplo-type DNA testing is limited in scope and cannot detail an individual's entire ethnic background."