Abstract: This invention provides human mtDNA polymorphisms that are diagnostic of all the major human haplogroups and methods of diagnosing those haplogroups and selected subhaplogroups. This invention also provides methods for identifying evolutionarily significant mitochondrial DNA genes, nucleotide alleles, and amino acid alleles. Evolutionarily significant genes and alleles are identified using one or two populations of a single species. The process of identifying evolutionarily significant nucleotide alleles involves identifying evolutionarily significant genes and then evolutionarily significant nucleotide alleles in those genes, and identifying evolutionarily significant amino acid alleles involves identifying amino acids encoded by all nonsynonymous alleles. Synonymous codings of the nucleotide alleles encoding evolutionarily significant amino acid alleles of this invention are equivalent to the evolutionarily significant amino acid alleles disclosed herein and are included within the scope of this invention.