The Genographic Project
As you've seen in the site info, one part of this site is devoted to core members and whoever else wants to get involved to share a reading list. This reading list idea actually began before this forum did, and we're just now finishing up our first selection: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey by Dr. Spencer Wells. If you're interested, please read it and join our discussion. It is exceedingly interesting, engrossing, and fascinating. And we will be talking about it more shortly. (And more than likely referencing it in later discussions, as well.)
Here is pretty much what I wrote about it in my
mattphillips11 (Beyond the Pale) journal before I set up this community:
Science continues to wow me.
I have always been interested in archeology and anthropology--basically, in things related to the origins of our species, how we came to be, why we are where we are, etc. Learning of archaeological sites is fascinating, but I was always turned off by the amount of pure guesswork needed in order to make conclusions; this amount of uncertainty gave room for racists, for example, to make egregious claims. Discoveries of Neandertals in Europe and Peking Man in Asia led some old-school anthropologists, for example, to claim that white Europeans were a separate speciesfrom other "men." This, as is obvious now, is complete and utter nonsense.
Modern science, however, has taken anthropological research to the next level: Namely, genetics. Specifically, the Genographic Project. (Click on that to go its homepage.) Our DNA can be used to track the generational migrations of prehistoric humans. (It also shows that we did not descend from Neandertals, as people used to think, but that Neandertals and Homo Sapiens--us--were spin-offs from a shared ancestor about 500,000 years ago.)
The way DNA can be used is quite simple. For men, researchers look at their Y-Chromosome. (There's a separate process for females.) Each male has a Y. This Y is received from his father and is usually passed on in exactly the same form; hence the possibility of paternity tests and such. Occasionally, though (and I'm talking about every few thousand years), a son will receive a mutated Y from his father. What this does is create a genetic marker, as that son will then pass the new Y onto his descendants, and so on. Yet, the change is only minimal and most of the two Ys will still look exactly the same.
So, a researcher can look at your DNA (if you're a male) and look at the various mutations you have on your Y-chromosome. When they see these mutations, they're seeing proof of a specific past ancestor. Other people who have the same mutation as you have the same past ancestor. To skip ahead to what I'll probably write about in a later post, I've found out that one of my ancestors is a guy the Genographic researchers call M17. This guy lived in the Ukraine area about 10,000 years ago. (They figure out placement using other forms of deduction that I won't write about.) This man is the great-great...grandfather of a very significant amount of people in the Ukraine/Southern Russia area, northern India, spots of Central Asia and Siberia, and even Iceland. About 40% of the modern-day men in these areas have this mutation in their Y-chromosome, showing that they trace back to the same patrilineal ancestor.
Some very interesting things have been close-to-proven from this process. First of all, every single person that has had their DNA processed for this purpose (10s of 10s of thousands, including people from every "indigenous" population on the globe) can trace their patrilineal ancestry back to the very same man in southern Africa, a man who lived roughly 60,000 years ago. Researchers have misleadingly dubbed him Adam, but he's nothing like the biblical Adam. First of all, he wasn't the "first man." Research on the female line, for one, shows every person tracing back to the very same woman who lived around 150,000 years ago (misleadingly dubbed "Eve.") (The reasons for the discrepancy between the two dates has something to do with how common polygyny has been until just recently.) Other men lived at the same time as this "Adam," but their lines all died off. This "Adam" figure (our great-grandpa!) seems to have had a major intellectual advantage, and a) had children with various women, and b) endowed his children with better genetic assets to outcompete "non-Adam" humans. Remember at this time that there was only a small number of humans in Southern Africa, so a minor event back then (one man being superior to others, for instance) would have major repercussions in later generations.
The research then shows, by looking at later mutations, the movement "out of Africa" of a major portion of "Adam's" descendants, while some stayed behind in Africa. There's a very nice, interactive map on the Genographic Project website, showing the various branches of the migration (which gets more complex as time moves on).
There's a lot to take in. I poked around their website for a while and figured out all I could. I also read the accompanying book by Dr. Spencer Wells: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. It is short and not too very hard to follow; and he writes very well--like a good teacher. The book traces the deduction process using some of these "markers," gives good background on the general concepts involved, and reinforces the conclusions made with references to climatology, linguistics, etc. And it remained interesting the whole way through; it didn't get bogged down in details. I also gave in and got the test kit so that I could give my DNA to the project. With the kit, I got a nice DVD that explained the project (it was a PBS show last year, maybe). I just got my results back today (it took a couple of months). If people seem to be interested in this post, then I'll write another post about my results.
Here is pretty much what I wrote about it in my
mattphillips11 (Beyond the Pale) journal before I set up this community:Science continues to wow me.
I have always been interested in archeology and anthropology--basically, in things related to the origins of our species, how we came to be, why we are where we are, etc. Learning of archaeological sites is fascinating, but I was always turned off by the amount of pure guesswork needed in order to make conclusions; this amount of uncertainty gave room for racists, for example, to make egregious claims. Discoveries of Neandertals in Europe and Peking Man in Asia led some old-school anthropologists, for example, to claim that white Europeans were a separate speciesfrom other "men." This, as is obvious now, is complete and utter nonsense.
Modern science, however, has taken anthropological research to the next level: Namely, genetics. Specifically, the Genographic Project. (Click on that to go its homepage.) Our DNA can be used to track the generational migrations of prehistoric humans. (It also shows that we did not descend from Neandertals, as people used to think, but that Neandertals and Homo Sapiens--us--were spin-offs from a shared ancestor about 500,000 years ago.)
The way DNA can be used is quite simple. For men, researchers look at their Y-Chromosome. (There's a separate process for females.) Each male has a Y. This Y is received from his father and is usually passed on in exactly the same form; hence the possibility of paternity tests and such. Occasionally, though (and I'm talking about every few thousand years), a son will receive a mutated Y from his father. What this does is create a genetic marker, as that son will then pass the new Y onto his descendants, and so on. Yet, the change is only minimal and most of the two Ys will still look exactly the same.
So, a researcher can look at your DNA (if you're a male) and look at the various mutations you have on your Y-chromosome. When they see these mutations, they're seeing proof of a specific past ancestor. Other people who have the same mutation as you have the same past ancestor. To skip ahead to what I'll probably write about in a later post, I've found out that one of my ancestors is a guy the Genographic researchers call M17. This guy lived in the Ukraine area about 10,000 years ago. (They figure out placement using other forms of deduction that I won't write about.) This man is the great-great...grandfather of a very significant amount of people in the Ukraine/Southern Russia area, northern India, spots of Central Asia and Siberia, and even Iceland. About 40% of the modern-day men in these areas have this mutation in their Y-chromosome, showing that they trace back to the same patrilineal ancestor.
Some very interesting things have been close-to-proven from this process. First of all, every single person that has had their DNA processed for this purpose (10s of 10s of thousands, including people from every "indigenous" population on the globe) can trace their patrilineal ancestry back to the very same man in southern Africa, a man who lived roughly 60,000 years ago. Researchers have misleadingly dubbed him Adam, but he's nothing like the biblical Adam. First of all, he wasn't the "first man." Research on the female line, for one, shows every person tracing back to the very same woman who lived around 150,000 years ago (misleadingly dubbed "Eve.") (The reasons for the discrepancy between the two dates has something to do with how common polygyny has been until just recently.) Other men lived at the same time as this "Adam," but their lines all died off. This "Adam" figure (our great-grandpa!) seems to have had a major intellectual advantage, and a) had children with various women, and b) endowed his children with better genetic assets to outcompete "non-Adam" humans. Remember at this time that there was only a small number of humans in Southern Africa, so a minor event back then (one man being superior to others, for instance) would have major repercussions in later generations.
The research then shows, by looking at later mutations, the movement "out of Africa" of a major portion of "Adam's" descendants, while some stayed behind in Africa. There's a very nice, interactive map on the Genographic Project website, showing the various branches of the migration (which gets more complex as time moves on).
There's a lot to take in. I poked around their website for a while and figured out all I could. I also read the accompanying book by Dr. Spencer Wells: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. It is short and not too very hard to follow; and he writes very well--like a good teacher. The book traces the deduction process using some of these "markers," gives good background on the general concepts involved, and reinforces the conclusions made with references to climatology, linguistics, etc. And it remained interesting the whole way through; it didn't get bogged down in details. I also gave in and got the test kit so that I could give my DNA to the project. With the kit, I got a nice DVD that explained the project (it was a PBS show last year, maybe). I just got my results back today (it took a couple of months). If people seem to be interested in this post, then I'll write another post about my results.