The Hisory Channel and Genome Projects

The History Channel recently did a two-part program on immigrants.   It prompted me to re-run this column about my participation in the National Geographic's Genographic Project.

This summer I took part in the Genographic Project sponsored by National Geographic.  For a modest sum I was sent a kit to collect skin cells from the inside of my cheek.  These cells allowed me to learn the path my ancestors took in their long journey from past to present.  They also allowed the Genographic Project to add my DNA to its bank of information on the human species.  I am now a part of original research, and I know a little more about my story.

Of course, there are some things that are obvious to anyone even casually aware of modern anthropology.  We know that all humans evolved in Africa starting 2.5 million years ago with Homo sapiens appearing some 200,000 years ago amidst dramatic climatic changes.  We know that humans traveled slowly but constantly out of Africa, into Asia and Europe developing differences in body type, coloring and health propensities as random genetic mutations favored certain individuals.  An easy example of this is the long, thin, straight nose of Northern Europeans.  These noses help warm the cold northern air before it enters the trachea and lungs.  Warmer air was less traumatic to tissues and more energy efficient, requiring less body heat in the core.  This nose wasn’t ordered up by the people living in cold climates.  Instead, as humans traveled from warm to cold climates, any individual who—purely by accident—was born with a slightly longer, narrower nose had a slight health advantage.  In perilous times, that advantage would amount to a stronger, longer lived person who had lots of children who all looked just like him or her.  

So we know that we all are, “Out of Africa.”  Knowing that we all have the same beginning, the same long, arduous path seeking survival and advancement should prod us to find the similarities and not the differences between us.  That big picture is what I was after.  I didn’t expect any surprises, but I got some anyway.     

After about 12 weeks of waiting, I was able to access the results of the test via the internet.  I was taken, step by step, through my genetic history. 

1.  All women on earth today trace their heritage, passed from mother to daughter, to a single woman, a “mitochondrial” Eve from East Africa. 

2.  The ancestors in my N haplogroup date from about 70,000 years ago.  These ancestors crossed the Sinai Peninsula and lived in Western Asia, probably sharing turf and DNA with Neanderthals. 

3.  About 65,000 years ago I joined a developing haplogroup R moving over the Caucasus Mountains into present day Russia and Europe. 

4.  About 47,000 years ago a woman in this group showed a new marker, “U” and I found my way into the Baltic area and Scandinavia.  [We are finally getting to familiar territory, here.] 

5.  About 30,000 years ago a U5 marker broke off from the main group and went to—wait for it—the two lands which claim my known relatives: Scandinavia and Great Britain.  Here was the first surprise.  The Saami Reindeer herders (Laplanders to my mother) have a strong presence of this same marker.  To my Norwegian grandmother these native people were, “strange and wild;” not relatives.  The second surprise is that my ancestors were in Europe long before the last glacial maximum and the Neolithic farmers that came with it.  I recently read, Sarnum by Edward Rutherford and realized that my people would be the same ones which he described at the beginning of that story.  This is a longer history than I imagined.  

Love humanity, and keep the faith.