While waiting for Erin to get off work, I stayed at the library and did some light reading. One of the books that I was surprised to come across was “Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project” by Spencer Wells. It had been a couple of years since I last encountered his work in “The Journey of Man.” No offense to the Niles Library, but I wouldn’t have expected to run into this book at that place.
The Genographic Project collects data from people and identifies certain genes that are distinctive for groups of people. (Forgive me, but I’m not really a science person so my working will be fast and free.) The aim is to map out the migratory path of humans as they populated the planet. In a way we are backtracking to the starting point of the human race by finding our common ancestral groups. The more subjects the projects analyzes, the better the data.
I first came aware of Spencer Wells while I was at State. Coincidentally, I was taking an anthropology course that focused on the settlement of North America and the various theories as to how and when that was done. On this one particular day, I was in my dorm flipping through the channels finding out that there was nothing on TV. I settled on C-SPAN. At least, I think it was C-SPAN. Anyways, this guy (Spencer Wells) was lecturing on who humans originated in Africa and how they migrated to the rest of the world. His presentation was based on genetic tests taken from population groups across the globe.
Now when we look at other peoples, a lot of us can see the different physical attributes in different people. The most obvious being skin color. While the human race appears to be varied, the study revealed that our genetic variation was not so varied. In fact, you could have to dig really deep into the genome to find the variations.
I can’t be 100% certain of what I am about to write but the genetic variation caused by mutations can be averaged out. Through some process using the Y-chromosome, they can backtrack through our genealogy by finding other population groups that share the same mutations. For example, the British and French will have more genetic mutations in common with each other than they would with Malaysians. This means that the British and French have a more recent common ancestry with each other. Eventually, though, a common mutation can be found that will link the British and French to the farthest flung groups on the planet.
Again, I don’t get the technical details, I just find it fascinating to see where my ancestors came from and where my maternal and paternal lines have a common origin. While I may pride myself on my multi-racial background, it’s nice to know that my two sides really aren’t that different after all.
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2 comments:
Well, I do have some background in the sciences, and I'd say you understand and present the material well.
There's just one remark in your post that got me thinking - you say skin colour is the most obvious difference between different genetically defined human groups.
If we notice skin colour more than facial bone structure, bodily build, musculature, the shape of eyes, nose and mouth etc ... it's because we're hyper-aware of the political issue of racism, as opposed to the geneological issue of race.
There's a definite difference in tendencies of general body shape between west-coast Africans and east-coast Africans - though as always variation within each group is much larger than variation between groups.
But, even those of us who are careful to monitor ourselves for racist thoughts still notice small variations in skin tone over much larger variations in body type. Probably because we're still very conscious of racism, which focuses on colour and mostly ignores body shape.
I agree with you there. I think in general, people find it easier to point to skin color as it is more encompassing. White=European, Yellow=Asian, Black=African, and so on. Finding the subsets of these groups serves no further purpose. And I say that from the American experience. From the Filipino experience it's much more different. If anyone thinks that racism is blatant in the United States, they need to take a trip to the Philippines. They discriminate against people that, to me, look just like them.
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