A couple of years ago, Lynn and I submitted our DNA to the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project. The cost of the submission kit is currently $99.95. Each submission results in a report of information about either a person’s maternal or paternal ancestors and the path they took out of Africa. If you are a male, you can submit two kits, one for each gender of your ancestors. If you are a female, you can only have your mitochondrial DNA checked for your female line. You have to get a male relative to submit his inner-cheek scraping to see about your male line, since you don’t have any of the Y chromosomes in your body.
It is quite quick to take the kit’s object that looks like a toothbrush without bristles and scrape it against the inside your cheek. It doesn’t hurt, You drop the object into a small tube, put it in the padded envelope provided and mail it.
Most of the paths pass through modern Egypt and most of the people I know have ancestors who traveled north around various obstacles into what is now Europe. Some of my relatives are very interested in the history of their families going back into the 1600’s and further. There are more and more resources, both online and other, for finding and studying who one’s ancestors were and what they did. However, the Genographic Project and the book “The Seven Daughters of Eve”, by the Oxford professor of genetics Bryan Sykes, made it clear to me that we are all (maybe modified) Africans and all us humans are one big family.
There is a passage in the writings of Thich Nhat Hahn where he advises us to learn to see flowers when looking at a manure pile and to see manure when looking at flowers. He means the same thing as the Zen saying “We are one” meaning the whole world is connected together. All the parts of the world are connected to all the other parts. So it is a bit shortsighted of me to see only other humans as my relatives since birds, trees, sand and sky are also connected to me. I can’t help but be influenced by my senses and I see physical and emotional similarities between me and other humans that don’t work for other parts of the world.
Since pondering the pathway charts and reading “Before the Dawn” by Nicholas Wade, thinking about humans 50,000 and 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, I have lost much of my interest in whether my great grandfather was a thief or a judge (or both). I can see biologically, psychologically and historically that you and I and all us humans are cousins.
