As a novice genealogist, I am interested in finding out where my ancestors are from and my genetic lineage. In the TEDGlobal 2007 Ted talk, “A family tree for humanity”, geneticist Spencer Wells explains how the Genographic Project was setup to answer two questions:
- Do we all share a common origin? and if so,
- How did we migrate to all corners of the globe and become the diverse population that we are?
In 2007, at the time of this talk, there were 6,000 different languages spoken by six and a half billion people on Earth. Because the genetic code in our DNA is a historical record that provides a look into the earliest days of our species, it can provide information about where we all come from and how we are all truly connected, despite the diversity in our population on Earth today.
The video explained the Genographic Project and that our DNA indicates that within the last 200,000 years, we all share an ancestor, a single person, in Africa. About 60,000-70,000 years ago, the human population nearly went extinct to fewer than 2,000 individuals. But then something happened that changed human behavior – we became more social and art and language developed. Tools became more sophisticated. This change is what allowed us to survive and to start migrating around the world, leaving Africa around 60,000 years ago and reaching Australia by 50,000 years ago. The migration continues to this day. This video was fascinating and helped me to appreciate the information stored in our DNA.