Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Who Am I? Seeking your Inner Neanderthal

Vikings. Attila the Hun. Cavemen. Meet the in-laws, or rather, those genetic relatives you didn't expect to find on your family tree. 
Amid the wonders of the age of genetics, people worldwide are spitting, swabbing or otherwise submitting samples to genetic registries, opening an era in understanding that most fundamental of questions: Who am I? 
"Everyone wants to know how much of a Neanderthal they are," says genetics expert Spencer Wells, head of National Geographic's Genographic Project, a worldwide DNA ancestry-tracing effort that estimates how related you are to that vanished family of human caveman cousins. "Wives particularly seem interested in their husband's results, for some reason," Wells jokes.
Once the domain of great-aunts hunting down any family member with a royal pedigree, the world of genealogy is tapping into the genetics revolution while going mainstream. In less than a decade, more than a million people have taken such ancestry tests, offered by more than two dozen companies. The Genographic Project got things going in 2005. The "incredible response," Wells says, reflects a revolution in cheaper DNA testing, one that has at times raised hackles of privacy advocates. 
At the National Genealogical Society's annual meeting last month in Las Vegas, more traditional talks on tracing immigrant paperwork competed for attention with a new slate of "DNA" sleuthing from geneticists.
Indeed, the ancient art of family-tree-tracing is rushing into the 21st century. 
"We are seeing a coming of age in genealogy meeting genetics," says Ancestry.Com's Ken Chahine, a biochemist. "The expense of tests has dropped, and the number of records has reached a point where we are able to tell people a good deal about their ancestry." 
Intended by National Geographic as a part of its mission to map and explore the world, the Genographic Project has analyzed the genetic markers of nearly 600,000 people since 2005, specializing in looking to the origins of modern humans in Africa more than 100,000 years ago.
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