Jun 30, 2008

I sent away for the National Geographic Genographic Project DNA kit a couple of months ago. Just recently, I have found out some things about the migratory route of my ancestors. It seems that all non-African men in the world share a common male ancestor, who lived in what is now modern day Kenya or Tanzania about 60,000 years ago. My ancestors traveled from Africa to what is now Iran, then onto the Balkans and into the Iberian Peninsula. They were probably forced there by the Ice Age. My most recent ancestor identified in the project, was among the people who left the Iberian Peninsula and populated Europe after the Ice Age. I have a DNA marker called M253, which is still found in high frequency in Northwest Europe. Something like 50% of all Scandinavian men share M253. Of course, if you are among the anti-evolution, New Earth crowd, all this is just bogus. Here's something else. There are a lot of reason to vote for Obama over McCain, but Wesley Clark's assessment of McCain's military record is not among them. According to Clark, McCain's long naval career, his service as a fighter pilot and his five-year incarceration as a POW, don't qualify McCain to lead this country. Hogwash. Wesley Clark is the same asshole who claimed that John Kerry's service in Vietnam made him especially qualified to be President. What a bag of crap. How about we have an election about the issues, not surrogates running around trashing the other guy? Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

5 comments:

Coffee Messiah said...

That sounds interesting!

As for politics, it always seems to be about something/anything other than issues! ; (

Mouthing off, all sides about "stuff" that has nothing about what they will or will not do for the country, is simply BS and not worth listening to, or giving a damn about.

But that's just me....

bitchlet said...

Intriguing.

I'd like to know a little bit about my ancestors too, especially since I'm not one of the New Earth Crowd.

Is there a way?

Bobby D. said...

I would guess we share a common ancestor. I was telling someone once how we have 32 Great great great great grandparents --hard to keep track of THEM even! They said no, we only have TWO gr gr gr gr grandparents, or FOUR then they got all confused.

--but when you do the math it's mind boggling! People Not only might we have known each other in another lifetime ages and ages ago--we may have been close relatives. I'm just thinkin'.

Kurt said...

We're all from Africa.

I like the whole DNA scan thing - it's only going to get more informative as time goes on.

Nan Patience said...

What science has been able to figure out is so amazing and fascinating. I didn't know you could get a DNA test and find out where your ancestors came from. I think we'd like to try that, if I can get some info.

If I hear one more news cycle about Swift Boat, I think I'm gonna hurl.