Emotional attachment to Cro-Magnon
By Jason Major
TechNyou
Did anyone watch “Faces of America” Episode 4 last night on SBS? I thought it was a fascinating insight into the emotional connection people (or at least the celebrities on the program) have to their ancestors. OK, I can understand the deep connection we have with immediate ancestors, those that we can track through written records. I think we all, especially as we get older, have a desire to know where we come from. My wife’s family had a castle in Ireland before being shipped out here as convicts. Hmmm…Lord Jason. What I found most interesting was the connection the guest appeared to have to our more distant cousins, the ones only analysis of our DNA can reveal.
My cousin the Cro-magnon
The emotional response these guests had when the program presenter revealed their distant genetic connections, even back to their links to specific genetic groups that first walked out of Africa was suprising, given we are not examing a specific person and what they did in their lives. We are simply matching chunks of DNA.
Personally I find it a remarkable bit of DNA detective work, one that presents clearly that we really are essentially the same, not that we needed a micro-array analysis to know this. I don’t know if I can feel such emotional or familial ties to such distant ancestors.
We share 66% of our genes with a fruit fly and I can’t imagine anyone claiming blood ties to those beasties. For me, the interest remains academic.
World changing
One comment from Dr Oz, a guest on the show baffled me a bit. The program arranged for an analysis of their guests’ genetic haplotypes – chunks of DNA whose sequence has been conserved over thousands of years and can be used to determine relatedness – albeit distant relatedness.
Dr Oz was apparently raised a Muslim. An analysis of his DNA, however, showed his genetic haplotypes were exactly the same as another of the program’s guests whose descendants were Russian Jew on one side and German Jew on the other. The point being made was that Muslims and Jews descended from the same common ancestors. This seemed to shock Dr Oz, though program editing might have made it appear this way or emphasized it more than the reality. His comments were that this information is “world changing” and that it was a hard truth to admit, but the only differences separating one human from another is the way we think about things. Well, Duh! I am unsure how this is any sort of revelation, especially for a man educated in the sciences.
And will such information really change the way we view each other? The way the show was framed it suggested that this sort of information did make some of the guests, at least, think differently, which if it actually did, surprises me. Maybe as the technology improves we can reveal more, but for now I think such info is interesting as it provides us with another perspective on human history, but I don’t think it is going to change how we view each other. It certainly isn’t going to stop any ideological intolerance. When we get a handle on how the environment plays a role in the development of human nature – both in how it acts on our genes and non-genetic responses – then we might go some way toward a “world changing” bit of knowledge.
But it will be many decades, if not longer, before that happens. The genome is a complex beast.
More info
National Geographic Genographic Project
