Genographic Project Update III

I have already written my understanding about the Genographic Project. Do not get confused by the word Genographic, DNA, Chromosome etc; rather read this one just as a discovery information, then it may be interesting.

I was reading an article in internet from the site of Genographic project, and came to know some interesting facts about human migration and thought sharing here.

Scientists agree that all humans share a common ancestry in Africa. Much less well understood is how the human race migrated from Africa and became so diverse. So far we know from the evidence of fossil and genetic data that human race was originated in Africa couple of hundred thousand years ago, few thousand individuals in Africa to six and half billion today all over the World.
The genographic project, which helps in analysis of DNA to track the ancestry roots have already reveled some interesting facts. Some of them I have mentioned in first post.

Here goes the analysis of DNA of an US born anthropologist Dr Spencer Well who is heading the project. He has common Y chromosome haplotype or set of linked markers that’s found through Southern England. If we go little bit further back, his ancestors were living down in Spain. This is during the worst part of the last ice age; that means 15000 years ago. If we go back to 35000 years ago, his ancestors were in Central Asia, and before that at around 40-45,000 years back they lived in Middle East; as part of second migration out of Africa; they were back n Africa along with everybody else, around 50,000 years ago.

As far the project can tell about two migrations from Africa, the second one was the major one we just discussed, was through Middle East around 45,000 years ago.

The first one took place probably around 50-55,000 years ago that took a southern coastal rout, so along with the south cost of Asia, southern India and ended up in Australia. Isn’t it amazing!!

This document has opened up some more information to me. I discussed that the ancestry root can be traced by Y chromosome, but for female I didn’t have any clue, but came to know about Mitochondrial DNA; what I still don’t know is how we can trace with this DNA, still searching for answers.

The Genographic Project -II (Male carries the Ancestry)

We are still living is a male dominated society, where the Surname of male is still used as Family name.
Specially in India, we have some common believes that women are responsible for giving birth male child and only the male child can carry the ancestry.
The first one is definitely a misconception. We knew from the school that the sex of the child is determined by the father. Here is a small revision.
Male contains X and Y Chromosomes; Female contains X and X. So for a son the Y chromosome has to come from the Father.
But it is true that the family characteristics propagate through males. So “male child can carry the ancestry” is not a misconception. See the flowing explanations.
I have found the following 4 slides in http://www.dnaancestryproject.com/ ; where it tells

“A male inherits his Y-Chromosome directly from his father. The Y-Chromosome
that a male receives from his father is very special because it holds a lot of
valuable information about his ancestry. This is because the Y-Chromosome is
passed down along the male line, relatively unchanged from generation to
generation. A forefather will pass his Y-Chromosome down to all of his sons, and
they will then pass it down to all of their sons, and so on throughout the
generations along the male line. Thus, males who are descendents of the same
line will have the same or nearly identical Y-Chromosomes.”

"When a Y-Chromosome genealogy test is performed, the laboratory examines
specific regions (markers) along the Y-Chromosome called "hypervariable"
regions. Hypervariable regions are areas within the Y-Chromosome that may differ
greatly between different family lines. The type of hypervariable region which
is studied in Y-Chromosome testing is called STR markers (stands for "Short
Tandem Repeat" markers). STR markers are regions of the Y-Chromosome where small chunks of the DNA are repeated over and over again. The number of times that these small chunks of DNA repeat themselves in the Y-Chromosome is variable amongst different family lines."

So, we can conclude that the unique ancestral traits are carried only by the male members because, all males with the same ancestors will have the same or similar Y DNA markers. For the female it gets overlapped with many different genes from mother sides.

After going through these slides, the basic question that came to my mind is if human is originated from single person, then the Y pattern (ATGC base patterns) will be same for all male in this world, which is not.

There are 2 possibilities. The first one if the initial set of Homo sapiens originated in different parts, who had different Y chromosomes. But still this one is not that convincing because as a consequence large section of human has to contain same Y patterns, which is not the reality.

Second possibility that came in my mind is Mutation (the abrupt change of Gene orientation of a species due to some external factors). This is the case probably, for details I have to dig more into the subject and will keep you updated.

The Genographic Project - I (Sample DNA of 2 Indians)

I really don’t know why India and Pakistan fight between each other, why we pretend Africa is backward in terms of civilization, I wonder why we conclude the white are more civilized than black? Science proved everything wrong by virtue of innovative researches and experiments.
Yes, a stunning result from The Genographic Project revealed many mysteries’ of human migration. It’s a joint venture of IBM and National Geographic and the project is still going on. Being an Indian I first checked the result of the Geographic projection of IBM India Country General Manager(from AP, ancestors from Tamil Nadu)

"Shanker’s DNA matches that of Haplogroup R1A, a group that scientists believe
probably formed in what is now Pakistan and northern India about 30,000 years
ago. About 20 percent of the men in India are in Haplogroup R1A.
But Shanker probably has many distant relations in Europe as well. For example, R1A is the predominate type of DNA found in Poland. Geneticists believe that the group spread westward from India in an arc that went through central Asia to Russia and as far west as eastern Germany."

Isn’t it stunning!! My belief was that the David civilization was hardly affected by the Aryans and they are the natives of India, confined in the southern territory. I was wrong.

Another well known truth is that the first human was originated in Africa, all of our grand grand ……..grand father (we call him Adam) was from this poorest ebony continent, and when I see read that article, I feel sorry for all the bloody wars, racism, cast, creed, religion and all possible man made divisions. Under one umbrella we all are living and our source is same.

I guess I am talking hypothetical. Lets come back to the reality with some more details of Geographic project, where the family tree DNA testing results in charting the genetic lineage.

"By unlocking DNA, you can find out very interesting information about your
personal migration pattern over the last tens-of-thousands of years," says
Greenspan.
It’s called "The Genographic Project," and the theory behind the
DNA testing is that we all share a common ancestor who lived in Africa 120,000
years ago.
Sixty thousand years ago, our ancestors began migrating to the
Middle East, India, Asia and Northern Europe. With each move, mutations occurred
in the DNA and each mutation is associated with a place and time in history.
That's the crucial link scientists need to be able to tell where you came from.

I found it really interesting, the mind boggling results has answers many questions of human civilization and yet to explore the minute details and intricacies of human migrations.
Lets take an example of another Indian, Aseem Adhav working in IBM US.

"Born and raised in India, Aseem Adhav discovered his DNA places him in
haplogroup R (M173). This lineage first appeared about 35,000 years ago and
probably arose among migrant hunters from central Asia who moved west and then
east. This was the first large scale settlement of Europe by modern humans. This
group was responsible for the famous cave paintings in Lascaux and Chauvet and
may have hastened the disappearance of the Neanderthals by out-competing that
species for resources."

Again I am taken aback. According to my knowledge the European civilization(Greek 3000BC) was more ancient than the Indian one(2500BC). However the first human civilization(70000BC) was originated in Africa, the Mother Nation. Well, its the necessity, weather, circumstances, history, nature and interests made each of the country, civilizations so different, but the basic of every human is identical.

The ambitious five year program by National Geographic and IBM is now in middle and way to go to explore the mysteries, how we have traversed many different paths in different time line and shaped our civilization. I will come up with more details in subsequent posts and lets see whether this project can reveal the secret fact - Laden is a remote brother of Bush.

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PS: I am only proving the information available in Net which is not confidential. The picture is taken by me in Helsingor Castle, Denmark.