Harvard’s Gates Start Genetic-ancestry Company
Mistakes made by the burgeoning genetic-ancestry industry have prompted Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates to start his own DNA-tracing company, one that he says will be able to take a more refined look at African-American ancestry.
November 16th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
We still struggle with important information relative to research and findings about the Africa, its people and the MOTHERLAND which is Africa for the entire human race.
November 16th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
There are numerous scientific problems associated with any claim of ancestry using genetic markers. First, is the fact that as you move each generation back, your ancestors double. With a generation time of 36 years, you have about 32 ancestors since the end of the importation of slaves to America. The testing at best would only reveal a few of the material that came from these ancestors. In addition, only some markers can be “definitive” due to the fact that they occur in low frequency and are localized in their distribution. Many of these markers are more cosmopolitan and therefore cannot provide any real ancestry definition. Finally, since the allele frequencies in human populations evolve, there is no way to know what the frequencies were in African populations > 5 generations ago (when many of the Africans who gave rise to African Americans left Africa.) If African populations had remained large, hadn’t migrated, or where not impacted by war, you might be able to extrapolate the frequencies to the past. Yet we know this is not the case (I made this point at the New Genetics and the African Slave Trade gathering at Harvard last fall.) So, at best, any attempts to correlate today’s genetic markers in Africa with the ancestry of African Americans is speculation.
The real problem with genetic ancestry testing is that idea that someone may learn something about their personality or (identity) by finding out that you share some genes with individuals in a given ethnic group. This is not true since personality and other complex traits are strongly influenced by environment. African Americans and Africans had profoundly different physical and soical environments over the last five generations. Unfortunately this is often the motivation behind the search for African ancestry.
Interestingly enough, due to the social construction of race in America, many African Americans are not as interested in the roots of their European ancestors. The psychological reasons for this are unstandable, given for many their European ancestors (male) forced themselves on an African ancestor (female). Just as today their European relatives are hestitant to revisit that period in our history, or to embrace their African American kin.
Recreational genetics is the best description of what we are observing here. If individuals have the financial means to afford this, so be it. But let the buyer beware.