[PenultimateManStanding]

I watched this last night and was amazed. It traces genetic markers back 50,000 years to African Bushmen from whom we are all descended. Then it follows various new markers to trace the Big Picture of how humans migrated through the millenia since then to the whole earth. What made it so interesting is that they went all over the world to find and photograph the isolated people who possess these various genetic markers. There is a man in central Asia who has the marker which separates Europeans, Northeast Asian Reindeer herders and Native Americans from Africans, Southern Asians, and Australian Aborigines. When you look at his face you can see it with your own eyes. BTW, he is descended from the first man to possess this marker and still lives in the place where it first came about, which is the point. Fascinating.

interesting tidbit: apparently it was about ten to twenty Siberian nomads who, in 800 years, spread out to all of the western hemisphere. This matter of humans and their explosive potential is a longstanding thing. The timeline is suggested in the documentary that if you put the origins of humanity in January, that the expansion of the Bushmen occurred on New Year's Eve. It beginning to look like you might even put the clock back to zero at one second past midnight and it will start all over again with a few thousand survivors. But this time with no fossil fuels available for us to fuck it up.

Journey Of Man It's in the Anthropolgy section if you're interested in watching it.

[TWilliam]

PMS your post reminded me of a program I saw a couple years ago - unfortunately I can't remember the name of it - that was about some of the things that genetic (and archaeological) research is uncovering regarding the earliest inhabitants of the (at least northern) Americas. It appears that a group of Western Europeans, possibly following the edge of the retreating polar cap across the northern Atlantic near the end of the last Ice Age, actually preceded the migrations across the Bering Land Bridge by some (possibly even 10's of) millennia. The main researcher following these findings has identified a distinct genetic marker in at least one tribal lineage that is shared with a small population of inhabitants of western Europe (again unfortunately, I don't recall which tribe or people specifically).

Needless to say some of the tribes are not overly thrilled about this discovery...

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TWilliam', '.') The main researcher following these findings has identified a distinct genetic marker in at least one tribal lineage that is shared with a small population of inhabitants of western Europe (again unfortunately, I don't recall which tribe or people specifically).

Needless to say some of the tribes are not overly thrilled about this discovery...

[Newsseeker]

My cultural anthropology teacher said there was no scientific basis for race so I am amazed to hear about markers.

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newsseeker', 'M')y cultural anthropology teacher said there was no scientific basis for race so I am amazed to hear about markers.

[PenultimateManStanding]

One thing that comes across clearly in the documentary is that the races are a continuum. That guy in central Asia really does look half European and half Native American and he is in fact the ancestor of both, genetically speaking. And check out those African bushmen. Look at them carefully and be amazed by what you see. There are brown, not black, they have Asiatic looking eyes and Mongolian cheek bones. They are the oldest human genotype on the earth.

[PenultimateManStanding]

BTW, TWilliam, the minor cross-currents are something to be worked out. The documentary traced the main currents of human expansion. This is what has been worked out by genetic research in the past few years. To me, it's an amazing accomplishment.