Making your own family tree is a common activity in the early years of school. The idea is to start with you and list your ancestors, your ancestors' ancestors, their ancestors, and so on. However, researchers at the University of Oxford have taken this scholastic task to the next level: they have made a family tree of the entire humanity. Learn more throughout the article.
How was the research done and what were the results?
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According to this research, we are all related. The conclusion comes after studying 3,601 modern genomes and eight ancient genomes.
“Human beings are all related to one another,” says Gil McVean of university of oxford. "What I've always wanted to do is be able to represent the totality of what we can learn about human history through this genealogy."
For the researcher, there is now the possibility of building everyone's genealogy. In this way, according to him, people can give more complex descriptions of themselves, instead of saying simply: “I am European” or “I am African”.
Where we came from? Where are we going?
The family tree made by Oxford points out that our roots begin in the northeast of Africa. Furthermore, it hints that people arrived in New Guinea and the Americas thousands of years earlier than in the archaeological record.
The most likely, according to the scientists, is that humans first developed on the African continent – more specifically in the region that is now Sudan. Then, their migrations began.
However, this theory is considered "simplistic" by many archaeologists and anthropologists. Most of them believe that there were peoples scattered throughout Africa, who were sometimes separated or crossed. In this way, humanity would have not just one origin, but several.
McVean said the discovery of the family tree is also consistent with this theory. “There are very deep lineages in Africa that suggest the notion that there are populations of multiple origin, deeply divergent, representing really ancient divisions”, he adds.
But it will be?
Gil McVean believes there are three possible solutions to this dilemma: the first is that the research is wrong and the second is that people have been elsewhere before they were in Africa. However, the third explores a slightly more complex scenario.
According to the researcher, the first people to populate the Americas came from East Asia. The theory is that the population they came from died out there. This would mean that, in fact, the genes of the American population are variants of people who came from the Asia.
“In this long family tree of life…”
The full trajectory of human beings is still far from complete. However, enough is already known to say that our ancestors are the same if we put enough branches on the tree. Furthermore, as new genomes are sequenced and catalogued, the structure becomes even more comprehensive.
Source: New Scientist
Graduated in Social Communication at the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.
