Scientists from National Geographic, along with anthropologist Theodore Schurr and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, have embarked on a five-year project to analyze DNA samples from various indigenous groups across North America.
The data obtained will help resolve long-standing debates about when and how the first people arrived in the Americas.
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“The story of humanity’s ancestors is written in the DNA sequences of A, C, G, and T,” said Spencer Wells, director of the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project. This project will analyze DNA from tens of thousands of individuals to understand the connections of prehistoric settlers on this earth. |
Other researchers will focus on studying migrations in the rest of the world. However, the success of this project depends on the cooperation of indigenous groups here and external communities. The DNA of these tribes will shed light on many straightforward truths about the related origins of humans in different locations, at least for a brief period.
In the early 1990s, geneticist Luca Cavalli-Sforza from Stanford University and colleagues conducted the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) with similar objectives. However, this plan faced numerous obstacles due to indigenous groups fearing that findings about their DNA could be used to reveal their origins. In this current project, scientists will utilize chromosome analyses from each individual, which will then be compared with DNA data collected from other groups.
