What is Digg?81 Comments
- umrgregg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19I'm pretty sure that they collect mouth swabs not blood samples. My father has participated...
From the website:
"With a simple and painless cheek swab you can sample your own DNA. You'll submit the sample through our secure, private, and completely anonymous system, then log on to the project Web site to track your personal results online."
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/participate.html
The Digg summary is HIGHLY inaccurate. Go to the NG website linked to find out what this $100 kit really provides. It's definately not a "down to the village" genetic trace. @hasanahman: get your facts right, please. - gandre, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17What are they going to do? Show you targeted ads based on your DNA?
- umrgregg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Wow, you could try reading the article. What a concept:
"To insure total anonymity you will be identified at all times only by your kit number, not by your name. There is no record, no database that links test results with the names of their contributors. If you lose the kit number there will be no way to access your genetic results."
From: https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/participate.html - jsd8cc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11It's just a stratagem to clone an army of super-National Geographic journalists. The same thing happened in Star Wars... or something.
- duncantuna, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I was really hoping they'd show a sample report on their website .. looked for a while, couldn't find it.
If the results are a few sentences, like "There's an 80% chance you came from Europe" .. well, that's not very interesting nor worth $100.
Anyone who's done this willing to share what their results were? - ScottNY, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Odd... They tell me I am descended from some guy named Adam and some woman named Eve and that I am separated 6 degrees from Kevin Bacon.
- 3dfxgamer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Check out this for a sample of the information. http://justinblanton.com/2006/02/the-genographic-project
- inline, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Have done it.
- no blood samples, mere cheek swab
- information is very general (to region of earth), and provides one line only (eg father / mother line)
I've heard of others which may be more detailed, such as http://www.ancestrybydna.com/welcome/home/ - jnorris441, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8This should make it pretty easy to round up anyone with Middle Eastern blood to be put into internment camps in 2009, after the next great terrorist attack.
- SixSider, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5May family has done this... it's kind of interesting. As they get more information (and can sort through it all (say in 5 years or so)) it will be very interesting. Don't expect any exterme info the anscector tracing is very very broad.
- Gnarly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Be advised that this test is for your "deep genealogy" going back many, many generations. It will NOT tell you about any ancestors who may have arrived in the Americas during the 1600's, for example. For males, it's your father's, father's, father's ... etc., and for females, it's your mother's, mother's mother's, etc., DNA. A lot of individuals in your family tree are NOT included. My test indicated that I shared DNA with the same haplogroup as 80% of the males in southern England. That hardly targets a "village," does it?
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9At least now you can know if she really is your grandmother.
- rabiddogma, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Hah as long as there isn't anything your parents haven't told you about ;)
- SeanCK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This point cannot be emphasized enough. This test will tell you only where ONE of your MANY THOUSANDS of ancestors came from. If you are a male with three grandparents from China, but your paternal grandfather is from Ireland, then this test will say that you are of European descent.
- jnorris441, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Happens everyday on dnsstuff.com
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Well, you just need one person in your family to do it, if you're brothers and sisters, since you'll all share the same DNA, right?
- Deuterium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Cool, I grew up in an orphanage and I don't have any idea of what my ancestry is. For those that know their parents you don't realize how much this means to those of us that grow up with no family or ancestral ties at all. Thanks for the link.
- Omnius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I remember watching BBC: Blood of the Vikings and thinking to myself how nice it would be trace my ancestry through DNA. Like sixsider said it'll probably be a few years before you'll be able to get good information, but for $100 I think I might get one.
- rstevens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This is really cool. Has anyone merged their genealogy into the single human family tree at http://www.OneGreatFamily.com ? Once you upload your family tree, their software matches your ancestors against their single tree and notifies you when matches are found.
- mtvkilledusall, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Well... it's all about natural selection.
- matts0344, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I remember seeing something on the NG channel about Genghis Khan and how they think he had probably hundreds of children because a huge percentage of Asia is thought to have descended form him. It was really quite interesting.
- CrioKnight, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3They should marry the API for this info to google maps.
Oh snap. My 3rd cousin 5 times removed lives down the street!
;) - umbra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3why would you get your whole family done? I mean, your parents should be enough to cover you, unless you look more like that plumber then you'd like.
- beoswulf, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6I like this, it's anonymous and its affiliated with National Geographic. I refuse to give Ancestry.com my information because many of these family tree websites are run by Mormons. No joke. Ancestry.com denies being run directly by the LDS Church but look and see they are located right in Utah, same with these other family tree websites.
The Mormons are obsessed with getting the names of every person who ever lived so they can be posthumously baptized into the Mormon Church and saved from eternal damnation. They baptized Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler and all their victims already.
I gave them a bunch of fake ancestors when they came to my school. I'm not going to help any religious fundie attain self-gratification. - snorkle256, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And wasn't there already people before the garden of eden? How else would the boys leave and go out to a city near it. Hey, its just me reading the bible and saying wtf.
- equusdc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Yes, because knowing that your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother was a Turkish whore is really going to give the government massive power.
- Lynxpro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Can you name the company that does that for approximately $100 US?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Don't trust NG. ;)
- Lynxpro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Would you prefer if Scientology ran the process? :)
You know, I wouldn't have a problem at all with LDS if they removed their extra-New Testament theology (now that its been proven scientifically that the Native Americans are not descended from the "lost tribes" of Israel), and revised itself along traditional Protestant lines while maintaining their stellar member social programs...and following the legal institution of gay marriage pressed the Feds and the States to accept polygamy. I think they'd end up the largest non-Catholic denomination of Christianity if that were the case and without the ridiculous baggage that comes from claiming that the Garden of Eden was in North America, the Native Americans are Jews, the "Mark of Cain" is any skin color other than "white" and that Joseph Smith was an upstanding individual who did not have a background consisting of trying to create new religions prior to finding the special tablets and translating them into English with a ViewMaster from Heaven. Their unprofessed and unofficial ideas about God's [Yeweh] wife is also interesting considering the Semitic god named El that predates belief in Yeweh had a wife.
Then again, if all Christianity fessed up and admitted it would have been ridiculous for Jesus not to have been married then we might actually see Catholicism embrace what the rest of Christendom has been allowing for centuries...that being the "priests" being able to marry.
Wish in one hand and in the other, well, you know how that goes... - buddylee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If this was more detailed, it would be pretty awesome and I would easily pay the money. The way I read it, you pay $100 and you can track your results in a broad sense, I didn't read anything about tracing ancestors or anything. I know I've heard of a company that will do your DNA test, and tell you general areas where your closer relatives are (like your dna was a partial match to 3 people in Scotland who are approximately 4-6 generations removed from you, etc). Some companies also tell you if you've got the DNA of someone of historical interest. If this National Geographic thing could do this, I would gladly give them my $100.
- ph713, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3
The issue here is that people have way too many ancestors to know/care about them all. People pick and choose which lines of their ancestry they wish to highlight as interesting (or I guess NatGeo picks for them now?). As every child has two biological parents, the number of ancestors on your family tree X generations ago is 2^X (2 to the X power). 10 generations back is 1024 ancestors (at that level, plus the ones between you and them).
20 generations back is over 1 million ancestors. The real numbers are usually somewhat smaller due to (usually unknowing) inbreeding within that tree (think about it, within the 1 million ancestors you had over the last 20 generations, quite likely many times over people procreated with 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc cousins within that tree. It's very likely to happen.).
Another paper I read on this stuff said that there is a very high probability (in the 9x% range?) that any two random human beings alive on the planet today are related within 20 generations, based on DNA studies. This even counts for some poor indonesian villager and Bill Clinton. Inter-(country/race/ethnicity/region/continent) procreation has happened quite a lot in the past several hundreds years, enough that pretty much everyone has at least a little bit of pretty much everything in them.
I guess what I'm getting at is, the only reason looking up your ancestors matters is if you want to pick and choose one line that leads back to some old rich/royal person (just like that person's other millions of remote descedants) to make yourself feel special. Guess what? You're not. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yea to be honest $100 sounds about right for me too...
If I get my whole family done is there a bulk discount ;-> - parasitewasp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'd really like to see the finished product. I tried to view the sample but it cannot be read if blown up. I think I'd be pissed off if the only thing to show for $100 is a lame ass generic map with some arrows that could represent the majority of the US population.
- ezweave, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Yeah this was on NPR last year (almost exactly a year ago). The digg summary is really off. The guy on NPR said it was very general. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4597357
- Lynxpro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You must be referring to the part in Genesis where Cain goes off and lives in a city full of people. Maybe they were all the children of Lillith (sic).
- Lynxpro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1
There is a Bruce Willis movie that addresses that subject... - Reddog_x2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@ The Mormons are obsessed with getting the names of every person who ever lived so they can be posthumously baptized into the Mormon Church and saved from eternal damnation.
Yeah, so? That seems well intentioned enough. I don't buy into their religion. But, if they want to pray for me, I don't see the harm in it. Think of it this way. If they're busy with this, they're not busy lobbying congress. - jhendrix86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My parents did it for free thru IBM. Basically I found out I'm ancient greek, turkish, and indonesian, hahaha
- Quickstrike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2beoswulf,
I don't see why you would avoid using Ancestral Sites based on the fact that they are run by the LDS church.
We don't have to believe what they do and what they do causes us no harm (atleast I don't believe so).
They are doing us a favour by providing easy, free means of searching for our ancestry.
This information can be of great assistance to our families and families to come. - ollywompus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"What are they going to do? Show you targeted ads based on your DNA?"
Get the latest in fashion trends from your Indonesian Ancestral Village... each piece of clothing was made for 10 cents a day by your distant cousin in a sweatshop in Jakarta! - WermerSkoch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Just because a company is based in UT, doesn't mean it's run by the LDS church. Come on....
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I payed $100 for the obvious. It's just a broad analysis of your ancestral movement through the continents. Didn't need to spend that much money to be told I originated from Africa...then ended up in western Europe.
- Petromyzon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1These guys have alot more options available, including sirname project. Infact, they are doing the dna work for National Geographic:
http://www.familytreedna.com/?src=overture - OddSource, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0beoswulf, just because a company resides in Utah, doesn't make it run by the LDS Church. While many of their employees are mormon, that's likely to happen to any company which has offices in Utah. Having said that, many of the family tree websites are not run by mormons... they're run by baptists, pentacostals, and probably a catholic and athiest or two... along with the occasional mormon. Here's a large family tree website run by a guy out of Georgia:
http://www.familytreeguide.com/
You can search their database for your ancestors here:
http://www.accessgenealogy.com/search/ - philip, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Has anybody actually gotten any results yet? I sent my kit back a long time ago, and it's been stuck for weeks on showing me the first two items completed.
- Reddog_x2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1If you've ever served in the military, they've already got it.
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4I think this is just a front for either the NSA or Google AdWords. They want your DNA for some ulterior motive.
- Dross, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Who cares, really? (note to beoswulf I misclicked, I meant to reply to ahhell one comment below, I might have done the same thing you did.)
The sample is submited with a 10 place code.
All requests are to that code, your name is never used.
After the results are known, you have the option to give some background info on that person.
I did both my mother and father. My mothers results came back and I later linked it to another site via the HRV1 test results. There are two tests that can be done, this test is HRV1 only which is not as deep as HRV2. HRV2 is not done and is not offered as an option via the National Geograhic site. However other sites do offer this test.
Turns out dear Mom is exactly what we thought she would be, Kelt. What was suprising was the great number of linkages with modern day Germans. - yukevster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Read the damn article! Sheesh!
- equusdc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1After a certain number of generations, one wonders, which village? After ten generations, your _living_ ancestors would number between 600-1000. After twenty, over 700,000 would be alive at one point in time. The most lilly white person could well have the results come back with "Ngiyakuhalalisela, Mrs. Smith! Your ancestors are from what is now Nairobi, Kenya! ... and Stockholm... and Ulaanbaatar. Fascinating stuff, still...
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