What makes YOU special?

The Genographic Project

This project's goal is to solve the mystery on how humankind populated the planet. They say that we all are related - descended from an African who lived only 60 000 years ago. What scientists believe is that we all migrated from Africa. If we did, how did we get where we are and how did humankind become so diverse? So many languages are spoken and there are just so many of us populated all around the world. How did we become who we are today if we all somehow have an ancestor who only lived 60 000 years ago? That is what the Genographic Project is all about, but they can't do this all alone. They need DNA from traditional and indigenous people.

Traditional people include us, the general public society and what they mean by indigenous people are populations of people who have lived within their geographic region and have kept their present culture for many generations. There is no official universal definition for "indigenous people", but they do go by an influential working definition:

"Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system."(Jose R. Martinez Cobo, Special Rapporteur of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities)

This project doesn't have a lot of time to reach its goal. This Genographic Project will need to only take 5 years of effort to collect and genotype 100 000 indigenous and traditional DNA from all over the world. How do they do this if they're going to need individual DNA samples from around the world? They can't bring everyone to one laboratory to do this. Instead, they send out Genographic Public Participation Kits. An individual has to do a simple cheek swab sample, that simple.