Legacy Matters

Your family lineage back 10,000 years

Want to know where your ancestors came from?  Your family tree only go back so far.  Now tracing your family lineage back 10,000 years is possible, amazing as that sounds.

IBM and the National Geographic have begun assembling a massive genetic database called the Genographic Project.  You can participate in the project according to the Wall St Journal today in Project Hopes to Trace Your Ancestors Back 10,000 years (subscription only) and have your DNA analyzed for ancestral origins.

For $99.95, you may be able to see what path your ancestors took on their migration to their eventual home.  The trick lies in persistent markers left in DNA from generation to generation.

If you want to participate, National Geographic will mail you a kit containing two swabs and a pair of plastic vials.  You just scrape some cells off the inner wall of cheek, mail them back and start to check in on the Web to see just where you are in the human family tree and at the same time contribute to the sample.

It's being called a Landmark Study of the Human Journey.  Here's the National Geographic site for The Genographic Project.