What does it mean to retrace the steps of a nation of immigrants?

Topic: Dr. Spencer Wells on the Power of Genographic Data

Spencer Wells: Why is it powerful to individuals? I think particularly in a society like the one we have in the United States, we are a nation of immigrants and, you know, I was talking to some school kids this morning, giving a talk to high school kids who had migrated here, you know, their parents had come here from all over the world, we had kids from Sri Lanka, we had kids from Korea, we had kids from Hong Kong, you know, all over the planet, Puerto Rico and everybody has kind of a vague notion that they’re a hyphenated American, I’m African American, I’m Irish American, whatever it might be and beyond that they don’t know that much about their ancestry and so I think there’s a real desire particularly in places like the US, nations of immigrants to connect with the past, to connect with the ancestral homeland. And so I think that’s why individuals at least in part are interested in testing their DNA because it allows you to go back beyond traditional genealogy and get into the kind of deep aspects of your ancestry, where you’re really deeply connected to around the globe. Scientifically, you know, this is an effort to answer a key philosophical question, I mean it’s something philosophers and people who study religions and, you know, thinkers in general have been pondering for years, for a millennia, you know, where do we all come from, how do we relate to each other, why do we speak different languages, all of these basic things and, you know, now we have the tools of science that actually start to chip away at that and answer some of these questions.

Recorded on: Mar 15 2008