• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Our Bureau

Geneticist, Dr Spencer Wells, addressing a press conference to announce a global premiere of Journey of Man on the National Geographic Channel in the Capital on Monday.

NEW DELHI, Nov. 18

WHO on earth do you think you are?" That is a question that the National Geographic channel would attempt to answer through `Journey of Man', a global television event premiering on December 15, at prime-time.

And taking audiences through this story of the human journey out of Africa and into the rest of the world, is geneticist Dr Spencer Wells.

The genetic detective story traverses six continents, tracing genetic evidence based on several blood samples taken from the world-over. Dr Wells draws the conclusion that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa, some 60,000 years ago. "Each and every person on this planet is part of a connected family of man, we are all African and our ancestors left Africa more recently than previously believed," he observes.

India plays a significant part in this discovery of ancestry. By sampling DNA of people in a village close to Madurai in Tamil Nadu, Dr Wells spotted a genetic mutation that had been passed on to aborginial people in Australia - thus offering the first biological proof that African ancestors of the Australian natives passed through India on the way to their new home.

Throwing light on the Aryan-strain that some states in India claim to have descended from, Dr Wells told Business Line that this came much later in time. "Mankind appears to have moved north into Central Asia from Africa and stayed there for about 10,000 years. Subsequently they moved out and every one of the central Asian descendents, including Europeans, have the DNA from a single Central Asian man who lived there over 35,000 years ago," he said.

And even as recent research de-coding the human genome points out that every human being is distinct or different, Dr Wells points out that there is no "pure" gene pool left in the world. All gene pools have been diluted and subsequently people are going to look similar. But all the travelling and mixing among human beings has had a sad fall-out - the number of languages in the world have reduced from 15,000 languages down to about 6,000 today "and even this is decreasing with a language dying, almost every other week".

Dr Wells has neither looked at the origin of life, in the way one knows it nor has he looked at human evolution in the last 10,000 years. However, this is going to be the substance that his sequels will be made of, he said. And after slowly busting every myth on creation as religion seeks to propagate, does Dr Wells believe in God? "Not in the religious sought of way, I am too much of a scientist for that. But certainly in a powerful being," he quips.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail
Comment on this article to BLFeedback@thehindu.co.in

Stories in this Section
Max New York launches new ad campaign

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line