Why race shouldn't matter.

[warrior1]

After I had watched a show on the National Geographic channel called The Human Family Tree, I was moved to order the kit to submit my DNA to trace my Mtdna. The red line is my results. My haplogroup is U5.
The upper red line is about 50,000 years ago.




Many successful ancestral women in this line who originally migrated from Africa are my family. The first line out of Africa was from a woman called Mitochondrial Eve who started moving north ward some time 150,000-170,000 years ago. People still living in Africa have the highest frequencies in Africa's indigenous populations, the hunter-gatherer groups who have maintained their ancestors' culture, language, and customs for thousands of years.

We all are related to this person. WE are all from Africa. We wouldn't be here today, if these brave people didn't make this great leap forward.

When thinking about all the women before me has me awe struck. I just wanted to share.

[Igel]

1. True.

But irrelevant.

Race as we know it didn't exist then. And often when it does exist it's not always the most important tribal boundary (obviously I'm using "tribal" in an extended sense--some larger group that is your primary or a primary identification). In fact, some of the bloodiest wars--routine genocide--have been fought in areas where the bloodlines diverged much more recently.

As for maintaining their "ancestors' culture, language, and customs for thousands of years" I'd note that the French have largely done this, however if you put a Frenchman on the Ile de France in 500 AD he'd understand neither the culture, the language, nor the customs. Even discounting Frankish influence, there's still a lot of drift.

[Odin2005]

2. I participated in the genographic project.

I'm Y Chromosome haplogroup I1, which is not suprising given that my dad's side of the family came from Norway.