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The question of ancestry has been of human concern in virtually all cultures and over all times of which we have any knowledge. Whether it be a story about the origin of a particular tribe or nation and its subsequent mixture with other groups, or curiosity about a family history, there is always the implication that we understand ourselves better if we know our ancestors and that we, within ourselves, reflect properties that have come to us by an unbroken line from past generations. As treasurer of the Marlboro Historical Society in Vermont, I am the recipient of requests for printed copies of the Reverend Ephraim Newton’s mid-eighteenth-century history of our town, 70 percent of whose pages consist of “Genealogical and Biographical Notes” and a “Catalog of Literary Men.” Over and over our correspondents write of the “pride” they have in descending from these early settlers.

Surely pride or shame are appropriate sentiments for actions for which we ourselves are in some way responsible. Why, then, do we feel pride (or shame) for the actions of others over whom we can have had no influence? Do we, in this way, achieve a false modesty or relieve ourselves of the burdens of our own behavior? As a descendant of late-nineteenth-century Eastern European immigrants I cannot depend on Reverend Newton’s pages to explain my frequent contributions to The New York Review, but neither have the extensive “begats” in Genesis 10 or Matthew 1 been more enlightening.  Read More...

At a time when it seemed that American science had bitten off more than it could chew with the Human Genome Project, Craig Venter and his innovative company published "A New Strategy for Genome Sequencing." Appearing in the journal Nature in 1996, the Venter multi-center approach bypassed laborious gene mapping and allowed the HGP to meet its goal of full sequence information on the human genome in 2000.

"In the race to sequence the human genome," write the editors of Nature's DNA Technologies Milestones, "research groups had to choose between the random whole genome shotgun sequencing approach or the more ordered map-based sequencing approach." The choice of randomness versus order was present from 1982, but the Venter strategy was resisted for many years. Finally, in 1996 it was accepted and given an equal emphasis with the more orthodox approach.

After a standoff between the two groups of scientists, "a showdown ensued, with the biotechnology firm Celera Genomics wielding whole-genome shotgun sequencing and the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium wielding map-based sequencing. Yet when the dust settled, it was a draw -- both groups published their initial drafts of the human genome concurrently in 2001."

The maverick technology helped make high throughput genomic sequencing at commercial labs an economy reality and gave birth to a range of new DNA tests within the reach of ordinary consumers like you and me. Today, fifteen years later, those interested in autosomal ancestry testing and personal genomics have biologist and entrepreneur Craig Venter and his irascible persistence as a scientific pioneer to thank.

Wrong. According to a correction in Nature, it was discovered by Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher in 1869, nearly a hundred years before. James Watson, Francis Crick and the less often mentioned Rosalind Franklin were responsible for determining DNA's structure, a double helix shape.

Maybe I do not understand "classic Darwinism," but I am puzzled by the claims of numerous articles in leading scientific journals that evolutionary change in human beings is "accelerating." Since when? One such article was published several years ago by the National Academy of Sciences, "Recent Acceleration of Human Adaptive Evolution." It claims an acceleration in evolution in the last 1000 years, on an inferred and theoretical, not observed basis, needless to say. Its projections are based on the 4 million SNP database called HapMap, a collection of mostly European and American gene irregularities. Several books and a slew of articles in journals like Nature and Science have jumped on the scientific bandwagon. But we have a few embarrassing questions.

If the "classic" model of Darwinism was based on primitive man, New Guinea orchids and Galapagos turtles, wouldn't we need to redefine what selection and survival of the fittest and its other tenets really mean for, say, a Harvard or Stanford white male Ph.D. who sits in front of his computer most of the time or the current population of the United States, few of whom qualify as hunter-gatherers or tribal or starved or threatened by predators?

Isn't there rather a disconnect today between surviving and your genetic composition? Pretty much anyone can marry and have children with pretty much anyone they want to, and few people are dying off without issue from bad genes or fatal decisions.

If genes are supposed to mutate and produce more "fit" and eligible marriage partners because of "pressure" from the environment like drought or low-protein diets or too much or too little sunshine, how does evolution operate on a level playing field where the environment is a shopping mall or suburbia?

World population has increased from 200 million in the year 1 to nearly 7 billion. Perhaps the presumed rise in SNPs is an effect of population growth? Evolution was supposed to operate on the basis of selection, not indiscriminate proliferation.

Evolution, it is claimed, has now sublimated beyond the physical realm. It is internal, or mental, or spiritual, or cultural, or social, or political, or even (God help us) scientific. This was the super-clever dodge favored by Teilhard du Chardin, a Catholic missionary to China who wrote The Phenomenon of Man. He called it the noosphere. Whatever else, this latest Big Science Fair project requires a new definition. There are no measures possible beyond our present lifetime. We have no way of judging a Neanderthal's consciousness.

I'm sorry but I just don't get it. I wish someone would please explain it to me so I do not need to feel guilty about not reading all those pat-me-on-the-back and pip-pip-don't-you-know-old-man Victorian recidivist articles that I find, somehow, very self-serving.

I am an avid follower of the Darwin Awards but the only thing I can see accelerating are modern American and European scientists' delusions of grandeur.

The explosion in commercial archaeology has brought a flood of information. The problem now is figuring out how to find and use this unpublished literature, reports Matt Ford in the current issue of Nature magazine.

"I became aware that what I was teaching would be out of date without looking at the grey literature (unpublished reports)," says one professor at the University of Reading in England.

A policy shift in 1990 required all construction projects to document archaeological remains in Britain and generated an avalanche of findings that cannot be absorbed by the official academic field. The result is that our picture of the past is very much outdated. Academia is not likely ever to get caught up. Nor are academicians ever likely to warm to new theories of population genetics like diffusionism and trans-Oceanic contact and colonization, since few of those theories ever received a hearing in the halls of academe in the first place.

Read the full story in Nature, "Archaeology:  Hidden Treasure."