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The essential chutzpah

by Maud | September 29th, 2009

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own persona.” Jim Shepard quotes Oscar Wilde in a piece on using real life in fiction.

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Even in sketching our own lines, we’re slowly revealing the branches of the global family tree. A.J. Jacobs, who’s writing a book about technology and genetics, is particularly intrigued by Y-DNA’s role in this, because it’s ‘so pure, the little part that doesn’t mix,’ he says. He’s referring to the odd fact that only the Y’s tips combine with its partner, the X, so the Y’s center remains largely unchanged through aeons. This is what links you to Adam, the earliest male whose line survived. Geneticists thought they knew who Adam was, but they don’t: Two years ago, Family Tree DNA got a sample from an African-American in South Carolina named Albert Perry who descended from a man predating Adam by at least 60,000 years.
Chip Rowe on YDNA and unseating “Adam”
03/05/15

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