Christoph Columbus 1492 accidentally put anchor on American continent. At time of Colonialization, first Nerlanders settled South Africa and huge empire of British East India Company left its mark everywhere – including in India and Australia. Adventurous, pioneers and businessmen from Europe have opened up whole world over past 500 years and some brutally repressed and enslaved indigenous peoples. This can be traced back to many historical writings and artifacts – but also to our DNA.
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Scientists at Columbia University have now created largest contiguous family tree through a large crowdsourcing project, which impressively recounts exactly this history of settlement that emanates from Europe. You have now published results of your study in magazine Science (Kaplanis et al. 2018). For this purpose, researchers used some 86 million public profiles of page Geni.com. An offer on which anyone who is interested in ir own ancestral history can create ir own kinship profile – including date of birth and death, place and ir own DNA test. However, it costs, but it makes it possible to trace its own ethnic origins to some extent well over several generations. The scientists around mamatician Joanna Kaplanis checked data, compared it with public registers and recorded all temporal and geographical information in order to create several family trees. The largest comprises about 13 million people, connected above average eleven generations.
We are all related 500 years of marriage and migration have traced researchers with a huge pedigree. It reconstructs how inhabitants of Europe settled world. © Photo: MyHeritage
who married whom? How close were relationship relationships? How far did women and men go to establish ir own family in a distant place? The researchers were able to answer all se questions with data. However, record had a weakness: most of profiles available on online platform came from people from Europe and North America. Thus, pedigree does not tell history of mankind – but it can at least be clearly seen how inhabitants of Western world have moved in past 500 years (see video above).
Greater distance – closer relationship?
But more stories can be told: before Industrial Revolution, which began in middle of 18th century, mostly married couples, whose birthplaces were only up to about ten kilometers apart. This changed at end of 19th century with beginning of second Industrial Revolution, when rail network of railway was expanded and steam engines were able to transport more and more quickly. Couples found mselves toger from far furr distances, until birthplaces of partners around year 1950 were around an average of about 100 kilometres apart. Women migrated much more often to settle for marriage in anor place. Men, on or hand, only returned sporadically longer distances.
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Interesting: At a greater distance, which was between birth locations of individual spouses, kinship distance between m did not increase – it became even smaller at first. The distance did not ensure that people were looking for ir spouses where y began ir new life. “During this time y continued to marry close relatives, despite widening distance,” researchers write in ir study. Only about 50 years after people were able to travel more and more through planes, trains and, finally, ir own cars, families also removed from each or in genetic terms. The researchers assume that cultural factors also played a decisive role in way in which married couples, with time, become more and more distant from each or and not just ir new circumstances.
“We hope that this data can be useful for or scientists who can explore many or topics,” says Yaniv, main author of study and a colleague at MyHeritage, company which also owns Geni.com platform. The larger pedigree, better. Maybe someday re will be one who will spread around whole world. Everyone can help to enlarge it. Humanity explores itself, according to principle of civic science – to English citizen science.
