Re: Recommended PBS TV Program

Yes I realized how dumb that was after I wrote it. Here's what I think it
was: the guy in Mongolia is a direct descendant of the progenitor of the
first people to migrate into North America. If I remember this right, Wells
argues that the first group to migrate across the land bridge from Asia to
North America was a small group of people, and this particular guy in
Mongolia can be shown to be genetically related to Navajos in the U.S. and
such. I guess his ancestor was married to someone, like my wife, who
doesn't ever want to move, even though everyone else is heading for places
where housing prices are lower. Honestly, though, I'd have to watch it
again. It was something very cool and amazing, and the poor guy was
befuddled by all the attention.

On 1/7/06, gordon brown <gbrown@euclid.colorado.edu> wrote:
>
> I don't think you said what you meant to say. Isn't any Asian person
> living today a direct descendant of the progenitor of all Asian people
> living today? Perhaps this man is a particularly close genetic copy of the
> progenitor.
>
> Gordon Brown
> Department of Mathematics
> University of Colorado
> Boulder, CO 80309-0395
>
>
> On Sat, 7 Jan 2006, David Opderbeck wrote:
>
> > I saw this a while back. It's really well done. There's an
> > unintentionally funny and poignant moment, though, when Wells seeks out
> and
> > meets a Mongolian (I think he's Mongolian, but I don't exactly rememer)
> > person who apparently is a direct descendant of the progenitor of all
> Asian
> > people living today (or something like that). The poor Mongolian man is
> > completely befuddled and has no clue what Wells is trying to tell him
> about
> > his ancestry. That moment seems as powerful a commentary on
> geopolitics,
> > education, and affluence as it is on the possibilities of forensic
> genetics.
> >
>
Received on Sat Jan 7 18:14:40 2006