TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is a conference that brings the best minds in different areas together to discuss wide ranging topics , called TED Talks. TED Talks expect the viewer to be smart enough to learn, interested enough to pay attention, but not versed in the subject discussed, so the talks are easy to understand, but challenging to the mind. Most TED Talks are less than half an hour long and fun to watch. In order to participate in discussions about TED Talks you must watch the topic TED Talk. My hope is to open a door of discussion with people who have long considered these topics or who have never considered them before. Feel free to bring up your own ideas on this talk.
TED Talk: Building a Family Tree for All Humanity
Speaker: Spencer Wells
Spencer Wells studies diversity of human beings all over the world. The field researchers involved with Wells’ studies have taken DNA samples from people all over the world. They wanted to make a genetic family tree. They found a genetic Adam and Eve, from Africa.
The results confirmed a long standing anthropological belief that we all wandered from Africa to different parts of the world. What they didn’t expect was how recently it happened. The African man in Africa we all split from was in Africa only 6,000 years ago.
At the end of the talk, Spencer Wells asks for your participation in ongoing study of geneography by sending our DNA samples for study.
Watch the talk here http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/spencer_wells_is_building_a_family_tree_for_all_humanity.html
Spencer Wells’ TED Talk has serious implications on the modern world. It challenges old ideas about race differences. Wells’ results may shorten the psychological gap of differences between groups of people by establishing a common beginning. This new genetic understanding can make the skill of interrelation a bit easier because people have a connection, if only in the biological sense.
The interrelation and gap ideas brought up two questions for me.
Does the understanding of geneographics (The study of gene or genetics as it relates to geography and migration or through time) hold the key to ending racism or is racism based on such illogical beliefs so the use of logic will not sway racists from their beliefs?
Do the results of these geneographic studies make the economic, social, political, military and emotional investment in Africa feel more urgent and necessary to people outside of Africa? Why?
www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic
http://atheistnexus.org/group/tedtalkdiscussions
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