It is one thing to work out your own family tree. It is another to create one for all of humanity. But biologists have made a start: in February, at the University of Oxford and his colleagues unveiled a family tree of humanity based on 3601 modern genomes and eight ancient genomes.
鈥淧erhaps the most positive aspect of the response I鈥檝e had is that many people are starting to see human genetic variation in terms of the underlying genealogy, through which we are all related, rather than discrete 鈥榩opulations鈥�,鈥� says McVean.
鈥淏ecause we can now build the genealogy of everyone, we can talk about ourselves in this rich and nuanced way, rather than resorting to simplistic labels like 鈥楢frican鈥� or 鈥楨uropean鈥�,鈥� he says.
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This initial attempt at a family tree is obviously far from complete because it doesn鈥檛 include all individuals and their relationships. But it does reveal the main structure of the tree, going all the way back to distant ancestors that lived in Africa 2 million years ago.
As more genomes are sequenced and included in such analyses, the human family tree will become ever more comprehensive. But there are fundamental limits on how complete it can be, says McVean, because we share DNA with more and more people as we go back in time.
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