Yes, @ SarathW1, I knew, but was trying to make a joke, as a way of saying that there’s only one kind of ancestry that really matters. Hence the 
The fascination mystifies me. It’s just another place for atta to take root, extending I/me/mine across time and space.
I quite enjoy exploring my ancestry and have been working on it for a few years along with my grandmother. I’ve always found it fascinating because one can learn so much about the stories that have been passed down for generations. For instance, there is a story that one of my second or third great-grandfathers was an illicit horse trader living in Detroit; there are many newspaper articles about him going to court and I imagine he was very often in jail.
Contrary to your idea of division, I have often found that knowing my ancestry allows me to humanize not only my ancestors, but those who I live amongst in society. I, of course know that my ancestors suffered, they were human, but knowing their stories and the events of their lives helps me to see beyond the dates on a tombstone. It helps me to learn from their lives. And I like to think that if I carry them with me and work hard enough towards nibbana, that whatever merit I gain will help them reach an end to suffering as well.
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I clicked on your youtube link and actually ended up watching the documentary 
(I’m sucker for these kinds of science documentaries). I find this kind of stuff fascinating. The long and complex chain of random past events (human migrations from Africa stretching back 2000 generations) always seems amazing to me. I don’t think he’s being sexist; this documentary was tracing back the history of the Y-chromosome, which obviously can only follow male descent. However, I’ve previously seen similar stuff based on mitochondrial DNA which is only inherited from the mother, which obviously traces back female descent back to some kind of biological “Eve” or “Eve” population.
I’ve a retired uncle who spent a few years happily tracing the family tree as a hobby. That’s a task made a lot more difficult here given that most of the national records went up in flames during the Irish civil war. But, of course, such records still exist in parish registers throughout the country. So he spent quite a bit of time introducing himself to parish priests, having cups of tea, and tracking down such registers in rural churches (following one trail over to the UK at one stage). Amazingly he was able to trace some threads back around 250 years. He dredged up some interesting things: one or two black sheep but also some interesting characters, e.g. had one ancestor who was a sea captain. I suppose it gives one a little inkling of the vastly long complex, and seemingly random chain of events (most of which we’re unaware), for one to arrive at any particular time and place.
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Not caring is one extreme. The other extreme is pride & conceit over it. Avoiding these two extremes we take ancestry only as a fact and not as identity.
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The out-of-africa theory has been callenged by genetical findings in the last decade that support the multiregional theory. It’s very probable that there was no “adam and eve” and that homo sapiens independently developed from homo erectus in different regions of the world.
Unfortunatelly, from what I know, it is unclear which one of them is correct right now and both have their inconsistencies. We either need more evidence to figure out for sure which one is correct or we need a better theory perfectly integrating all the evidence found so far.
Also, some interesting sutuff: Indians (both northern and southern ones), Arabs and some africans (northern ones + Ethiopians and Somalians) are caucasian as a race. Skin color has nothing to do with race.
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This is a very good point. Ancestry investigation more deepens the self-views and the Mana.
Not to mention the money and time you spend on your investigation and you are giving your genetic information to someone which can be used against you one day.
Perhaps this could be the reason why you are breaking from your ancestry when you become a monk. If we believe in rebirth the ancestry is a useless information.
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This is another good point. Science is not perfect. Rely on this infrormation you become more delusional not wise.
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Well, the out-of-Africa theory has in recent years been modified to include a degree of interbreeding with older populations of Neanderthal and Denisovans in different areas, so that supposedly there’s a few percentages of that DNA in most of us now. Multiregional versus out-of-Africa theories has been one of these perennial debates. I’ve always found the out-of-Africa more convincing, given how little genetic diversity humans have compared to other species (probably due to some kind of population bottleneck where there might have been only a few thousand humans existing at one point, perhaps on the verge of extinction due to some catastrophe: the Toba super-eruption 70,000 years ago being one such theory) and that that diversity seems to decrease further away from Africa. But again it’s not a settled debate.
It’s an interesting field alright. I think the general message is how closely related all humans are. If humans were dogs, then genetic diversity is so limited compared to other animals, that different human populations wouldn’t even get to be considered as being different dog breeds within the same species (let alone be foxes or coyotes 
). Humans would be all considered part of the very same breed (all Labradors or whatever ! 
).
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I can see your point how it can be interesting. My wife’s grandfather was one of the inventors of frozen food. Maybe it’s interesting to see conditionality and that the humanity apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If I have Buddha nature, then I also have an even measure of Mara nature!
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I agree it would be strange for such similar groups to develop by themselves from homo erectus, but the multi-regional one also has a ton of inreeding going on. From what I googled I see it now came down to version 2 and version 3 of these 4 versions over ere: https://www.nature.com/scitable/content/out-of-africa-versus-the-multiregional-hypothesis-6391
I really have no idea what theory will prove correct and am hoping they will find out more, cause besides the recent discovery of denisovans, appearently there is another species that mated with people from Malaesya and no fosils of it have been found. Another big mistery is the aboriginals from australia. Whatever they will find out in the future, I am quite sure they evolved by themseleves.
The best thing that came out of this huge genome project is that it put the nail in a centuries long dispute about who was first in Transilanya, the Romanians or the Hungarians lol.
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Am I the only one here with no famous ancestors ? Can this ancestry search program also be used in countries other than USA ? What if my country does not have enough records ?
And when are then gona make “the great rebirth project” to trace all our rebirths ? 
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Aborigines in Australia is not a mystery to me at all. Australian aborigines are very similar to the Sri Lankan aborigines now almost extinct. (the way we were taught I am not a Sri Lankan aborigini) Sri Lankan aborigines are very similar to Australian aborigines) Perhaps there was a time Sri Lanka was connected to Australia. Another theory is that the African migration via the coastal roots.
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Sri Lanka aboriginals ? I’ve never heard of such a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedda
I see it is unsure how old they are, but they look european. They might be simply early indians. Australian aboriginals have been there since forever and they could not get there by ship. Vedda probably had the technology to get there by ship.
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According to the legend, my ancestors came from India and killed most of the Sri Lankan aborigines the same way Europeans killed most of the Australian aborigines.
I’m looking forward to that one. We can’t all have been Napoleon though. 
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It appears someone else is caring about it!!
There may have been much more migration than modern minds imagine.
FYI: When I hear ancestry my first thought is about my direct ancestors, fathers, mothers, great grandfathers, etc. @SarathW1 I think you speak to something related but different.
The western world seems to enjoy an odd conflation where a highly vocal group speak both against racial discrimination and yet tend to encourage a sense of, and identify with, race and ancestry. Thus conversations about society often begins with the formula
“as a person of <racial, ancestral, & other identity> I …”.
Things get confusing after this. Is the motivation for the formula the idea that we should privilege some perspectives over others on the basis of identity? Or is a matter of maintaining a level of epistemological humility? Something else? It seems to me, that in practice it’s often closer to the first.
Further privileging and discriminating are closely related if not interchangeable.
What’s behind this may be a thinking that is influenced by distinctly different understandings of stereotypes and stereotyping. I think the mature understanding – and one that is supported by social science – is one that acknowledges that stereotypes are often, but not always, statistically accurate.
…
For living I take a middle way. I am a racist and an influenced by stereotypes. As far as I can tell virtually everyone is. That said, there is much that is called racist or racism that is troubling, undesirable and/or unethical.
Wisdom is awareness of the existence of stereotypes as one of the ways I perceive the world while also being aware of the limitations of stereotypes – especially that a stereotype is not a person.
Such a viewpoint is threatening to many notions of “harmful stereotypes”. That threat or tension encapsulates a good amount of “the culture war” when seen as a conflict of views. Especially so when the notion doesn’t include nuances such as the middle way view above.
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As you know, the Buddhist term for this is Mana.
People are not only racist but they try to discriminate any possible way.
Mana will be eradicated only by Arahant.