Haplogroup I, genetic marker M170 - that's me!

Just noticed that the inspiring and globally unifying Genographic Project is coming to its end in April 2010.

National Geographic's Genographic Project is a five-year research that charts the migration of human species with the aid of dna contributions from all over the world. Participation is safe; it is stated in the project's introductory page that it is "anonymous, non-medical, non-profit and all results will be placed in the public domain following scientific peer publication."

There's still one month to participate and leave your mark in the study!

And even after April it's possible to order a test kit, send your sample and get results of your ancestral lineage.

To me, my brother and father, back in 2007, participation was very exciting. Based on the information males pass on to their sons in their Y chromosome, the research could determine the approximate journey of our ancestors from Africa into Europe.

We found out that the man who was the first carrier of our defining genetic marker, M170, was born about 20,000 years ago probably in some safe, isolated area "during the last blast of the Ice Age, possibly in the Balkans." On the net the migratory atlas shows an arrow denoting the route of these ancestors, and it currently ends in the South of France, in the area that's now Lascaux.

Naturally one must remember that The Genographic Project is not a family tree thing that outlines the near history of your relatives, but a large-scale study into the migratory behaviour of our species.

The final results cover a time span of thousands of years, which just boggles the imagination. My roots extend into central Europe, Middle East and Africa...