Unravelling mysteries of ancient human migrations

THE HINDU
Thursday, Aug 23, 2007

Where did humans originate and how did they populate the
entire globe? Scientists may finally be able to answer
these fundamental questions when they have enough DNA
samples from people all over the world.

The Genographic Project attempts to trace the ancient
journey of man through the genetic analysis of present-day
populations on every continent. This nonprofit, five-year
research partnership of National Geographic and IBM is led
by geneticist Dr. Spencer Wells with support from the Waitt
Family Foundation.

India is one of the ten international centres for this
world-spanning project. A state-of-the-art facility
dedicated for genographic work was established at the
Madurai Kamaraj University this July. Vijaysree Venkatraman
interviewed Dr. Ramasamy Pitchappan, Regional Director of
Genographic Project, India.