Earlier thread here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu... about the National Geographic Genographic Project participation kit found here: http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/shoppin... with further details here: https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genogr... /

In a nutshell, you send them a cheek swab (anonymously) and they tell you where your ancestors came from. If you're male you can choose between the patrilineal (y-chromosome)or matrilineal (mitochondrial DNA) lines; if you're female, it's just matrilineal. It's a straight line to your furthest identifiable direct ancestor, and winds up about 10,000 years ago, so it's not going to tell you whether great-grandma was Hungarian or Croatian or anything like that. Orsino was kind enough to cut and paste his results on my earlier thread. It was good to know in advance that though the material is fascinating, it might not be as specific as one might expect.

Regardless, Alice has been fascinated with this stuff for years and she was thrilled to get it. If you know somebody who is interested in archaeology, genealogy, human migration or just neat stuff and if you have $110 handy, it's a great present. They got it to me in 9 days. Granted, that was November and this is December, but you've still got an even-up chance of getting delivery by Xmas if you're so inclined. And again, I'm in no way affiliated with the National Geographic Society, unless one of them is reading this and wants to throw money at me for doing such a good job of promoting their Genographic Project. Hell, I'm not proud.