The People We are Related to!

People are not computers,
but if people were something like computers,
it would be the way in which our genetic code
resembles the coding that makes computers work.

Half of the instructions for how to make a human being
are copied from the mother, and half from the father.
Combining them is not only our greatest pleasure,
but provides important possibilities for variety.

Some of the variants do not work very well,
and some of them are real advantages,
and the advantages tend to survive better: natural selection.

The ability to map that code makes it possible
to understand our ancestry in astounding ways.
For instance, because scientists have been able
to map the genetic code of Neanderthals--early human
variants first found in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf--
we now know that a very small part of the genetic code
of most of us is inherited from those Neanderthals.

[This is where you can insert brother-in-law jokes,
bad date jokes, political party and Supreme Court justice jokes.]

Our ancestry is becoming fascinating.
The people we can call relatives--whom we cannot deny
are relatives--are a lot more interesting than we knew.
Mostly, it becomes impossible to deny that all of us
are related to each other; the evidence is there.

So why are we still fighting the Civil War?
Why are we still reciting myths about our special creation?
Which gene is it that is a marker for being a chosen people?
On which boat, coming to America, were the best genes?

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