The Phillips DNA Project News

Why do we care about very distant ancestors, when it's obvious that, the more distant an ancestor is, the less likely he or she is to share genetic material with us? Why does a family tree showing that your ancestors go back to the 1600s make you feel especially connected to that prior age, when it's obvious that all living people have ancestors from back then? Most people today reject the idea that you can inherit moral guilt or fault -- so why do we still tend to honor ancestral glamor and interestingness, by noting, say, that so-and-so's ancestors were on the Mayflower?  Click here to read more in The Boston Globe.