A. J. Jacobs - It’s All Relative

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ALSO BY A.J. J ACOBS

Drop Dead Healthy

My Life as an Experiment

The Year of Living Biblically

The Know-It-All

Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2017 by A.J. Jacobs

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

Family Tree by John Forster & Tom Chapin Limousine Music Co. & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2017

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

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Interior design by Silverglass

Index by Sydney Wolfe Cohen

All photos not otherwise credited are courtesy of the Jacobs family.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4767-3449-1

ISBN 978-1-4767-3451-4 (ebook)

T O J ULIE , J ASPER , Z ANE , AND L UCAS

T hanks for picking up this book.

You didnt have to, but its a nice thing to do, seeing as you and I are cousins. Our shared ancestor would no doubt be proud.

Admittedly, Im not sure exactly which ancestor we share.

If youre flipping through these pages at a bookstore on New Yorks Upper West Side, our shared ancestor might be our fifth-great grandmother, a seamstress in a Polish shtetl.

Or perhaps its further backour twenty-first-great grandfather, a goat farmer in the Euphrates Valley.

Or maybe wed have to rewind all the way to our eight-thousandth-great grandparents, a couple of scruffy humans who hunted, gathered, and vigorously reproduced on the plains of Africa about two hundred thousand years ago.

These two ber-grandparents were the real Adam and Eve. Their scientific nicknames are the slightly less catchy Y-Chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. And everyone on earth is descended from themme, you, Miley Cyrus, the guy who took your parking space at Chipotle, the second-best dental hygienist in Singapore. Everyone.

Recently Ive been thinking a lot about my eight-thousandth-great grandparents. Partly its because I have young kids, and its got me reflecting on the long family chain, both past and future.

I like to daydream about y-Adam and m-Eve coming to the twenty-first century. Maybe some budding Elon Musk could build a time machine, bring them here, and get them booked on the Today show.

Maybe Matt Lauer would ask them how they feel about having seven billion offspring. To which m-Eve would reply, Thats a lot of birthday presents, and everyone would laugh. (Shes had some media coaching.)

Perhaps Matt would ask if they have a favorite eight-thousandth-great grandchild. To which theyd say, Oh, theyre all our favorites, but secretly theyd be thinking Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, because who in their right mind wouldnt?

Then Matt would ask y-Adam and m-Eve what they think of the state of their family today. Theyd sigh and shake their heads. We just wish all our family would get along better.

And theyd have a point. Because the world family is not getting along. At all. Its in crisis. Its more dysfunctional than Ive seen it in my lifetime.

Im well aware my time-travel idea is absurd on several levels.

First of all, y-Adam and m-Eve were probably not enlightened beings with wise advice. They were most likely xenophobic and paranoid and would attack Matt Lauer to steal his bagel. Second, theyd probably go with 60 Minutes for the ratings.

So I know its not realistic. But when Im feeling despairwhich is not infrequent these daysthis is the kind of fantasy that takes over my brain.

Up until recently I figured humans were marching slowly but surely along a rational path. I figured wed eventually shed primitive tribalism and join forces to try to solve the worlds big problems. Instead, we seem to be more tribal than ever. Were obsessed with us-versus-them thinking. Blue state versus red state. Americans versus foreigners. Believers versus atheists. Black versus white. Patriots fans versus everyone else.

I see this trait in myself and it disturbs me. I try to be all noble and teach my kids to be good Homo sapiens . Over dinner, Ill tell them not to dehumanize anyone. Dont fall for hate. Be respectful and rational. And then ten minutes into the meal Ill find myself ranting about the issue of the daygun control, isolationismand slamming the other side as drooling, brain-dead idiots.

It confuses my kids. It confuses me, too.

But Im trying to be more civil, more understanding. And in between bouts of despair, I think there might be hope, even without a time machine.

A few years ago I stumbled across a group of scientists and researchers working on a remarkable quest: to connect all of humankind in one big family tree. A World Family Tree uniting all seven billion cousins on earth. A tree built with the help of millions of DNA tests and thousands of historians and genealogists.

Its a crazy ambitious project, like mapping the human genome or building a colony on Mars. And as with many crazy ambitious projects, its got huge implications.

The still-in-progress World Family Tree is already helping scientists track diseases and develop cures. Its changing the way we understand history and culture, race and ethnicity.

And maybe, just maybe, the World Family Tree will nudge us to treat our distant cousins a little more kindly. Or at least less awfully. Because for the first time in history, y-Adam and m-Eves descendants can see the human family isnt an abstraction. Its real.

Granted, this may all be a fools errand. I know its got the whiff of navet and dorm room bong water. Maybe I should just go sit on a mound of patchouli and strum Peter, Paul & Mary songs on a sitar.

But I think the quest is worth a try. Because Im feeling desperate. We need to do something. I want my kids to have kids (if thats their choice, of course) and for those kids to have kids and for y-Adam and m-Eves family to continue for another eight thousand generations.

This book chronicles my adventure in helping to build the World Family Tree. Its been the most fascinating, exhilarating, and occasionally frustrating experience of my life.