THE LATEST social networking is not on Facebook or Myspace, it’s happening at DNA-testing parties across the city. Rather than getting trashed at bars, New Yorkers are swabbing their cheeks en masse at house parties and then sending saliva samples back to labs to help trace their ancestors.
But for Latinos, an umbrella group consisting of various ethnicities, races and religions, tracing family trees is a bit more complicated.
“Five hundred years after Europeans colonized Latin America, imported 10 million African slaves and mixed with the Native Americans, modern Latinos still don’t have a clear understanding of their own lineage,” explains Bennett Greenspan, a genealogist and expert in Jewish, Latino and African ancestry.
“They’ve heard tales and rumors from relatives, but they’ve often lacked a paper trail to verify the claims,” says the head of Family Tree DNA.
With one of the largest collections of DNA samples available, Greenspan’s Houston-based-company is making it possible for Latinos to finally trace their ancestries. And as a public participant in the Genographic Project, Family Tree DNA is working alongside National Geographic, IBM and other scientists around the world to map how humankind populated the earth.
Five New York Latinos, including Tempo’s editor, representing various countries in Latin America took the test.