Are All Humans Cousins?

Several years ago, the Almanac carried an article on the length of one's family tree. In brief, this is what it said: According to the leading geneticists, no human being of any race can be less closely related to any other human than approximately fiftieth cousin, and most of us are a lot closer.

Are all human beings related?

The DNA of all human beings living today is 99.9% alike. We all have roots extending back 300,000 years to the emergence of the first modern humans in Africa, and back more than 6 million years to the evolution of the earliest human species in Africa.

How closely are all humans related?

Biologists estimate that any two people on Earth share 999 out of every 1,000 DNA bases, the “letters” of the genetic code. Within the human population, all genetic variations—the inheritable differences in our physical appearance, health, and personality—add up to just 0.1 percent of about 3 billion bases.