Genetic anthropology is an emerging discipline that combines DNA and physical evidence to reveal the history of ancient human migration. It seeks to answer the questions, “Where did we come from, and how did we get here?”

These studies provide a d

etailed snapshot of human genetic variation that will assist in answering the following questions:

• How did we migrate and populate the world?
• What impact has culture had on human genetic variation?
• How have cultural practices affected our patterns of genetic diversity?
• If humans share a recent common ancestry, why do we look different from each other?
• Did extinct human species, such as Neanderthals, contribute to the current human genome?
• How does the DNA evidence relate to the fossil evidence for human migration patterns?

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/humanmigration.shtml