Friday, 18 July 2014

Flying Kite

Shortly after they were married my middle son and his wife researched family trees and learned they share a common ancestor. His fourth great grandfather is her fifth, which makes them distant cousins. A few years back I discovered an app on facebook that promised to reveal distant relatives among my circle of friends. I was surprised and delighted to find several of my favorite people are also third or fourth cousins. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised, after all. According to a Yale/UC San Diego study, we tend to choose as friends people who are genetically similar to ourselves. James Fowler, one of the authors of the study claims, “We have more DNA in common with the people we pick as friends than we do with strangers in the same population.” There’s an old saying, “Your can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.” How curious that the friends we choose may be family, too.

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