Hey Trenders! Do you ever wonder where your family comes from, or which countries your ancestors originated? The answer might surprise some of you, and might even reveal how diverse your genetics are!
Momondo’s short film, The DNA Journey is a video experiment that surveys a large group of participants, each volunteering to sample their DNA in order to trace their ancestral background. Prior to finding out their results, some are filmed giving their opinions on their ethnicity and national pride for their country of origins. For many of the participants, they tend to find out that they’re not fully the ethnicity they thought they were and are surprised to see DNA traces from countries all over the world.
My favorite part about this video, though, is how the participants’ perspectives change. Some participants in the beginning of the film show bias towards other countries (particularly if their is tension with the participant’s country of origin). After the DNA reveal, these same people who expressed some pretty harsh opinions are humbled when they find out that their ancestors also came from the countries they spoke poorly about.
Now, I’ve read some of the comments on the video, noting that the film itself is scripted and the people in it were hired actors. That might be so, but I don’t think that takes away from the strong message this film expresses. The point of the short film is to celebrate the diversity in the world. Humans have been around for quite some time, and have migrated all over the place. And with that in mind, it should be no shock that we’d have ancestral roots from all over the world!
The DNA Journey is a video that makes you think about where we all come from. It is an eye opener, and you can’t help but appreciate the diversity in the world. If anything, it makes us realize how much closer we are to one another, and with that in mind we can hopefully be brought closer together.
