MANILA, Philippines?Do try to catch the NGC documentary, ?The Human Family Tree.? We viewed its screener recently and felt our psychic horizons expanding even as we watched.

The special program is eminently viewable because it seeks to prove nothing less than the stunning proposition that all of us six-billion-plus humans are interrelated more closely than we think (or some people would prefer).

DNA samples

To prove this contention, the production?s scientific research team asked people attending a street fair in New York to swab their inner cheeks to provide DNA samples for their group to study in order to find out where their ancestors came from, as far back as the very dawn of human prehistory.

The DNA samples were then collated to help establish sequential waves of human migration, first from Africa and on to the far reaches of the known world.

A lot of the study?s findings surprised the people who took the test. They discovered genealogical and geographical links they never knew they had, radically altering not just their personal contexts but also their overall view of the composition of the human race.

Interestingly, our Aetas got more detailed coverage than some other groups, because the documentary used them as a key example of people who originally came from Africa, but eventually found their way to Asia by way of the land bridges that used to connect continents to one another.

?The Human Family Tree? makes many more connections that end up proving that, despite our teeming numbers, we humans really do comprise an extended family, all of the members of which are 99.9 percent identical from a genetic point of view.

Also illuminating is the program?s declaration that issues related to race are really skin-deep and thus ultimately irrelevant. Basically, people look different not because they?re intrinsically diverse, but because their ancestors? looks and bone structure were ?forced? to adjust due to the demands of climate change:

Adjustments

African nomads exposed to winter on the European continent had to lighten their skin tone and effect adjustments on the shape of their nasal passages in order to increase their chances of survival.

Put in that elemental way, many of our racial and other biases are shown up for the irrelevant distractions they really are. It?s all about the weather, folks, and when it changes, we have to roll with the punches.

More soberingly, that realization should compel us to worry more about climate change, especially the dire consequences of its current upheavals, and what we can do about them while there?s still time. Let?s get our collective act together before it?s too late!