Friday, July 29, 2005

Lauren's Great Site Round-up

This week I have found a couple of really great web sites that I just have to share with you. The first is called "Oompa" and you can find it HERE. Oompa sells oh so wonderful European toys that I lust over. My favorite brand now being Haba toys. You must check it out, the colors are vibrant, the craftsmenship supurb and the toys are so whimsical. Aunt Pat is kind enough to continually feed my European toy addiction.

Another great site is National Geographic's "Genographic Project" web site. By simply collecting a swab of cheek cells and sending it in, National Geographic will be able to tell you who your original ancestors were! I'm not talking Abe Lincoln, think cro-magnon grandpa! It's $100 to find out such fascinating information about your past. The scientists can trace men's Y-chromosones and women's mitochondrial DNA which never mutates. You will be traced back to one of the aprox. 50 tribes of people descended from the first humans who left Africa 60,000 years ago! Are you Mongolian? Did your ancestors cross the Cordilleran ice sheet in the Bering strait to Alaska 20,000 years ago!? It's quite amazing! Clink on THIS link. I recomend clicking on "The Atlas of the Human Journey on the upper right side and then on the "Genetic Markers" button near the bottom. This will let you scroll through all the tribes and see their story, map and photos of modern day descendants. Who do you resemble?

3 comments:

Judy said...

My sister-in-law is part Norwegian, and she goes overseas quite a bit on business (she works for a Swedish trucking company and does translation work with her plethora of languages). She is constantly bringing Travis and Tyler little toys like these from overseas! Our faves are the cars -both boys love zooming them on the tile floor!

Laura said...

Oompa has some really cute toys. I saw several things I'd love to add to Caitlin's collection.

Jeremy said...

The Human Genome project is awesome - I finally saved up enough to order the kit, so I'm expecting it sometime soon. Looking forward to getting the results and really finding out if the history I know about myself matches up with the DNA in my body (or if my ancestors have been lying all these years!)