Top Award for 'Motherland'

The organisers of Motherland were thrilled and surprised on Tuesday night to win the RTS (Royal Television Society) award for Best Science/Natural History Programme of 2003, a fantastic tribute to the work, trust, talent, support and expertise all of you contributed in so many different ways to make 'Motherland'.

Our only regret was that you weren't all there in the swanky Park Lane ballroom to share the occasion (and the champagne). Thanks, once again, for your contribution to a very special project. We and the BBC couldn't be more pleased or grateful. Jana Bennett, the Director of Television at the BBC, wrote asking us to pass her thanks on to everyone involved. Jane Root, the Controller of BBC2, also wrote to congratulate everyone on the fantastic news in the face of very stiff competition. And Greg Dyke, who was also a winner on the night, took the trouble to tell us again what a wonderful programme we had all made together.

Other Motherland news:
Neil is off next week to Cairo as a guest of the African Genetic Human Diversity Congress, where scientists from around the world, and Africa in particular, will be exploring the implications of DNA research in terms of archaeology, bioethics and health. They are screening the film and discussing it together with the wider issues 'Motherland' raises for Africa of a future new wave of 'genetic tourists'.

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Motherland: A Genetic Journey, Friday 14th February BBC2 9pm-10.30pm

View DNA & ANCESTRY by Arthur Torrington >>>
View DNA & Black Heritage by Arthur Torrington >>>


An epic film - shot in Britain, Africa, the Caribbean and America - which follows the first ever descendants of African slaves as they 'return' to Africa armed with the science that will finally enable them to rediscover their lost African roots.

The ancestors of British African Caribbeans were deprived of their history as well as their freedom when they were packed into slave ships and transported over the Atlantic to the plantations of the Caribbean. Now, for the first time, groundbreaking genetic analysis makes it possible for some to discover just which part of Africa their ancestors came from.

Motherland: A Genetic Journey is the exclusive inside story of this pioneering project - an exciting partnership of science, history and people. By analysing genetic markers on samples taken from 230 men and women from Britain’s African Caribbean community, scientists in Britain and America are able for the first time to identify the geographic origins of the participants’ maternal ­ and in the case of men, paternal - ancestors.

The film follows the emotional journeys of three members of the group as they investigate their ancestry.

Mark, a music industry PR from South London travels to Niger, the second poorest country

 

Beaula, a youth worker from Bristol, discovers that her ancestry lies in the tiny island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. In an historic meeting 4,000 miles from home, she meets living African relatives.

 

 

In contrast, Jacqueline, a Peterborough schoolteacher, explores her roots in Jamaica and discovers that a significant proportion of her ancestry is European.

Motherland: A Genetic Journey has also commissioned an ancestral genetic analysis on hundreds of volunteers which will reveal, for the first time, the genetic impact of the Transatlantic slave trade on British African Caribbeans.

For the first time since the enslavement of their African ancestors and the eradication of their ethnic identities, advances in DNA analysis have now made it possible for individuals to discover from which African region or population group their families originated.

In an historic first, a Bristol woman who took part in the study was even able to track down African relatives living on a tiny island off the coast of Cameroon.

The vast majority of the UK’s African-Caribbean community are descended from the millions of Africans taken from their families and homes to work as slaves on the Caribbean sugar plantations. The study, the most comprehensive attempt so far to investigate the specific roots of the descendants of slaves, took anonymous DNA samples via a buccal swab from 229 volunteers (109 men and 120 women). The only criterion for all volunteers was that they had four African-Caribbean grandparents.

As well as individual ancestral profiles, the Motherland study also quantifies, for the first time, one of the most sensitive genetic legacies of the Transatlantic slave trade; the extent to which African slaves were made pregnant by European slave-owners.
Today, the study reveals, more than one in four British African-Caribbeans have white male ancestry on their direct fatherline.

Analysis showed that 27% of British African-Caribbean men have a Y chromosome (passed directly from father to son) that traces back to Europe not Africa. In sharp contrast only around 2% of British African-Caribbeans have mitochrondrial DNA that traces to Europe, rather than Africa, on their motherline (passed from mother to child).

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