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美国国家地理学会的遗传学家斯班瑟•威尔斯利用DNA技术经过多方的寻找，终于找到这位人类祖先———科学亚当。今天，他的基因已经遍布于地球上每个男人的身上。

The prince’s Y chromosome mutations do lend support to his claim. They point to Middle Eastern ancestry. But it’s not definitive proof. With Genghis Khan, we have 16 million men pointing to one man. With Solomon, we may have one Ethiopian prince. There is simply not enough evidence to go on. The experiment shows how hard it can be to trace the Bible’s genealogy. It’s a book of faith, not forensic evidence. “What the Bible is saying about creation is way beyond the scope of science. It’s not about DNA and all that. It’s about who we are as people.” In Hebrew, the name Adam also means people. “What’s important about Adam is that Adam is every person.” The Bible gave us the idea of Adam. But finding the scientific version will take modern genetics. If we succeed, we will link all men today back to a scientific Adam and maybe even pinpoint his Garden of Eden.

As people move from place to place, they often end up far from where their lineage began. Our family tree is becoming tangled at the top. Tracing family lines is getting harder and harder. There is only one way to clear away the tangles- analyze Y chromosomes from people who still live in the land of their forefathers. To get a clearer picture of our family tree, Wells is leading a research project with the National Geographic Society and IBM. It’s called the Genographic Project. It’s a massive undertaking. It will take years. But when he’s done, Wells will be able to tell where anyone in the world comes from. Wells and his colleagues have crisscrossed the globe in search of DNA samples. From aborigines in Australia to tribesmen in South America, they’ve journeyed from Central Asia to South Africa to Siberia. Wells can already tell a lot about some men’s origins, just using their Y chromosome. And he thinks he’s found something unexpected in the background of one of America’s most famous figures—the third president, Thomas Jefferson.