yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Soil Secrets | Explorers in the Field


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

(Rhythmic music) (Train horn) - I feel like that saying, if they say, you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. I am from Brooklyn, so I feel like I can do anything. My name is Carter Clinton, and I'm a genetic anthropologist and a National Geographic Explorer.

Presently, one of the major issues that we find in genomic research is the lack of representation for African Americans. Genomic research is the study of all of your genes at a basic level. And one of the major goals of this project was to contribute information from a historic, African American population. Soil has a lot of secrets that you can't see with the naked eye.

I'm studying 400-year-old grave soil to learn more about the health and lifestyles of a historic African American population. (Footsteps) (Oriental music) So this is the New York African Burial Ground. It's now a national monument. (Oriental music) In 1991, a construction crew attempted to erect a federal building at 290 Broadway.

Being one of the taller buildings in the area, it was about 30 stories high, they had to dig 30 feet below. And around 25 feet, they began to uncover and unearth human remains. After they found the human remains, they went back to the historical maps, and they realized that they had just rediscovered the New York African Burial Ground.

419 were excavated, and that's out of an estimated 15,000 individuals, over 6.6 acres of land. So here we have the New York African Burial Ground Grave Soil Collection, housed at Howard University. And each of the samples represents an individual who was buried 400 years ago, and each sample is collected from a specific body region from each of those individuals.

So we each have our own unique bacterial community, or signature, if you will, of bacteria that live within us, on us, like on our skin and our gut. When we die, that bacteria is the leading force in how our bodies are decomposed.

So what we're looking at is what survives after 400 years after a person has been buried. So we took the original soil samples, we sieved it, we collected those fine particles, and then we attempted a DNA extraction. So we did that hundreds of times over the span of about six months.

And then one day, we actually got results. It was the best day ever; it was the best day ever. So, even hundreds of years after a person passes away, you can see infectious disease bacteria that may be the result of what that person died from. (Running water) (Piano playing)

I feel proud. I feel proud to be an African American working on what could possibly be my direct ancestors. Being an African American and native New Yorker at the same time. It's so much more than just the tangible.

It's the knowledge that you had ancestors who lived years ago that contributed to this greater picture that you're now a part of. So we're not just contributing to science; we're contributing to history.

More Articles

View All
Society and religion in the New England colonies | AP US History | Khan Academy
Depending on where you grow up in the United States, you might hear a different story about the founding of this country. Now, I grew up in Pennsylvania, and the story that I heard was about the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. They were a group of deep…
Ray Dalio: The Great Wealth Transfer Explained
Can’t keep spending without bringing down inflation. So here’s what I think: Ray Dalio is one of the greatest economic minds of all time. He is the founder of Bridgewater, the largest and arguably most prestigious hedge fund in the world. This spot at the…
The Unsung Heroes of the Arctic - Ep. 3 | Wildlife: The Big Freeze
[Bertie] Polar bears are such icons of the Arctic. It’s hard for anything else to escape their shadow. But what if I told you only a few inches from the ground, there’s a host of less celebrated little creatures who’ve made a playground of these brutal co…
How I'm Investing In 2022
What’s up guys, it’s Graham here. So for a lot of us, 2022 is probably going to be one of the most confusing years of investing. After all, with interest rates beginning to increase, there’s the concern that stocks might begin to decline. Real estate inve…
See How Pigeons Saved This Man From a Life on the Streets | Short Film Showcase
[Music] From the first time I seen, I was in love. I’ll be honest, that was my love at first sight. As they come down slow, it just moved. Ah, it’s good. You see this? That’s it! The team? I think this is just great to me. Listen, what other hobby can yo…
Harj Taggar - How Startups can Compete with FAANG Companies when Hiring Employees
[Music] Hey everyone, I’m Harj. I’m a partner at Y Combinator and I’m gonna answer the question of how do I hire someone who has competing offers from the big tech companies. There’s two ways I think you can compete with someone who has an offer from a …