Africa to Aotearoa—the longest journey

Five videos available by award-winning film maker Shirley Horrocks 2019 Teaching videos

Science teachers to use their own DNA to teach human evolution and migration

(Please note the DNA kits referred to, are not available in 2019)

Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith, a leading biological anthropologist at the University of Otago, together with the Biology Educators' Association (BEANZ), have devised an exciting way of teaching students about the evolution of modern humans (that's us!), and their dispersal out of Africa and ultimately across the Pacific to Aotearoa New Zealand.

250 science/social science teachers will have the opportunity to send a DNA sample to the National Geographic Genographic Laboratory in the United States.  They can use the results, video presentations by Lisa, and the written resource that has been prepared to teach the current understanding of human evolution.  New information, both DNA and archaeological evidence, is constantly challenging, revising and resolving our understanding.

As part of the teaching module—funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Unlocking Curious Minds programme—students will video each other recounting what they know about their family history.  Some of these videos will be uploaded to a public site.  The message to students is that everyone's story is interesting and important.

The aim of the project is to inspire young high school students with the amazing story of our shared maternal ancestor in Africa and how a small band of humans left Africa 60,000 years ago, spread across the entire world, and finally journeyed here to Aotearoa New Zealand—the longest and most dangerous leg of the human journey. The stories of our origins and different journeys are preserved in our DNA.

Although the number of DNA kits on offer is necessarily limited by cost, any teacher may use the resources.  Professor Matisoo-Smith, Gisborne Mayor Meng Foon, and our former Governors General, Sir Jerry Mateparae and Sir Anand Satyanand, have made their own DNA results available for study by teachers who do not have their own.
Teaching resource pdfs

This education programme is part of a much wider study by Professor Matisoo-Smith.  Over the last three years she has sampled the DNA of over 2000 New Zealanders to determine their ancient origins.  She is writing a book which will report her results and feature interviews with a range of her subjects.

Professor Matisoo-Smith's group is working with National Geographic's Genographic Project to add the Pacific expansion to the global picture of human dispersal out of Africa. “The Pacific is such an incredibly exciting place to work. We've got settlement representing some of the first human dispersals out of Africa, with the initial settlement of Australia and New Guinea some 45,000–50,000 years ago, and we've also got the last major human dispersal which was the settlement of Polynesia, extending all the way to South America.  So it's a wonderful place to be studying humans and human adaptations.”

For more information, contact Glenda Lewis:
Email glendajanelewis@gmail.com

2019 Teaching videos

As part of our MBIE Curious Minds grant we were able to hire award-winning film maker Shirley Horrocks to help film five 10-minute videos for teachers to download and use which align with our previous teaching resources for the Africa to Aotearoa project.

What is Mitochondrial DNA?

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Download What is Mitochondrial DNA? (mp4)
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