What remains both fascinating and frustrating about human life is that we do understand why or how we came into existence. For centuries, religion has served a purpose of providing answers for these pressing but unanswerable questions, attributing existence to a being or force outside of ourselves and this world.  But as science improves and gets closer to unlocking the codes to human ancestry, we find an intrinsic desire in humans to find answers to these questions themselves, and to not relinquish the desire for this knowledge to a higher power. Finding a common human ancestry can work to bring cultures and peoples together instead of driving them apart, in the way that different systems of belief do, for instance. No one knows how far along we are in understanding the true path of our evolution, as the New York Times article admits, but the prospect that these discoveries could happen within my lifetime is truly amazing.