After the “whole” genome sequence of Craig Venter and James Watson were published and  newly developed sequencing technologies made the runtime and price of whole genome and whole exome sequencing acceptable, 1000 Genomes was the first public sequencing project that sequenced a high amount of individuals. The aim of the project was ” to provide a comprehensive resource on human genetic variation.” Altogether, 2500 individuals were selected for sequencing from diverse ancestry.

If you are interested in the 1000 Genomes project, you might want to read the pilot paper of the project:

A map of human genome variation from population-scale sequencing

You should also check out the project’s website.

Short reads, alignments, variant calls and other data can be downloaded from the 1000 genomes ftp site via NCBI or EBI.