"Finding YOUR own personal ancestors"

Philosophical musings, as well as the practicalities of building a family tree, your DNA tribe(s), and ethnicity tests.

I sort of volunteered myself to do a talk on a subject of great interest to me at the 'Mabon at Thornborough' pagan camp. 2017; partly to encourage myself to bring together various aspects of Family History research I have been working on over the last few years into a lecture I could give elsewhere too. Also, most pagans conduct various rituals or ceremonies in respect of 'The Ancestors' but these are all very general and non-specific to the individual taking part, and this is partly because most of us know very little about our family history beyond our grandparents (including myself before I started this research). However, unlike any previous generations, thanks to the internet, it is now possible to easily get hold of so much information that was previously only available to the most dedicated of genealogists; and now with the addition of DNA genealogy to the arsenal, we have a very powerful tool that can be used in conjunction to open up a number of new ancestral quests to us all.

Now a little philosophical musing.

Our lives are each the briefest of twinkles compared with the whole history of life on Earth, let alone compared with the vastness of universal time; but each of us is a result millions, no billions of chance happenings ever since the first lifeform on Earth developed the ability to reproduce itself, or maybe I should say, create a new spark of life in another lifeform, as each individual spark will die sooner or later. And virtually all lifeforms ever since have had to rely on the death of others in order to survive as long as they do or did. And every second of every day, each lifeform affects others, directly or indirectly, along with the various natural processes of the planet and the universe. Each of these second by second actions affects everything else to a lesser or greater extent, including which new generations that get born, or not. For example. If my paternal grandmother's first husband hadn't been killed in World War I, she wouldn't have gone on to marry my grandfather, and therefore my father wouldn't have existed, etc., etc.. "Ah! But what if your grandparents had just had an affair, or something like that?" I hear a little voice say. Well yes, they could of, but my father wouldn't of been conceived at the very same time and even if he had the domestic scene he would of been brought up in would have been different, and he may never have me my mother, or, or or ..... There may have been a very similar person, who did much the same things, but not exactly the same.

So you see we are all the result of a series of accidents. And, keeping things closer to our human ancestors, and despite prudish American genealogists trying to hide the fact, we are all the result of millions of people having sexual intercourse! Whether voluntarily or otherwise. Yes! Even YOUR parents! (It's amazing how so many young people hate the thought that their parents have had a sex life! LOL!).

Right! Lets get down to some more serious work.

There are a host of reason why people conduct family history research and/or take a DNA test. Some just seem to want to try and find some link to royalty, however tenuously (we all are to a greater or lesser extent, depending on how far back you go, but not everyone can prove it. I have found a tenuous link back to a bastard son of Henry II). Others just want to know their ethnicity, but there are many pitfalls with the DNA services I will discuss further on. Many people are desperate to find a parent, or grandparent, or any family at all! (Not that my Mother seems to have been too bothered by it, as an adult anyway, but she was illegitimate, and a huge hole in my family tree was as to who her father was). And then, a lot of us are just nosy, and the 'Skeletons' in the family closet are the juiciest joys of doing the research. And there are just so many family histories that are lost and forgotten, and just being able to rediscover any part of the life any of our ancestors led is a bonus. But at the end of the day, I suppose a lot of it, for nearly all of us, is trying to answer the big questions. "Who am I? How did I get here?"

Now that leads us onto the main aspects of research that can be split into three general groups. There is the paper work side of building a family tree, and there is the ethnicity stuff, that can be split basically in to "What race am I?" and "What tribe/region do I come from/belong to?" I have split the ethnicity stuff into two, because what the DNA test sites are selling you doesn't really give people the answer they really want, which is the tribe region bit.

In fact the advertising can be rather misleading. The ad for AncestryDNA where the bloke says he thought he was half British, half Afro-Caribbean, but I now know I am a Viking is wrong. He is still half British, half Afro-Caribbean, but, probably his British half has a large chunk of Scandinavian ethnicity. This is all part of the confusion of what is race and what is your ethnic group, let alone your 'tribe/region'. Don't forget that we are all descended from the same humans in sub-Saharan Africa, and all of us with predominately 'super'-Saharan(?) ancestors are descended from about 500 people that came north/east of the Sahara, in times when the desert was much smaller (although the Chinese claim they might be descended from a different sub-species, but they are mixed with our sub-species anyway). But also, since then we have had thousands of years of movements and interbreeding of a myriad of different ethnic, tribal and historic groups. Again, whether voluntarily, or otherwise.

Now! As an archaeologist by training, I had chronology and stratigraphy beaten into me, but most people just don't have the same understanding about time scales and cultural progression; so for example a couple of anecdotes that illustrate this. I was once partaking in an English Civil War event in Durham city, when a member of the general public asked me "Was Hadrian's Wall built by then?" And there was a great line in one of the more recent series of "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" where Jimmy Nail's character finds out that his son is gay. "Var's nither bin iny poofs in arh famli, an we kan trace arh famli reet bach ta the Sicond Wald Warr!"  And it is true of most of the general public that they can't really understand the past beyond about 100 years ago. Beyond that it is all just 'the past'!

But what people want from their 'ethnicity tests' is really to prove their perceived ethnicity, or more the tribe or region they belong to. They just want to know, for example, that they are a born and bred Yorkshire man, whether they are black, white, yellow, or whatever! Or that they are a true Geordie. Or if racist, perhaps(?), that they are 'pure White', or 'pure Black', for example. Racists are abhorred at the thought they may have some Gypsy, or Jewish, or whatever ancestry in their genetic make-up. Although I doubt many true racists are likely to do a DNA test, as they would hate finding out that they aren't 'pure', and where they have done a test for a TV programme, etc. they tend to threaten to sue over the results!

So what is it that you get from the DNA testing companies regarding your ethnicity?

You have to remember that most of the testing companies are based in America, where the testing has been going on for some time, and the results are aimed at what your average American wants to know about their ethnicity, and most of the databases are based upon the research that has been carried out to give those average Americans the answers they want. Obviously, most average Americans, like us here in the UK, are like us, they don't know or understand much about their history from beyond a hundred years ago. And many of them can be of very mixed race, with races/ethnicity from throughout the world. So for example, a lot of Afro-Americans want to know which part of West Africa their Black ancestors were taken from, So on AncestryDNA you see they have several West African ethnic groups, because that is where the research has been paid for, whereas the rest of Africa is more of a great ethnic lump. And a lot of money and research has been put into identifying the genetic profiles of particular European Jewish groups, as not surprisingly, a lot of Americans have Yiddish ancestry. Many white Americans want to find they are 'Irish', so on AncestryDNA you find that is one of their categories; although when you look at the map in detail you will find that this group should really be called 'Western British Isles', as it includes the Cornish, Welsh, and Scots-Irish, etc.. 

But then you find that the collected data that the ethnicities are based upon can be suspect. Often the DNA donors only had to prove that all 4 of their grandparents were from that place. Just think of all the movements there have been over the last couple of hundred years in particular! So perhaps we should rely more and more upon DNA collected from historic bodies? But then again, we face some of the same questions as to what their ethnicity was, and the movement of peoples were that led to their burial there, etc., etc.. And some of the few archaic bodies that have been tested successfully have little to do with the peoples living in the same area now. For example on one of the forums I am on someone had been comparing their DNA test results against some archaic ones and thought that they had some Hungarian genes because they got a match to a 3,000 year old skeleton from what is NOW Hungary, The ethnic group that 'we' call the Hungarians, the Magyar, were not in that area until 2,000 years after the burial of the skeleton that the DNA material has been collected from.

In fact, all the ethnicity results, of all the main companies, must be not be taken too literally. And actually, if you examine the results in detail you will see that it is all based upon an average of various averages of various possible amounts for each ethnic group. In detail you may see that say 25% 'Irish' might in reality be anywhere between 5% and 45%, and with the minor groups it may be in reality anywhere between 0% and 5%. That is why they call them 'Ethnicity Estimates'.

Saying that, overall, they do give a good overall picture of your ethnicity, but in very broad strokes, and they shouldn't be taken too literally, or seriously. A bit of historical fun!

Mind you, we are back to people getting confused between the tribe/region they want to belong to, and what is in fact your very distant ethnicity.  What people want is not actually what they get. This is because ethnic groups based upon where modern scientist think people with those genetic identifiers lived approximately 500 to 10,000 years ago, is way beyond any possibility of tracing any historic paper tree link, which is what most of us really want. Again we are back to the difference between your ethnicity and your tribe/region.

For example, most of my 'ethnicity' is what AncestryDNA calls 'British' but is actually more 'Anglo-Saxon', with a big chunk of 'Irish' which is actually 'Cornish', with smaller amounts of various mostly Western European groups, that could represent a bit of 'Roman', 'Viking' 'Iberian', etc. or any of the invading and trading groups that have left their 'genetic' markers in the British Isles. But also there are small amounts of 'Eastern European' and 'West Asian', both about 5%. Now all or any of these small percentages could be just noise in the data, and unreal, and the 'Eastern European' is not Yiddish, and the 'West Asian' isn't Jewish, Turkic, or Romany (if I had had any 'South Asian' I would just assume that it was a bit of Gypsy in one of the family closets). I wouldn't have been upset at getting any of those, or any other 'ethnicity' in my DNA. For one you had no choice! LOL! And I would just have been fascinated as to where they had got into my family tree! But it turns out that most of us in North West Europe have a bit of 'Western Asian' and 'Eastern European', and from what I have read it seems to be just as fascinating as to where it came from. The 'Western Asian' is basically a residue of the first farmer that left Anatolia and moved into the Balkans some 8,000 years or so ago??? Who then proceeded to shag their way across Europe, interbreeding with the local populations as they went, and gradually getting ethnically 'watered down' as their 'cultures' spread voluntarily or otherwise. And the 'Eastern European' genes are again an ethnic residue, this time from the Bronze Age 'Ayrian' tribes that left the Black Sea region and shagged there way westwards across Europe, and got ethnically 'watered down' as they spread their 'cultures', again, voluntarily or otherwise.

But all of this is way back before most of us can comprehend or actually trace to any individual ancestor. Although, apparently, all us western Europeans have a bit of Charlemagne in us, and much of the world population has a bit of Genghis Khan, and most of the ginger Scots-Irish are descended from one Irish King that put it about a lot!

It is not answering the question most of us really want to know. What is my tribe/region?

AncestryDNA have actually introduced a new aspect to their DNA test results recently that at last answers the question in a way most people can understand and want. They call it your 'Genetic Communities', where your ancestors probably lived in the past few hundred years. It is based upon where various known ancestors of many to those you have a match to were born. In my case, not surprisingly, my genetic community is South West England. I knew that form my paper tree research, but if you were adopted, or didn't know your personal recent family history, it could be very useful, and you might also discover you had a chunk of Scottish relations, for example. This finally answers the question of what is your tribe/region, where you belong, ancestrally; although this is not necessarily your living 'tribe', as in the social group you actually live in.

I will have to leave the paper tree stuff for another occasion, as there is far than enough here for the moment. And there is lots on which are the best companies to do your paper and DNA research with, and the pluses and minuses of them, and how you can combine them to get the most from them. Something for you to look forward to!