Just as with our own spirit of nomadism, by which I would travel so much more if opportunity was there, far back enough our ancestors would have done just that. Like, I've always been trying to pinpoint a matriarchal homeland, but its more likely that until political pressure limited free living, the peoples would have relocated according to the seasons and food abundance. When all is so hot it is better to be in the high Caucasus, when cold there, down one goes to the Armenian grasslands, or on and around the Black Sea, as is not to be forgotten that my mtDNA has also been found in the Ukraine, and when all is cold even in these parts, even further south one goes deeply into the Levant, to Syria and Palestine, the slopes of Mount Carmel and the Mediterranean. Mountains are places of refuge and safety, but it takes a lot to remain in them when when conditions turn brutal and food becomes sparse. Only when kingdoms arise and assert permanent territories does one have to find a long term place to wedge in oneself. By trading, travels even then can carry on, and in honouring the former sacred places by pilgrimages. But, like the vast confounded pathways the elephants habituated in the Indian jungles I have stayed in, so too the people would have got blocked, fenced in, driven out and attacked. Despite all this, we do know a group that has always travelled, the gypsies, refusing to be stuck forever in one place only. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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![]() I really wonder now about my rare mtDNA and it potentially being of the Armenians. After all, we're not just talking about ancient annihilation of peoples here, but a very recent genocide of between a million and three million of their people in Anatolia in the early 1900's. The Armenian intellectuals first were slaughtered, properties confiscated, and then came the massacres, outright murders or being dumped in desert lands to die with no food or water. As much as the second world war was used to eliminate the European Jews, so was the first world war an excuse to turn on the Armenian Christians. For why might be mtDNA be so rare as to be only of my family, other than because others of that DNA had all been wiped out. As much as there are holocaust deniers, there are those who refuse to acknowledge the genocide of the Armenians, and not the least the perpetrators themselves, ie. the Ottoman Turks, but even the British and the Americans. France does recognise what happened, good on them. When I hear of such things I feel the energy of what could end up a rage inside, and not only for then, but for the ever vulnerability of minority communities in these middle eastern lands at the mercy of the great all encompassing Islam, groups such as Syrian Christians and Yezidi's. And at the same time as the Armenians were being genocided, so were the ancient Assyrians and Byzantines, all the original peoples in effect. Western nations prefer to turn somewhat of a blind eye to such episodes, avoiding controversy, leaving such threatened peoples without support and hardly even recording their predicaments. My former dreams of escaping Nazi's; I see now that I used the most blatant stereotypes in the dream imagery, because the Armenian story is not widely known, is kept invisible, is not taught in schools as is the Jewish holocaust, and is something even I myself have only lately begun to hear of. And yet it may be, that at least in my dreams, I heard the soul of this ancient people crying out. The closest mtDNA to mine, so far recorded, is an Armenian sample. And, its time I looked at this more, to understand who these people were, to learn what I can about them. Anatolia had been the Armenian homeland for thousands of years, as ancient remains have shown. What I can know as yet: Mount Carmel has yielded my mtDNA, and then the plateau of Anatolia, with its hills and mountains, and the DNA has reached high up into the Caucasus, reflections of a past great kingdom. And now it can be seen, that with great brutality, they were ripped out of their very heart land. And all is so hush-hush, like really? Are you sure? Never heard of that one. Hitler himself, in 1939, said 'Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?' Quite an encouragement for his own campaigns. Orders were put out, that all Armenians of five years and older be taken into the desert and slaughtered, that all Armenian soldiers be taken to a solitary place and shot. Prices were put on Armenian heads, so that many were found after in wells and cisterns to have been decapitated. Bodies lined the roads of every Turkish province, vultures and wild dogs feasted upon them. Corpses floated down the river Euphrates. Babies were thrown into lakes. Murdered women were first beaten and raped, their bodies ripped open. Men had their genitals mutilated. As one Turk leader, Dr Nazil, had early on proposed 'We must not leave a single Armenian alive in our country; we must kill the Armenian name'. And this was eagerly carried out, such is the bloodlust of man. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() A genealogy discovery gives a great sense of achievement, even if for a sad revelation, this latest being for my great great grandfather, William Maxted of Nine Elms, who while a teenager had begun his career as a boiler maker on the railways. At a young age he was in a dreadful accident, from the exploding of a barrel of tar in his workshop, back in 1879, when he was 15 years old. William and another were burnt all over, legs, arms and bodies, for which they were conveyed to London's St Thomas Hospital, their condition described as 'dreadfully burned'. And how could such an accident be recovered from, but certainly my ancestor survived this and went on to have a family and children and always a career on the railway. Likely, then, he always would have had scars from that time. His mother had died but couple of years before, I don't know from what as yet. I'd already come across that newspaper article before, but had not been able to link it with certainty to my ancestor, despite this being his name and profession, not only because it sounded fatal, but because his age was given as a couple of years older and I didn't know if he's lived at the address given, Riverhall Street off the Wandsworth Road. But, anyway, it was looking at the marriage certificate of his older sister Sarah that I saw the family was indeed living at that time in Riverhall Street. How remarkable, and I don't know what became of the other fellow, but William made a miraculous recovery. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I worked hard on a good historical write-up about my Shetland islanders general lifestyle. It makes me feel so much to go and see that world for myself, a place I have never been. And it gets me feeling that I want a Shetland pony and Shetland sheep, and Sheltie dogs. For three months plus I have been vegan, which would never have suited the old ways of Shetland, with their staple diet of fish and butter, oats, barley, tatties, cabbage and turnips. I do wonder how much vegan idealism is but contrived. Of course, in our modern world so much variety of foods enables this, and we know it is a healthier way to live. The Shetland way, from what I see so far, appears to have overall been pescaterian. I would live in such a way if I had to, if there were no alternatives, but I never would pollute my body with the corpses of mammals, for our bodies are too similar and it would be like cannabilism. Regarding the Shetland people, I do think my own mix of hardiness and gentleness is thanks to them. Over hundreds of years, their isolation and inbreeding produced great survival traits, just as it did for their sheep and ponies. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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