I am contemplating how DNA may be relevant as regards the foods we eat. One mans food is another mans poison. Some disregard New World foods, like tomatoes and potatoes, to which American Indians would have long adapted. Far East Asians never generally adapted to eating dairy foods. Meat may be fine for ice bound Inuits. For my Shetlander's, Welsh and Irish the staple was oats and not wheat. Frying oils may be fine for spice loving India. Maybe one day we will regard all that suits our DNA and know by that what is healthful and what to avoid. As I have the DNA of Central Asia and the Caucasus, the suitable diet is soured fruit sauces and yoghurts. In some of these high altitude places have been the worlds longest livers, with their mainly vegetarian diets. And I have some Mediterranean DNA - hail the salads, feta and olive oil, herbs and tahini, beans and vine leaves. Celtic in me, that suits oats and seaweeds. So this would be interesting, individualised diets according to who were one's ancestors. And even with some Asian ancestry, the solanums aren't really even strangers to us, for these peoples ate aubergine, also a solanum. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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I have been reflecting on the way many of our ancients may have eaten and developing my own ideas. The oldest living style I know of in my own family is the crofting Shetland one, where really there was quite a separation between the worlds of women and of men, as the men would be away for months on communal fishing trips. The women were the home based foragers who sustained themselves, their children and the elderly on all they could find, in earlier times, and that which they could farm, later. Men were the hunters and women were the foragers. Only now and again did they come together. This is even what I feel of the long distant past. That men would be off doing their initiations and militant campaigns, for which flesh foods were their fuel to fight and conquer, as has been the way for the Kshatriya's in India. Whereas in places of communal family raising it was more important to have peaceful social cohesion, in which the eating of flesh would be irrelevant. Destruction and fighting was the pastime of man, where profit was thought to arise from conquering and taking on the supposed strengths of wild animals, as headhunters even have done with humans, with sacrifices made to powerful gods, taking the skulls, eating the flesh, of opposing warriors. Men were not only defenders and conquerors, venturing afar in combat, but also were traders or raiders of adornments and useful items, treasures which they would take back to their womenfolk. And the women, meanwhile, lovingly maintained and created the very fabric of society, there where all inspirations, both practical and ideological, would arise. For such a way purer foods of the land were ones fuel. And why kill animals, who have such value as providers of dairy, wool, eggs, and who plough and carry heavy loads, for such animals are family too. Surviving men would return and be woman's lovers, give gifts, enjoy civilisation and healing, before again going off to do what men are compelled to do. So I know people believe our ancestors were big meat eaters in the past, but if so we would have adapted better to such a diet and it would not still be a carcinogen, which in itself shows there has been less exposure than presumed. Likely, meat eating had a context with rituals and specifications and would not have been for all. Women kept on eating seaweeds, leaves, seeds, roots, beans, grains and berries, to which were later added fermented milk foods, and were no doubt very healthy on it. So, yes, men would come and go, with their nature and roles being quite different, with maybe up to three months of romancing, heading off and later returning with gifts. Staying around too long wouldn't be idea, when relations would degrade and stale, when he may resort to control stuff and battering, energies which are better spent on his campaigns abroad. Women can have both their fond thoughts and be free. The good men to have staying around would be equivalent to conscientious objectors, who would support, protect, build, and mend; not they who would be predators and make slaves of women. Only those who trust and respect, after all she has been his mother. Go off out into the world, and sometimes we will journey with you, on pilgrimages and to see wonders. But never must there be inequality. Roles are flexible, according to ones nature, saintly men opting out of that which their brothers do, and women who prefer bold forays with the lads. And then there would also be the inner voyagers, the renunciants and holy contemplators, who find for themselves caves and lone shrines, on mountains, in forests and in deserts, who take on shamanic aspects for the general people, are receivers of offerings, mediums to the divine, and have powers. Some are crazy, some are sincere, some are dodgy. Some would eat sacrificed animals, some only the purest and simplest of natures kind gifts. Some further the passions of men, others the ideals of women. Gurus form and cult-religions develop. Intense farming requires men to stay in one place. Kingdoms arise, exploiting the enslaved. In time we forget the ways of the ancients. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I at last connected with one of my Familytree listed cousins, Marie Celeste, born a man in New Zealand, now transformed into a woman. We both knew we had Shetland ancestors, and by some good researching further into his and my lines I managed to find the Inkster Burra Island link. Good stuff. And even he/she hadn't realised yet that there were Inksters in his/her family line. This was my quick research. Marie Celeste has an elderly mother who though in her 90's has just done a sky dive. So I now befriend my first trans-person on Facebook, my distant cousin. And, DNA does prove one thing, that whatever are those researched links, they are genuine, rather than there having been adoptions, infidelities and hidden family skeletons. Of course, with my having so much Viking DNA that was not a line to doubt. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() Updating my genealogy, I became most captivated by what I found. One of my relatives, a Bean cousin of great grandfather D'Auvergne Bane, was on the Titanic when it so famously crashed into an iceberg on it's way to America. Edward Beane, he is my first cousin thrice removed. He was on his honeymoon voyage with his sweetheart Ethel, they having just married in Norwich. They now become my Jack and Rose, but with a better ending, for remarkably they both survived, and were the only ones out of 12 honeymooning couples not to have been separated for ever by the tragedy. Women and children first, that was the noble British way, with the men kept back at gun point. Ethel was put into a lifeboat, which though only half full was set away in the sea, and Edward on noting this, took his chances, jumping into the freezing waters and swimming in the darkness, it being midnight, until he could be with her. One recount says he got to her boat and she lifted him in with her own arms. Another version is that a different rowboat picked him up and not until arrival in New York did each know the other had survived. Safe on the boat, united, if this is indeed how it was, they distantly saw the final plunging downwards of the great ship, hearing not only that band still playing, but the mass wail of the remaining stranded people in the moment of their perishing, a haunting sound Ethel could not free her mind of for many years. Edward was of the family of D'Auvergne's mother, Hannah Bean, being one of her nephews. It is also in looking more at Hannah's parents, Robert and Mary Ann Beane, that I discover what is the connection to Castle Hedingham, made mention of once by my granny Isabelle. For all my fanciful contemplations of was D'Auvergne a love child, was he really descended from the D'Auvergne family, this less and less seems a possibility, even though I had noted that there was a D'Auvergne- Barnard family link to this area. Well, actually, as I now discovered, Robert Beane spent his last years in Castle Hedingham at the Great Lodge Farm, one of his daughters, Mary Ann, having married the farmer there. When his daughter and then her husband eventually died, both having left wills, and not having had any children to inherit from them, D'Auvergne and other family members may have from past assurances reckoned they were in for some of that inheritance, which would explain why D'Auvergne had to go to Castle Hedingham when Isabelle was a young girl. And his upset on returning, would be that regardless of their great wealth, he had not been left anything. It's a less fanciable story, but it would make sense. It was another Beane who inherited greatly from them, a George who worked on the railways. But not our D'Auvergne. And Robert Beane's wife, Mary Ann, who long back I had thought to be a Bird, was actually an Empson. And it was Mary Ann's sister, or was it her aunt, can't recall which, who had married the composer D'Auvergne Barnard's father. So there is a certain link now. 'An aunt' as granny Isabelle had always said, only she'd thought the aunt had married the composer rather than his father. This does after all then make me related by blood to the composer. And so I frequently brush up on my genealogy and sometimes discover the new and interesting. Much of the following day I did my research, particularly being interested in the Titanic story. My friend, Ian, who came over to visit, and who believes in conspiracy theories, told me the Titanic sinking was contrived by the Jewish Rockefeller's, as he would say indeed. Looking more at the Titanic story, at videos of those who survived and those who did not, I got weepy about it all. One lady could have survived, but would not, because she was not allowed to take her dog with her, and she refused to be separated from him. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Being once more curious about the Indian ancestry of my friend, Angus, I researched an update for him, of Cullens and Van Serens, a colonial breed of many generations, who were totally at home in India. I got so much further back with this than previously I had.
I soon enough moved on from Angus's family tree to embellishing my own, looking more into my Welsh origins. I looked at my branch of the Rosser family who lived in Llangattock, Llanelli, Llanthony, and LLantilio Pertholey, all those double 'll's', who latterly farmed at Upper Triley Farm on 190 acres of land, and who intermarried with the Harrison's of Llanthony. In this I became totally absorbed, as well as with my Thomas's and Morgan's, boat builders of Govilon and Wonastowe, those that passed on their long life gene that my Pop benefited from. |
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