.I have been watching on netflix a mystical Turkish series The Gift, which is such good viewing. It is set around the ancient Gobekli Tepe (Potbelly Hill), where my own matriarchal ancestors likely were when they were in ancient Anatolia, on their having travelled beween the Carmel mountains of Israel and the mountains of the Caucasus.
Gobekle Tepe was built around 11,000 years ago or more, at the end of the last Ice Age. T-shaped pillars were created here as I had seen of ancient standing stones in Menorca. Large parts of Goekli Tepe still remain unexcavated. The ancient people of this hill, sometimes nomadic, but who based themselves here, using grinding stones and mortar & pestle to make cereals palatable. The trees offered them pistachios and almonds. When on the move they hunted gazelle. They appear to have been of the Natufian culture, which I already knew my matriarchal ancestors were from, on having looked at dna present at the Raqefet cave on Mount Carmel in Israel. Natufians are known to have used grains to make not only breads but beer too. The oldest known beer was actually found at the Raqefet cave and has been dated to be 13,000 years old.
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I was inspired to work on the genealogy of Boris Johnson, which I had begun at an earlier date and which it seemed now apt to elaborate on. In patriarchal descent Boris is a Turkish Kemal and not really a Johnson as such. Looking further back, his male line had sprung from the union of a Turkish villager and a Circassian slave. It was their son, Ali Kemal, who married a Swiss English girl, Winifred Brun. Ali's end was met when he was lynched and hung by a rowdy Turkish mob, some element to this being revenge for his outspokenness against the crime of the Armenian massacres, such perpetrators having now aligned to the revolutionary Kemalists. Ali had accused the Ittihadist chieftains for being authors of the massacre and had relentlessly demanded their prosecution and punishment. He called the Armenian massacre 'a crime before which the world shudders'. He was marked for plenty more than his stance on what had happened to the Armenians, being also a liberal pro-Britisher, outspoken journalist against nationalism, and friend of the last sultan. For a while he had been the countries interior minister. All was changing for Turkey at this time, departing an Ottoman multi ethnic past, which was a home to so many Greeks, Jews and Armenians, to becoming a land simply of Turks and Islam. A newspaper article in the Sphere at that time writes; 'Arrests have been made by the Kemalists of moderate Turks. The Kemalists have their black lists. On one Saturday evening, six men, civilians, entered the Circle D'Orient, the Diplomatic club in Constantinople, and asked for Ali Kemal, a former Turkish minister of the interior, who was later editor of the Peyam Sabah, the Morning News, and a well known Turkish journalist, who has consistently denounced the policy of the Kemalists in his articles and in his speech. He was not in the club at the time, but the six men waited for him in an alcove outside. At last he drove up, paid off his driver, and was about to enter the building when the men approached him. Pluckily he withdrew his revolver, only to find that each of the six had already drawn their arms on him. He was taken off in a motor car at once, and put into a boat on the Bosphorous. He was taken to Ismidt, half lynched by a crowd of fanatics, then hanged'. Elsewhere it is reported in more detail that Ali was lynched by a mob with sticks, stones and knives and then hung from a tree. An epitaph put across his chest read 'Artin Kemal', Artin being an Armenian name and a deliberate mocking of his standing up for these people. It was Ali's son, Osman Wilfred Kemal, born in England and there raised by his English granny, his mother having succumbed to puerperal fever after his birth, who adopted his grandmother Brun's maiden name Johnson, more appropriate for life in England: from Osman Wilfred Kemal to Wilfred Johnson; he being the grandfather of Boris, alias Alexander Boris De Pfeffle Johnson. Rather than Boris Kemal. 1911 Census for Wimbledon showing Osman Wilfred Kemal as a little boy living with his big sister Selma and Granny Brun: 18 Bernard Gardens Wilfred Kemal, age 1 and a half, born Bournemouth (English) Selma Kemal, sister, age 5, born Cairo, Egypt (English) Margaret Brun Johnson, grandmother, age 54, married for 30 years and had 4 children, 3 of whom have died, born East Witton, Yorkshire Florence Tanner, child nurse, age 30, born Ockham, Surrey Amy Tunny, domestic servant, age 30, born Southwark The De Pfeffle part to Boris's name reveals aristocratic ancestry, and further beyond that even royal ancestry, Osman Wilfred Kemal-Johnson having married Irene Williams, granddaughter of Baron and Baroness De Pfeffle who had lived in Versailles at the Pavilion du Barry. Irene's mother, Marie Louise de Pfeffle, would often compete as a teenager in lawn tennis and ping pong and here is one of many old newspaper references to the latter: 1902 Pall Mall Gazette "Ping pong, which broke out recently in Paris now claims many victims. The first tournament has been held by the tennis club and resulted in the lady championships falling to Mlles Yvonne and Marie Louise du Pfeffel. The ladies paper, Femina, which publishes their portraits, also gives an enthusiastic account fo the game for the benefit of those people who do not play it." Marie Louise married her English amour Stanley Fred Williams in Versailles: 1906 The Queen, The Ladies Newspaper "Fashionable Marriages" "A pretty wedding which took place at Versailles on January 21st (1906) was that of Mr Stanley Fred Williams, eldest son of Mr frederick G Williams, of Upper Norwood, to Mlle Marie Louise, daughter of Baron and Baroness de Pfeffel, Pavilion du Barry, Versailles. The Rev J W Browne, English chaplain of St Marks church, Versailles, performed the ceremony. The bride looked very charming in her gown of white crepe de chine with Irish point lace and a wreath of orange blossom. The reception was held at the Pavillion du Barry, and later the bride and bridgrom left for Beaulieu for their honeymoon, after which they will return to make their home in Shortlands, Kent." It was Baron de Pfeffle's mother Carolina who had royal blood, she being the illegitimate daughter of an actress Frederika Port and Prince Paul Von Wurttemburg. Boris's ethnic variety continues in his children, by his wife Marina, who are part Indian, their mother being half Punjabi Sikh.
Boris and Marina are separated, though married still, and he has taken up with a woman younger than him, having moved her into his prime ministerial residence. Boris's ancestry, as I interestingly now have seen, despite first appearances, is most colourful and not all traditionally British. On these genealogy blogs I have my first ever comment, from a John Schulz, who like me has this curiously rare mtDNA, which his sequence being given as N1b1a2 (my own having an extra a on the end). His matriarchal line he knows to have come from Belarus. He is aware that several Armenian merchant families had been welcomed here and in surrounding Polish-Lithuanian lands. This is another clue then to there having been some connection to Armenian peoples. Hotspots for our rare dna, John says, are thus around Belarus, the eastern Mediterranean, occasional British/Irish, and then he points out something I'd not yet heard about, which is that it has also been found in the Basque people. As Basque has been quite highlighted as an autosomal derivation for my mother, this now becomes all the more interesting. Now only has Basque dna potentially reached us via some settlers into Ireland, but also Basque language has been seen to have some unique kind of link to the people to the north eastern Caucasus, which is where our matriarchal type of DNA is seen to have variegated the most, hence its presentation so far for being a motherland. So, there comes even more idea of what journey my ancestors took, out of Africa to Mount Carmel and there being part of the early Natufian culture, pushing up and onwards into what would become Armenian lands, that which is the vastness of Anatolia, having early tribal associations there, and continuing on into the high refuges of the Caucasus mountains, where one can remain free and undisturbed for a great length of time. Nomadic journeyings happened around the Black Sea, with still links down into the Armenian hills and mountains. From the Caucasus to the Pyrenees, and from there to Ireland. This anyway is my latest evolved understanding, with the simplest way to sum all up. From Ireland to the old streets of London. To me. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I settled into trying to understand more these genetic tools on Gedmatch, specifically the Eurogenes K13 and the Dodecad 3, one of my aims being to discern what is from my mothers side and what is of my fathers. Not that I really work out so much, but there are some things I do see. One marker which I have, but my mum doesn't, and which therefore is from my father, is of the Red Sea. And there I had been previously, holidaying for a month right by the Red Sea in Egypt. Both the Eurogenes and the Dodecad reveal a lot of West Asian, which is considerably higher in me than in my mother. Thus it does look to be that my huge Caucasus heritage, and quite likely the Anatolian/Armenian too, is from my father, or at least a greater portion of the Caucasus is. And isn't that a surprise, considering that mine and my mothers matriarchal DNA is from there, and yet my more recent connections to that land come through my father. Naturally western-northern European is our highest genetics, after which comes a high Mediterranean, which includes some Greek from my father and East European shores of the Black Sea from my mother. South Asian is in my mother and father, and south west Asian is only through my dad. North East Asian is from both my parents, which does get me thinking of Mongol invasions. No paleo-Pygmy African presence shows up after all on the Dodecad. There is, though, north west African from my mum (Moroccan) and north east African (Egyptian) from my dad. Among the Gedmatch tools are oracles for predicting likely origins of the four grandparents, and looking firstly at my mums, her Shetland grandparents are no doubt responsible for the Orcadian, West Scottish, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. All is not so straightforward for grandparents Mary Ann Seagrove and D'Auvergne Bane. There is a considerable amount of south west English, pinpointed to Cornwall, that I'm not sure how to account for. This could be tagged onto either of grandparent I suppose. Like I don't yet know the place Mary Ann's ancestors dwelt in as yet before they came to London. The Irish is accounted for by Mary Ann's 'Sugrue' fathers side from County Kerry, and the Spanish with considerable Basque may or may not have come through the Irish connection. The Dodecad reveals that there is French other than just the Basque, and with a name like D'Auvergne naturally I wonder if that grandfather did have some secret French connection. As far as his Norfolk Banes and Beans are concerned, this would be covered by both south east English and Dutch, the Norfolk cloth merchants (a trade to which my people were linked) being from there, and this could also account for traces of German and Austrian. Although not to forget that the Hanseatic merchants also traded with Shetland. The conclusion of my mothers oracle is a quite present Cornish, Scottish and Danish, and a French Basque which is potentially through the Irish. In my own oracle Irish is the strongest, enormously so. Although my mum's Irish would appear to have a strong Basque and Spanish influence, my dads (which is from Westmeath) would be very grass roots Irish. So for my own grandparents in this: Shetland grandfather Lyall Inkster accounts for West Scottish and Orcadian; Granny Isabelle accounts for Irish, Cornwall, French and Spanish. Then, for my other two grandparents, pop and nanny Eileen, would come so much Irish. For pop surely Welsh would show, but maybe Welsh hasn't been sampled as yet and so has been lumped in with the Irish. Unless, that is, my Welsh Harrisons and Forest of Dean Hawkins were of Irish traveller derivation. So much Irish, it being the closest of all ethnic types to me inclines me to think my nanny Eileen's mystery father to be Irish as well. Somewhere on my dads side also comes in some distant Hungarian, according to Eurogenes, so it may be that the Maxteds came from a gypsy heritage after all, but I have to drop gypsyness for now as a consideration due to a lack of proof. Interestingly, beyond the strong French Basque, the most potent influence of all the Spanish areas is Catalan. And where I live now in the south of France was once part of the Spanish Catalan territories, before being snatched away by France. My coming to this land suddenly holds a significance I'd not before been aware of. The Dodecad points not only to Cornwall and Hungary, but also to Slovenia. And Sardinia is there through my mother, as well as north Italian. As Les Batt had pointed out, this appears to point out a route taken to Spain, being via Sardinia, a route of old sea traders, such as the Phoenicians. Certainly the Phoenicians come to mind with such locations, from the Levant to the islands of the Mediterranean to Spain. The Dodecad embroiders yet again on my mothers strong Iberian secondary ancestry, along with Sardinian and Italian. Whereas my own, presumably enriched by my fathers DNA, is increasingly exotic. The Eurogenes has pointed out for me strong Caucasus and central Asian ancestry, along with Anatolian. The Dodecad finds me markers in a more European and Mediterranean context and these are richly ethnic in variety. Primarily there are Greek, Romanian and Hungarian. So would that then relate to my maybe gypsy Kent-London ancestors? But, oh, they are a right melting pot of cultures, just as one may imagine Londoners to be. And I never thought there was any Jewish ancestry in me at all, for nothing else had shown this, but the Dodecad has made of me links to them. Beyond the stronger Greek-Romanian-Hungarian there comes Slovenian, Ashkenazi Jew, Cyprus, Sephardic Jew, the Balkans, Sicily, Lebanon, Moroccan Jew, south Italy, Cornwall (lol, so exotic), and Egypt. What to say of this, well, ones ancestry is not linear, nor easily determined. In these hundreds of years so many families are joined by the marriages and affairs of the ancestors. The Dodecad grandparent predictor oracle for my mother still emphasises a French Basque probability, with Slovenian coming up too, and naturally Irish. Mine brings in, from my father then, an addition of Romanian and the Balkans. At which point I take a break. Because my friend Omani comes to visit. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. 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. My American friend, Satshanti, was messaging me what was for us an amazing discovery. A cave being excavated in Israel on Mount Carmel has been found to harbour our matriarchal DNA N1b and is between 11,000 and 13,000 years old, found there in the remains of a 2 or 3 year old boy. N1b, so rare, and yet found. This boy, as Satshanti said, is one of our relatives and this is 'our cave'. Raqefet cave. The boy would be a brother, son, cousin. From this we can deduce that our people were part of the Neolithic Natufian Culture and Israel was their homeland, how wonderful. A few thousand years later my ancestors had moved northwards to Anatolia, as said Satshanti, as an N1b has there been found at that time. I don't even know how the Caucasus fits into this now. Satshanti says the journey up into those mountains would have come later. The mountains would have been a refuge from the tribal annihilations in the lowlands, as usual. I was so very excited as this was news long awaited, to have a sure ancestral connection to a specific place, and even a name given to that culture, and even more amazingly, some detail of lifestyle. The people back then lived in semi-subterranean round houses, wow, that in itself stirred my emotion. They laid on beddings of mint, sage and sedge grasses (this had been discovered in the caves where the bodies had been laid). They hunted gazelles and gathered almonds and pistachios. They made adornments from bone and little sacred statuettes out of limestone, of both human and animal forms. They were the first nomads to settle into established homes, and this was before farming. Mount Carmel is known to have anciently had a high altar and holy groves. It was such a sacred mountain that not everyone was allowed to step upon it. Pythagorus, the hero of my friend Trebha, said it was the most sacred mountain in the world and went there on pilgrimage. Satshanti sent me some pictures of the cave, one with its wide entrance and views, and of the archaeologists who are still present there. Oh, gosh, I want to go and tune into my ancient people. This is 'our cave' Satshanti and I are saying. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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