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.
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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. Familytree has perfected and updated its ethnic autosomal interpretations. And how crazy it is that, yes, before I was told I had some small Central Asian component, which is east of the Caspian Sea, which had got me all excited for its exotic appeal, but this has now been whacked back west and south of the Caspian to Armenia and Turkey. With a new ability to consider trace percentages I have been told I have Middle Eastern, that is the Levant, and Eastern European, both which I had not known of before. And whats more, to blow my mind all over again, I have some 2% Central South African! I almost feel, on being told this one day and that another day, that this science is too new even to be relied upon. Everything I have felt to believe is really fragile in this regard. And my matriarchal origin, is it really of the Caucasus, when it does seem that an Armenian link is arising, which is to the south of there. Anatolian Armenian Christian, this does appear quite possible. It could be this that has blended with the Levantine, and even the African, which has me confused of what to make of it all. The Africans could have been slaves in the Arab world, or from some past colonial interbreeding with locals. So many potentially fascinating stories are there which I will never know. And even this is not such a vast number of generations back. How exotic could it get, to know discover this ancestral connection to Africa, in the dark jungly south, where is Botswana, Angola, Zambia, and South Africa. And how watered down this is in me already, so pale and freckly, so very English looking. That black haired, ivory skinned ancestress in Greenwich, Maria Harrison; such a mystery resides within her. Was she a combination of Armenian, Levantine and African; is this why her distinct looks? My friend Deepak had once suggested she may be Armenian, with her un-British looks, and maybe he was indeed tuning into something. I need to locate the previous percentages that were given to me, to compare. I recall there had been Mediterranean, which has now been pinpointed to the Spanish peninsula. Other than which there is a whole connection to France, and/or its neighbouring lands, which I'd also not known of. British is naturally my main ethnic make-up with its Viking addition and of European there is in total 97%, though all then adds up to 105% and not 100%. The is the up to date percentages, then, which make up my autosomal ethnic mix: British Isles 55% Scandanavia 21% West & Central Europe 13% Spanish Peninsula 8% Turkey/Armenia 2% Eastern Europe 2% Levant (Asia Minor) 2% African (Central-South) 2% The Eastern European, which is from Poland to the Ukraine, is also a surprise. This is where the Ashkenazi Jews were located, so a link would be there, at least of having lived among them. This would concur with dreams I've had of being pursued by Nazi types and having to escape, and why I so feel to defend Jewish people who have known centuries of persecution even into modern times. Again, there could be an admixture into rarer types of peoples, via Ukraine, where indeed an ancient type of my matriarchal DNA has been found, as my friend Satshanti had recently pointed out to me. So, maybe my Eastern European type is indeed Ukrainian. With such a subject, all can only be guessed or assumed. These are but whispers of a past otherwise lost to us. But Africa, oh, Africa, how could I have know this was not just anciently the mother land, but something so much closer, still in my being. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. The response to my autosomal family finder upgrade is instantaneous. Of course, they have my DNA samples; there is no need to dilly dally. Raw data is now there to access, though I don't have a programme to unzip it. What I do get to see is a list of distant cousins and I look through them, but not one do I understand how I link to. How would I fit even one of them into my family tree, I cannot see. Satshanti, of far away California, says he will work on helping me to make sense of it all. And, meanwhile, I look more into this possible ancient Armenian connection. There is an Armenian specialist group that has on its list my rare DNA, so I wrote to the people hosting this. One of these fellows, Peter Hrechdakian, confirmed that N1b1a2a is of the Caucasus and Near East. He recommended that I upgrade with Familytree's mtDNA full sequence, so it can be compared in depth with other N1b1a2a's. Not that I haven't spent out on this already with the Genographic Project. The more angles the merrier, I do presume. Only by immersing myself will more pieces of the puzzle come together. The Genographic Project wasn't so informative really as I would have liked. Transferral is there to Familytree, but only in the basest form. So apart from learning I am minutely Neanderthal, I don't see really what advantage the Genographic Project has over the Familytree. Mitochondrial DNA, Peter Hrechdakian makes mention of, from an angle I'd never really examined, pointing out that it comes from an organism living in symbiosis in our cells. That's something to get the head around. So, genealogy and DNA, always a subject I shall come back to. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Reading about the early Middle East Christians, the Armenians and Syrians, along with the Georgians, I feel this so, and want to be there, to travel and explore, to find the special ancient places. I feel that these people, with their old nobility and good Christian morality, are beacons of light in a world of increasing darkness. Their intellectual capacity, their elite freedoms, with their beautiful gardens and lovely homes and grand architecture. And yet they have been ravaged, raped, murdered and sent into exile. Armenians are also of the Caucasus, once having vast lands stretching across to the Mediterranean. For the reading of this, I was inspired to look back at my DNA results. In transferring the Genographic results to Familytree, an upgrade is needed, to access raw results and be matched with near and distant cousins. This I paid to be done, luckily a very reduced rate for Genographic customers. What I am then faced with, again, is a more sophisticated mtDNA classification from modern updating of the systems. N1b1a2a according to the Genographic, and N1b1b1b as given on the transferral to Familytree. As ever, it is totally rare and mysterious. I find that this is, though, a recognised Armenian type of DNA. This blows my mind all of a sudden. For long I've known this DNA is rooted in the Caucasus mountains, but had always looked to the more northern Georgia, and not the southerly Armenian. Actually, all is close. This type of DNA is of Georgia, but not only. Somehow it is also found in Italy and Ireland, but the strength of origin is not in Europe, but in the Middle East. Specifically, the A2a part has been recognisably linked to an Armenian. Armenian does have more of an exotic appeal than Georgian, even though that in itself is fascinating. I have immersed myself already in the connection with ancient Georgia, the very source of N1's, but there is a step on from there, and it appears to be Armenian, or at least of some tribal group which would have come to take on that designation. Such borders were not always there. Does a line need to be drawn between one part of the Caucasus and another? Is my origin Armenian? This now becomes my question. I have been reading of it and now wonder if I am that. Indian friend, Deepak, had long ago suggested Armenian when I talked of my mother line, with this curiosity in there of black hair and alabaster skin. In photos I see that most of the Armenians, though, look quite dark and dusky. Georgians are fairer. Somewhere in their midst, middle to all, maybe there lies my people. Sucked into one great cultural definition or another, but previous to that a tribe, probably invisible now and lost. I have seen all these historical skirmishes, one people reigning, then another, massacres, enslavings, deportations - always this has been the way. Islam carries on this primal genetic battle of superiority, and this was the way of others before them. It totally fascinates me, who is such a Britisher, to have a deep connection to this vast medley. My nearer DNA is overwhelmingly British and Viking, but over time such things are transient, over vast time that is, when cousins no longer take habit to marry cousins. A high Viking percentage for me becomes maybe minor for my great great great grandchildren, depending on where they are and who has been chosen for partners. For six or seven generations all is intact, but beyond that all is increasingly watered down to minute proportions. Our nearer ancestors in this regard are always more relevant. My own discovery of royal ancestry is so distant as to become but a fractional influence. The only constant over the eons, at least for a female, as I am, is that which does not water down and evaporate, and that is an unbroken lineage I find to these exotic and mysterious lands. How can I not be fascinated. What I do still have of the temporal, which will become lost to my descendants, is this 3% input from what I have been told is Central Asia. This, also, both fascinates and confuses me. I wonder if somewhere along the way one of my ancestral ladies was adopted into an English family. Was it Eleanor Caroline Barton, she who was raised in an orphanage and died so young of tuberculosis? Or was it Maria Harrison, clearly described as having jet black hair, alabaster skin and twinkling eyes? I never stop being fascinated by such mysteries. I have to consider, also, that this un-English appearance may derive from Italy, or maybe this Central Asian land, and be quite distinct from the root Caucasian mountain more ancient ancestry. Although a link may be there, all may be totally separate and distinct. That old Silk Route 3%, it's not that it couldn't have been an Armenian or other settlement, a trading colony, a religious centre, an exiled people, an enslaved group, removed from their origins. But this I can't yet know. The Central Asian designation kind of radiates out from Afghanistan, tumbling into the surrounding lands. Again, how fascinating. At least pre-Islam, a culture which still hoovers its way through the ancient places, covering over and disguising all that was. That destruction of Afghanistans great Buddhist mountain deities, what a heartfelt tragedy that was. I don't know all these people and places in the same way that I have come to know India. They are not so accessible, not open to travellers and explorers, they are risky and dangerous. Until, and if ever they become free from Islam, then they may recover some of their old glory and repute. In effect these lands have been taken hostage by Arab imperialism. I do wonder if because my ancient people have suffered this religious oppression, that I now feel it so. What the Armenians went through was like the holocaust against the Jews, who I also sympathise with, rather than joining in with the never ending scape-goating against them. Does the clue to my origins lie with the Armenians? Does it? Does it? AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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