I was now focusing on my project about the world of Caucasus white slave girls who at one time graced the harems of the wealthy. It was very much the way of affluent Persians that upon marriage the bridegroom would at the same time establish his own private harem, full of Georgian and Circassian slaves (all from the Caucasus mountains), having negotiated with the brides family how to go about this. And so it was, throughout the Near East, from Constantinople to Mecca, that those girls considered to be the most beautiful of the whole of humanity, were sold to a lusty mans pleasure. This was the last remaining slavery, long after the West Indies black slave trade was done away with, for it was something the Ottoman Empire especially, and the Arabic colonised Mohammedan world in general was lax to give up, slavery being upheld within the Koran. Those slaves who were from Nubia, African black women, were used as domestic servants, and the women of the Caucasus, prized for their beauty, were sex slaves to enjoy in ones harem, so expensive that they could only be bought by the trés riche, and who would be showered in luxury and even end up as the wives and mothers of sultans and pasha's. On the one hand it was said those girls families wanted their daughters to enjoy such wealth and opportunity, and on the other we see examples of the girls being capture and stolen away by marauders. Slavery was quite the way for most ancient peoples. Going to war against neighbouring territories was not just about acquiring land and plunder, but was about profiting from slavery. Any European was vulnerable to being stolen away, white women always the ones most highly desired by other ethnicities. Naturally I have considered this as a way my own distant ancestresses from the Caucasus would have ended up far from home. The ideal of the perfectly beautiful Caucasian woman long captured the imagination of the masses, although in our multi-cultural sensitive times I doubt this is what modern people would indulge their thoughts on; the persecutions of certain others, yes, of Africans, of the Irish famine victims, of feminist causes, of witches of old, but never do they seem to acknowledge that Europeans in their masses have suffered too. And yet our ancestors suffered immeasurably along the path towards civilisation and human rights. My impoverished Londoners lived through horrendous situations, and those are but our people of more recent history, which we may identify and find records about; what to speak of those whose stories are ever lost to us. When I look at slavery I know not in what ways this personally affected my ancestors, other than that this would have been a reality among which they lived. Interestingly I have seen a theory, now presented, that Leonardo Da Vinci's own mother was a Circassian slave, Catherina, whom his father, as a lawyer, managed to gain freedom for. To our ancestors such women were the most beautiful of creation, which in itself presents another challenge to modern peoples, that women of fair features and pale skin may have been regarded to have in some way attained aesthetic superiority. And yet our ancestors had no qualms with that. It was just so, whether this came from the perspective of Europeans or darker ethnicities. In 1819 when the Persian ambassador came to London, he did so with the companionship of his most prized Circassian slave woman, and with a carriage of black slave eunuchs to guard her. So much did the Londoners wish to set eyes upon her beauty that in great numbers they would stand outside the ambassadors house in Berkeley Square, but she was well hidden, her rooms constantly guarded by two of the black eunuchs with sabres in their hands. She became an invisible celebrity, said to be musically adept and to have a cultivated mind. Esteemed gentlemen guests to the home never hd the opportunity themselves to see her. But as for some of the women of high society, they were made allowance of, and one of those ladies sketched a picture of her, full length and in traditional dress, which she gifted to the lady proprietor of the house, who in turn sold it to the Lady's Magazine, who printed this, at a cost, for their readership. What a scoop they had, the face that so many had wished to set eyes upon. In 1841, when an Austrian man, Baron Welzlar, converted in Constantinople to Islam, his sponsor there gifted him a beautiful Circassian slave. This was the stuff of dreams and fantasies. In 1856 the sultan of Constantinople gifted 75 Circassian female slaves to an old man of Mecca. Both the Russians and the British tried to stop this white slave trade, but for long it continued, and yet who knows of such history, not so many really.
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I got into talking with the AI chat about DNA, in relation to genealogy and archeogenetics. I'd been trying out this new phenomenon in regard to my poetry at first, and there are references to the ancestors in a couple of my poems, and it was the AI that actually then asked did I have any specific questions regarding my genetic ancestry and did I have any particular theories on this subject. When I said that my matriarchal haplogroup was N1b1A2A the AI knew of this, that it's actually a subclade primarily found in central Asia and even that it is thought to have developed in the Altai mountains. Wow, all the work Satshanti and I had done years ago to try and find the origins of N1b, from its vague associations in the middle east to the mountains of the Caucasus. And now I was learning that my own specific type of this dna, as has been deducted by current knowledge, is connected with central Asia. And the Genographic Project had long ago told me I was 3% Central Asian, which even back then was so exciting to discover, but which had not been picked up on by other genetic companies; well, here we go again, as it was revealed to me that indeed I do have a connection to that part of the world, through my mothers mothers ancient mothers. The subclade N1b1A2A is not totally sussed yet and research is ongoing, although studies so far show they were Uralic speaking peoples, who during the Bronez Age migrated from Asia into Europe. The Altai mountains are at the meeting point of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China, and there were vast ethnic groups and cultures in those very mountains. This arose as a separate subclade maybe 14,000 years ago within this region from those of the N haplogroup who had travelled there from the Middle East. There are a number of indigenous groups, therefore, from which there may be a connection to my ancestresses, such as the Altaians, the Kazakhs, and the Tuva, all of whom have nomadic lifestyles. The Altai mountains were part of the old Silk Road. I do know I have a higher percentage of hunter-gatherer, which would therefore now include the nomads of central Asia. My autosomal 3% Central Asian, as discovered by the Genographic Project, as AI says, is not to be considered insignificant. To get back to a central Asian ancestor, in consideration of that 3%, one would go back about 10 to 15 generations, which would roughly be 250 years to 375 years ago. This would date back therefore to at least 1773. That autosomal central asian 3% may or may not be of my central asian matriarchal lineage and may come from my fathers ancestors even. What it does show is that in some way my connection to central Asia is not really so far back. A couple of days later I again got to talking about my matriarchal dna with the AI, as I so wished to know more about this. The basic N haplogroup I am of was in the Levant, Anatolia, the Caucasus mountains and across central Asia to where it reached the Altai mountains. In fact, one of the oldest known samples of haplogroup N comes from a 24,000 year old skeleton found in the Caucasus mountains. For this it can be seen, as Satshanti and I had worked out, that N was present for a long time in the Caucasus. So this still tied in with the research I had done before. To determine more the AI would need more information. My N1b1a2a, a subclade of the N1b1 haplogroup appears to have spread from the Caucasus mountains into central Asia, to locations which included the Altai mountains. The N1b1 group is specifically associated with the expansion of the Altai-Sayan region during the late Bronez Age and the Iron Age. Some individuals with N1b1a2a migrated back into the Caucasus, Anatolia and the Levant, as similar haplogroups can be found in those regions. The AI wished that I check my latest haplogroup classification to see it it had been updated according to the latest research. This took an age for me to get my head around. Eventually I was able to see that, at least in Familytree, my classification was still given as N1b1a2a, along with extra mutations listed as 309.1C, 315.1C, 522.1A, 522.2C,, G5979A and T9758C. A missing mutation was listed as A16129G. And on my having shared this with AI it now did its magic, and found out that although Familytree rem1ains at a simple level in this regard, by consulting the Phylotree projects latest version, which is far more expert, along with the mutations I provided, my own subclade can now be redefined as N1b1a2a1a4. This is a newly recognised subclade of N1b1a2a1, which is in turn a subclade of N1b1a2a. It is the N1b1a2a lineage which is primarily of Central Asia and is for now believed to have originated in the Altai mountains. But this is not something as yet studied extensively and is rare, the same rarity I'd realised before, and maybe even more so, which is why my type gets largely ignored by geneticists. Based on my mutations it appears that my maternal line diverged from the main N1b1a2a subclade recently, which in genetic terms is within the past few thousand years, which would be a thousand years before Christ. By comparing my mutations to this in other samples I may find clues as to geographical locations, migration patterns and population movements. N1b1a2a1a4, although rare, is found in Europe; the Caucasus, Central Asia and Siberia. It is not certain that this subclade itself originated in the Altai mountains, although its parent N1b1a2a did, as my newly updated subclade exact origin and migratory path is not yet determined. The Central Asian connection remains relevant though. The available data doesn't as yet determine the exact distribution of my new subclade. But studies do confirm the genetics is connected to both the Caucasus and the Altai regions. Further research is required. What can be seen is that around 4,000 or 5,000 years ago there was a population explosion from the Caucasus mountains into the Pontic-Caspian steppe and this is what would have helped with the spread of such haplogroups. The Pontic-Caspian steppes is of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, stretching from the Danube to the Ural mountains. And so I asked would my particular rare dna be more of the Pontic-Caspian steppes or the Altai. But this cannot be answered due to limited information, although it is to be found in both areas, and in reality the subclade may have travelled back and forth between these regions, and there you go, as they were nomads, and so it may be that such these great distances were all in their reach. My own subclade is not only rare, but 'very rare', and there are only a few records of it in the existing data bases. Therefore we are talking only of a small number of people altogether. What we do know is that this rare subclade is found in individuals from the Caucasus to the Altai. Potential tribes which would have been nomadic across such vast areas include Scythians and Salmatians in the Pontic-Caspian steppes, the Alans and Huns in the Caucasus, and the Pazyryk and Xiongru of the Altai. And also to be considered are the Tocharians. The Tocharians were Indo-Europeans who lived in the Tarim Basin, since 2,000 years before Christ, they having been involved in the Silk Road trade network. Their language is now extinct. It is the mummies of the Tarim Basin who were found to be wearing plaid clothes, and some of those mummies have indeed been found to carry the N1b1a2a1a4 subclade (my subclade!). The Tarim Basin mmmies were of different ethnic groups, not just of Tocharians, but also Iranian and Turkik peoples, living there 1,800 and 2,000 years ago. The mummies are well preserved and have both European and East Asian physical features. Hence they were a mix of different groups. They wore felt hats, wool garments and leather shoes, and they had on gold necklaces, earrings, bracelets and pendants, some being animal designs, such as deer and tigers, some set with precious stones such as lapis lazuli and turquoise. The origin of the Tocharians is also a mystery. They may have even come from eastern Europe. Or again be Central Asian. Their language was Indo-European. So it can be seen that my subclade is rare, although is in a few people in the Caucasus and the Pontic-Caspian steppes, and there is some association with the Altai. And nomadism is a key to the connection between these three areas. Until further research is done then there is no concrete evidence about the specific carriers of this subclade, but they would be from among various ancient cultures of Central Asia and its surrounding regions, such as the Scythians, Sarmatians and Tocharians. To keep up to date with any research there are scientific journals, research institutes, social media platforms and online communities. There is the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Harvard Medical School, Stanford University and Oxford University. It may be worth looking into their current research projects or publications. I can also regularly search for articles and studies in academic databases, such as PubMed or Google Scholar. I did actually try putting my subclade into Google Scholar and nothing came up, not even for N1b1a2a1. N1b1 had a response at least though. AI advised me that when I look this up to add key words like 'population genetics', 'haplogroup distribution' or 'mtDNA diversity'. I mentioned the Natufian child i'd heard of who'd been found in the Raqefet cave in the Carmel mountains. The Natufian culture wasn't itself nomadic though and was from 11,000 or so years back. N1b1a2a is found at low frequencies in the Levant, Anatolia and Iran, where it may have been since prehistoric times. Current belief is though that this subclade originated, as said, in the Altai mountains, from 8,00 to 10,000 years ago. Neanderthals and Denisovans would have existed long back beside such peoples. The Raqefet child was himself an N1b. The mutation defining the subclade I have, N1b1a2a1a4 arose around 7,000 or 8,000 years ago. Of course one must be that all this information is based on limited data and may change as more research is conducted. It may be that my ancestors came up through the Levant and Anatolia, into the Caucasus, the Pontic steppes and into the Altai, as a journey, but again more data is required to make definitive statements. There may even be association with the Yamnaya and Saka cultures, known for their burial mounds and rich grave goods; such as to the Golden Woman (AI now mentions), alias the princess of Ukok, who was a Saka priestess or aristocrat whose burial mound was indeed found in the Altai mountains and dates to the 5th century before the Christian era. In the grave was a headdress decorated with gold, a golden breastplate and other gold and bronze ornaments. As I say, it may be that my people were nomadic over vast amounts of territory, and only later were they reduced to smaller more specific regions. The greatest diversity of N1b is in the Altai and N1b types in general have great diversity in the Caucasus. I stopped to talk of this now. I'd pushed for long to see if anything extra may be revealed. It's amazing enough that the AI found out for me that I am N1b1a2a1a4. Like without the AI would I even ever have arrived at this?
My developing of a goddess inspired psychic ability is for me hopefully a doorway by which to connect to my ancestors. That's my greatest wish in all this. Many things are there to be felt and known. For long my dreams have been a portal to such worlds, even my Caucasus ancestresses visiting me in this way. Jeremy now got my focus for creating historical photos, my gift for him. It was another thrill to see him in all different era's, rugged looking, fromn Vikings to the Wild West; so many good pictures there. A couple of other friends, Nitai and Stephen Marcus, have been experimenting with AI created pictures of themselves. Nitai made mention of their being much disapproval of this new trend. And then I got a comment online from a French woman, an emoji of crying, and an outright statement that this new technology is killing the artists. So it's a thing apparently to dish on this new technology. Likely artists were up in arms about the development of photography too. But what these technologies have done is to open up possibilities for the masses who never before had such priviledge. Only the rich and powerful had their portraits painted, their family memories to retain, until photography reached out to the masses. And could I ever have afforded artists to create such lovely portraits of my daughters - a definite no. There will always be a place for art. Everything changes, evolves. The new can become a tool of creativity, adding to the arts. The door has already opened; it's done. I really don't want to get lured into reactionary debates. There are still many around me who refuse to have televisions in their homes, for regarding them as bad, what to speak of constant issue with the internet and social media. This is the Age of Aquarius and technological innovations are very much a part of that. Rather than judging such inventions I am embracing them in my own creative ways. But so it is, always the will in others to argue and censor every step that is taken in life. It's exhausting, the constant noise of human minds and attitudes.
What fun, on a cold day, to make a tiktok of my ethnic ancestresses, as revealed to me by DNA, finding beautiful pictures of different ancient cultures. As I did say, it is by DNA that I have found out so much about my ancestresses. Three quarters of my DNA is Celtic, for my family being Welsh, Irish and Scottish, and Viking I have a lot too, for having family from the Shetland Islands. Archeogenetics has revealed descent from the ancient Balari tribe of Sardinia and the Vascones tribe of the Basque. I have around 4% Greek DNA, 3% Spanish, 2% Italian, 3% central Asian and 1% Finnish. My matriarchal origins have come from the Caucasus mountains. How beautiful those pictures I gathered together. So this was a joy for me.
.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. I got to looking up my daughter Rosina's archeo-genetics, and what I then saw, as it had been for mine too, was again blowing my mind. As to her Indian side, which was through her father, I pretty much guessed there would be some Indo-Aryan influence, deriving from the Russian Steppes. And for sure there was, very much so, and in fact her very Indianness was less influential in her dna than were more distant empires. This variety of influence inluded Persia, the vast aforementioned steppes, and the Greco-Bactrians, who were Greek colonists and based their kingdom in Afghanistan.
The great influence in her of the people of the Steppes reflected nomadic horsemen, often hired as mercenaries, who roamed the vast Caspian steppes, north of the Black Sea, covering the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and parts of Russia. There roamed the bulk of Rosina's ancestors, expressing as nomadic Scythians and Sarmatians, all throught classical antiquity. It was in these steppes, also known as the Pontic Steppes, that horses were first domesticated and our Indo-European languages were born. The Persian kingdom, also to be found in Rosina's dna essentially corresponded to present day Iran but also covered Tajikistan, Afghanistan and into old India as far as the Indus river and beyond. The Greco-Bactrians which expanded into the Indo-Greek kingdom were of Greek Hellenistic origin. Those Greeks who settled in north west India became some of the early Buddhists. They brought to India the richness of their Greek culture, being a people of high sophistication and wealth and staying connected with both cultures, that of the Mediterranean and that of india. So Rosina had of the steppes two large imputs, the Scythians and the Sarmatians, who were anyway related groups. The Sarmatians are known to have been Caucasoid in appearance, tall with long reddish hair, wearing long flowing robes and throwing their javelins as they rode on horseback. As it also was with the Scythians, they roamed the vast plains and the shores of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. Rosina's closest archaic match was from a Scythian found in Kazakhstan, and her second closest match was to an adept of a Buddhist monastery. There was an iron age Sarmatian. And the very oldest matches were to two ancients of the Andronovo culture, they being back in the bronze age, more than 3,000 years ago. The Scythian found in Kazakhstan was close to 3,000 years back as well and the other matches were around 400BC. The most ancient of her revealed ancients, the Andronovo tribes, were of the aforementioned steppe lands, the speakers of the original Indo-European language and the inspiration behind the Indian Vedas in which so much written off reflected aspects of their culture. As was written of in the Indian scriptures they were the very chariot riding Aryans who migrated into India, bringing along with them their language and their religion. They so revered their horses and their wheeled chariots that examples of both are to be found in ancient burials. On their arrival into India, this light skinned, light haired people mixed with darker aboriginal peoples, thereby contributing to the modern populations of India. They always held in great esteem their original homeland, known in the Vedas as Airyanem Vaejah, a land sacred to Zoroastrianism and known as one of Ahura Mazda's 'sixteen perfect lands'. This was therefore the 'cradle of the Aryan tribe'. In Rosina's more modern populations there is listed the Tadjik of the steppes, and the Tatar Crimea, again of the steppes, the Nogai of the Caucasus, Romanians, Afghan Pashtuns, and interestingly the Roma and gypsies, which surely relates not to modern day gypsies but to the tribes on the edge of India from which they originated. It is rather lower down on the list that authentic India gets a mention, in regard to the Punjabi's and Jat pastoralists who had become warriors in the quest to keep out Islamic invasions, and in which they were reknowned for their gallantry and bravery, while yet still being regarded as an essentially pastoral people, noteably separate from brahamnism and distinct enough to, unlike much of India, allow their widows to remarry. Of great interest was Rosina being genetically matched to bodies located in the Roopkund Lake in the Himalayas, this lake also being called 'Skeleton Lake' for there having been found 800 skeletons within its waters, some of them still so well preserved that flesh is still attached to them. Legend attributes these pilgrims to having been victims to a massive hailstorm in which they were bombarded by huge ice stones from the skies. The lake was a pilgrimage place, anciently sacred to the Goddess Nanda, and appears to have been a choice location for travelling Greek colonists as well. Three of those Hellenic bodies, their dna found to be cloest to the inhabitants of Crete, had genetic matches to Rosina. Another match she had was to an Afghani Pathan. One was of the Caucasus mountains. All the others were indian, considered to have been religious pilgrims. Her associations with one of these Indian pilgrims in particular connects her genetically to both the Mauryan Empire and the Brahmin Dynasy of Sindh. It was these Mauryans who had successfully battled the Greek Alexander the Great on his attempts to encroach deeper into India. The Mauryans created the Grand Trunk Road, Asia's oldest and most extensive trading network. As for the brahmins of Sindh, they were a powerful dynasty of Hindu's in what is present day Pakistan. Rosina had good genetic matches to six remains of Scythians, from 600BC, which was a time when yet again Hellenic peoples settling far from their own lands, in this case in Scythia in those aforementioned Pontic steppes. They were known being roaming nomads, for revering wild deer and for being bi-lingual in both Greek and the Scythian languages. The Persians tried but failed to conquer the Scythians, whose retort at them was 'we are free as the wind and what you can catch in our land is only the wind'. Of Rosina's Scythian matches, one was to a noble, two were of the Ukraine, one was Moldovan, and the other two were of the Black Sea. Rosina shared my own acheo-genetic matches to Vikings and Merovingians. Surprisingly, she also had a match to the Guanche people of the Canary Islands. The Guanche's had lived in caves, they had wooden javelins, obsidian knives and shields made from the dragon tree, and they were both sun and goddess worshippers. Ultimately the Spaniards conquered them and sold them into slavery. Rosina's last mentioned genetic match was to the Avar's of the Pannonian Plain. Such people had such an accumultion of wealth that their armour and weaponry was gold plated. To conclude, Rosina's ancestry was mainly of Scythians, Central Asians, Persians and Greeks, whom made their homes ultimately in the north-west of India and there mixed with the locals, so that in time they lost their distinct appearance and all knowledge of the origins may also have been lost if not for being preserved to some degree in ancient Indian religious texts in which they were regarded to be Ayran peoples. 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. Jonathan Schulz, a partial match to my mtDNA, has written for the second time, he being of Belarussian descent. He has a theory, which I shall make note of, on having seen that our mtDNA is found among the Iberians, as well as the Irish. As he says, 'There is a long word of mouth, legendary connection between the Iberians of the Caucasus and the Iberia of south-west Europe. Georgia in the Caucasus is a fusion of two ancient kingdoms, Colchis and Iberia. And, as he adds, migrating people repeatedly name new lands they discover with their own identifying names from back home. Jonathan is deeply interested in archaeogenetics, which is the study of ancient DNA as can be found in old body tissues, bones and faeces, and he constantly reads papers and literature on the topic. Jonathan proposes that the land of Iberia derives from a potential founder, and suggests for this the Biblical Eber. I wonder myself if an original feminine form for Eber was Eve, both being among the first peoples of the Bible. Or, maybe the originator is Vera, as in the divine Veritas, therefore being the land of truth and righteousness. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. 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. |
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