Having had some time now to digest the information that Romany genealogist Les Batt has given me, I can see at the very least this undertanding: That what is shown is a big connection with people along the old Silk Road, and especially a major presence in the Caucasus mountains and central Asia. The Spanish-Iberian element coming through my mother, the strongest connection being to the French Basque, as I seem from more reading, is indeed considered to have come to Britain from Ireland, accounting for the black hair still to be found there among the people. Some gypsy blood may be present via the connection to India, but as for now, understanding of gypsy patterns is still too primitive and unresearched to be able to firmly make conclusion about this. Another thing about all the Asian tribal groups I have had listed is that it is not that I would have had ancestors coming from every one of them. Although we share markers, this could have come from their own interbreeding with core groups which I am indeed connected to. I do think it would work this way. What would then be the authentic core origins of such markers is what becomes most relevant. Like with all those marked Iberians and Caucasus tribes, naturally they swapped markers between neighbours, therefore it doesn't mean my ancestors were necessarily within all those tribes. It is of interest that although the central Asian element didn't turn up in the analysis of either familytree or MyHeritage, it had indeed been presented to me by the Genographic Project, since which, until now, I had almost concluded this to be an anomaly. But it is indeed very much there. My American friend Satshanti (Peter Pynchon) now connected with me about these latest DNA revelations. And I had been waiting for his insight. He likes that I have a connection to Sicily, pointing out it is where the Greeks had farms for a while. As for my relatives in Iberia, this does hint at how my relatives moved into Britain, and I do think he is right about this, with Ireland being a midway link. Satshanti says he and I share roots in Tajikistan and that a Zoroastrian people from long back are revealing themselves here. Looking at our Gedmatch comparisons, Peter sussed that he and my mother share more than three chromosomes, and from further conversation we work out that this is from County Kerry in Ireland, as Peter has observed in looking at connections to other people with Gedmatches that my mother has some kind of relationship to an Irish Roche, and he himself well knows that his great great grandmother was an irish Roche from near Kerry, therefore this being totally the correct location to link us up. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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Absolutely, on this day, my mind was being blown by my supposed gypsy connections which more and more are revealed to be authentic, and not only that, the gypsies I am connecting with are helping me to understand more about my genetics. One fellow, Les Batt, was going out of his way to reveal the connections I have to his Romany compatriots. And not only that, for also he understands the tools which reveal specific populations and tribal groups which one is linked to. It is Les that is blowing my mind, and how lucky I am that he helps me to see what otherwise may have escaped me. Apart from the fact that I have tonnes of Viking Orcadian Scandinavian DNA and tonnes of Irish (I don't know where my Welsh pop fits into all this), I learnt that despite what MyHeritage had reported to the contrary I did have English DNA after all and it is of Cornwall (and how can I even understand how that fits in). And there is some Dutch and West German, which could be accounted for by my Norfolk ancestry, as Europeans were known to have brought the cloth trade there. This information was all so, so, and overall to be expected. What was mind blowing was other than that. Not only did Les give me lists of recent influences for the grandparents of both me and my mother, but he also presented totally exotic lists of secondary influences beyond that, and put his own time to preparing maps of the journeying of my ancestors out of India and into Central Asia - so the Genographic Project was correct about my central Asian link after all - and such a big influence he also showed me had come from the Caucasus mountains (I had been correct in focusing research here in the past too then); my ancestors had dwelt in Afghani-Pakistani border regions (no Pakistani separation back then mind you and this would have been known as part of India). One marker is to be found in Anatolia (where maybe the blending with Armenians had come in). One line travelled down through the Middle East into Egypt and across to Morocco, maybe that very gypsy journey into the south of Spain I'd recently been learning about. After Les showed to me that I had distant connections to him and other gypsies of the Romany group, he one by one presented to me more and more interesting details in relation to Gedmatch. A Utility K13 list, with its Oracle 4, shows the major imput from all four grandparents, which appears overwhelmingly Irish, with of course Orcadian, West Scottish, and the southern English (I wonder if this would tally with my Forest of Dean ancestry), as well as southern Dutch and west and north German. This was the first level of genetics I got and is of recent genetics. Totally I see that Irish is the strongest element. The next revelation Les came up with was the Oracle 4 in relation to my mothers own grandparents. This revealed, amongst all the expected Scandinavian Viking influence, which would account for Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Orcadian and nothern Dutch (although that last may still be to do with a Norfolk connection), an addition of Irish (which we've definitely known), and south-eastern English (Norfolk and London), but the real surprise in all this then came out, and it is Basque French. The French Basque is no minor element but is strongly present and is the second biggest influence beyond the Viking imput. Oh, could it be then that her grandmother Mary Ann's Greenwich mother Maria's appearance was really French Basque. Les pointed out that the Basques had not only remained in their Pyrenees enclave, but they had also made a home for themselves in Ireland, hence the black hair sometimes seen there. This presents then that Maria's Basque look, if that indeed is what it is, could have come to England via Ireland, rather than directly from France. Interestingly I read that the language of the Basques has similarity to tribal languages in the Caucasus, where my very mtDna has its origins. And Les Batt was revealing so much more to me. The Basque French is recent ancestry, beyond which there is so much more ethnic variety. I had asked Les if there was any way to know if one truly has Romany ancestry, pointing out that 11% of my DNA has been detected to be Mediterranean. Really for this one would have to detect a link to India itself, with the subsequent journeying towards Europe of these peoples. And Les found this for me, using the K13 Oracle, which specifically looks at markers shared with Asian peoples, along with usually looked at influences. For my mother, behind the primary source of Orcadian, British, Norwegian and Dutch, comes the secondary source, where are ones further back ancestors, and what shows up is not only French Basque in high proportions, but also a large amount of Iberian Spanish/Portuguese. As Les says, this even being what he had expected, this shows my mum's ancestors travelled widely in Spain. Not only have the old Irish been seen to have a link to both Spain and the Basque Pyrenees , but the gypsies had for so long dwelt in Spain, for which gypsies tend to have a big presence of Spanish DNA. There is so much of this Spanish influence in my mothers DNA, along with French, and interestingly, considering that I was drawn to spend a month exploring this island, some Sardinian. The Basque is not something in isolation then, but part of vaster exploration of the whole Iberian peninsular and beyond. And for sure this fits in with the autosomal results I was already told of by the general DNA testing companies. There's no defining, as such, as to whether this Iberian DNA is due to either Irish or gypsy influences, or both, although its pretty much accepted that genetic mixing has gone on between Irish travellers and European-Asian ones, and I think I can assume the same in my own case too. Now this is all fascinating enough, but my own K13 oracle is even more so. For beyond all my great influence of Irishness, which is of primary source, is the secondary aforementioned mass of Caucasus mountain tribes, central Afghani and Indian. This is as aspect of me, the ethnic colour of my being, whether it is through my mother or father, that not being clear as yet. It does look as if my more ethnic components aren't even through my mother, or at least they don't show up on her own oracle. And so has manifested a massive list of tribal peoples, by which an entire map of journeying across Asia can be plotted, with tribal names such as Ossetian, Balkar, Brahmi, Balochi, Kabardin, Georgian, Abhkasian, Makrani, Adygei, Afghan Tadjik, Kalash, Nogay, Chechen, Burusho, Afghan Pashtun, Kumyk, Sindhi and Tabassaran. Wow, in wishing to find ones exotic self how much more exotic can it get! Like we know Europeans came out of Africa via the Middle East. But this something totally different! An attraction I have had in my life to India, and the lands thereabout, reflects exactly where my ancestors have been. Les came up with three maps, one for the Asian journeying, one for the Iberian, and another of the total picture which includes every single discovered influence (which includes Greek, south east European, Cyprus as it looks to be (another place I'd like to go), Sicily, Egypt, the Levant and Morocco, all this being revealed by the Dodecad V3 test analysis. I am thrilled to bits with these maps. And of course by all the obscure tribes that have been listed. I looked up information on those tribal groups: Ossetia is of the Caucasus, the highest point in the landscape being Mount Kazbek and being part of the old Sillk Road. Other Caucasus groups are revealed, the Balkars, many of whom fled into Europe when the Mongols invaded, the Kabardin with their interesting belief that the soul of the ancestors watches over us, a soul which one is to perfect by honour and compassion, the Georgians, who had maintained their Christian identity even in the face of great pressure from neighbouring Moslem empires, Abkhasian whose land of the soul is on the shores of the Black Sea with its ideal mildly subtropical climate, a part of the ancient kingdom of Colchis, where is the worlds deepest cave (the Crows Cave), the Adygei Circassians, the Nogay who have been linked to the Golden Horde, who on settling in the Crimea became Crimean Tartars, still proud of their nomadic traditions which they consider to be superior to settled life, the Chechen who are fiercely independent and egalitarian, who had migrated to the mountains from the fertile crescent and are tall with all eye and hair colours, including red hair, and who are considered to be more European than Asian, with a strong connection to nature and love of freedom (their greeting 'marsha oylla' means 'enter in freedom', they are a happy and witty people, and it is they who, who with their diverse genetics, have this connection to the Basques, far more than they have to neighbouring east Europeans, the Kamyk of northern Dagestan, and the Tabassaran, also of Dagestan. And: On the edges of Afghanistan are the Brahuis, a relict people of Indian type, and the Balochi, a desert and mountain people living with the Pashtuns on the Persian plateau, though originally from the shores of the Caspian Sea (they are known to have plundered travellers in the desert and their singing and dancing women folk are known for their lullabies), the Makrani former mercenaries who to this day are found in the Gujarati princely states of Kathiawar, the Tadjik who are Persians who emigrated to central Asia, being former Zoroastrians with their fire temples, Aryans and Buddhists, the Kalash who are a unique aboriginal tribe practising animism, and whose women embroider their dresses with cowrie shells (elopements are part of the culture, even if with already married women), crows representing the ancestors (sadly this tribe has been targeted by local Muslims and militants), the Barusha who are the Hunza people, famed for living more than a hundred years, and being from north of the Himmalayas, their stunning scenic land associated in legend with the lost kingdom of Shangri La, the Afghani Pashtuns who are Pathans of unclear origin, originally being Buddhists, Hindu and Zoroastrian, worshippers of the sun and of Nana, and the Sindhi of what was West India, originally tribes of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with Mohenjo Daro being one of their larger settlements. Having looked at all that I don't see such a bold connection to southern India, as mapped by Les, although having said that, the Brahui were speakers of a Dravidian language and are thought to have come from Karnataka. I think, also, that with such nomadic travelling ancestors, one must consider that they not only would have travelled westwards but eastwards too, as along the Silk Road, forming colonies and cultural links to other groups, and in such explorations being isolated from their origins, absorbing at least partially into surrounding populations. Therefore myriad peoples are seemingly linked to, whereas the connections may rather have been later, and no one has ended up of one pure type of anything. Whatever was our African origin, this has diversified into so many exploratory tribes, chiselling such unique, differing identities, all who will re-emerge ultimately back into one vast people, like the expanding and then contracting universe. Along this multi dimensional journeying we experience such a blossoming of all that can be, while gathering a trillion personal stories, and I can't not but be fascinated. One thought that does come to me is that this mapping is not so much a road journey that one group of ancestors made. It is more like a river, into which flow not only springs, but also other complexities of rivers. It is not that every tribe was visited and a blending of peoples then enacted, all as part of the journeying of an edge of India people; but rather fewer people were met with, who already had long experiences of connecting to the various groups in their lands. As I can see, there is one big group of Afghan, old India, mountain tribal, and central Asian. And the other big group displays the huge variety of all the tribes of the Caucasus mountains. With emphasis being on the very edges of old India, it does not seem that any exodus came from what is modern India itself. Rather, since the exodus, tribes who remained have journeyed in quite the other direction, into India. Those met on travels westwards already had complex mixtures in their genealogies, again back to the symbolism of the river. Whatever may have been her complex Caucasus origins, a girl may have met others of my lineage nowhere near there, but in Anatolia or Greece, Italy or Spain, or Ireland. Also, though I do seek proof for gypsyness in my family, it has to be admitted that there still is nothing concrete. There could be other reasons why my people travelled across Asia, the Silk Road appearing to have quite some relevance; so that they may rather have been traders, missionaries, or explorers who set up distant colonies. My head has been so full on absorbed in all this, so that I have kind of reached overload with it and need to have a break and return with freshness later. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() The rains came down on and off all day, sometimes great torrents which knocked off the wifi. I engaged myself in studying the white slave trade, specifically the Circassian girls of the Caucasus, of which there was much written in old British newspapers. Even when the western trading in black slaves was banished, this trade in white slaves continued, an ongoing prerogative of Islamic society, the whole system of harems depending on it. Britain was very slow to condemn this, for which they were accused of hypocrisy, having ended their own slave trade. In a way they were glamourising this selling of beauty to the very rich, by which some of the ladies ended up as wives and mothers of kings. Of course, I look because I theorised long ago that by this trade in white flesh my matriarchal DNA was lightly disseminated down from the Caucasus into the Middle Eastern countries. Genghis Khan is also recorded to have carried these mountain people away as slaves, as had the Persians too. I still have to consider whether it is Armenians who are a real source for my DNA. Still the Caucasus mountains in some way hold the key. And, then, also, I have been informed there is a connection to somewhere in Central Asia. And all I can ever do at this present state in time is speculate. And one day science may progress to clarify all totally. 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. My American friend, Satshanti - Peter Pynchon, wrote on my mtDNA page, which is inactive really, but for this now, that which are his latest understandings. In taking to a geneticist he has gleaned that the origins of our shared rare mtDNA, non Jewish N1b, appear to be in the North East Caucasus, many of this type being found in Dagestan, and a lesser amount in Ossetia, a bit to the west. I suppose this is, for now, the best we can know of it, and it's pretty cool really. From being told at first we are total Middle Eastern but rare, to our working out the source is really the Caucasus mountains, to hearing now it is to the very north east of those mountains in the regions of Dagestan and Ossetia. Satshanti has looked at his autosomal results, and regardless, understanding so much more on this subject that I can make of it, he has deduced that from the high Caucasus his people migrated down to Lebanon, being drawn to the mountains there, the stronghold of the Christian Maronites, underneath Mount Lebanon. One of the strongest cousin connections he had found is to Hadchit in Lebanon, which is on the edge of the Qadisha Sacred Valley. From there his people had emigrated to America, possibly through Montreal. Well, this is amazing, what he has researched. I wish I could likewise suss all this out for my own people so neatly. It is really a delight. Maybe I need to do whatever autosomal test he did, rather than the so vague Genographic. The only clue I have so far deduced, maybe, is that my Caucasian line may have come via the Silk Route. From Dagestan/Ossettia to the Silk Route to London. And all is too vague. I mean I have no certainty even if that silk route descent is through my actual matriarchal line, though it would make sense. And this vast classification of Central Asia, could it be stretched to include the Caucasus, but one side of the Caspian to the other. I have far more questions than answers as regards this. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Waking up, I'd been having some vision, which was that once, long, long ago, not in this lifetime, as a child, I was chained to a bear, in dirt and in fear, forced to be like that day and night. From this there is still in me a fear of bears. This was from the times of street performances with bears, when the owners roamed with them, making them dance to entertain villagers and townspeople. If this story really does reflect a past reality or is but a dream and a dream only, well, it's not that I even have any compulsion to believe in reincarnation, at least not in the ways it has so far been presented to us. As I lay in bed trying to understand the vision, a theory came to me. This theory makes some sense of my long interest in genealogy. The performing bear scenario may be, long, long ago, an experience of my own ancestors. But it would not even be a me and them separation going on, rather I am them, and they are me, eternal life being something that passes along families. The very life force I now experience is my gift from them and has its own individual expression. Each new person gets a blast of spirit identity in a totally fresh and unique way, other than which all that we have been is in there too. Eternal life is that which passes along families. When I envision an ancestral experience it is because this too was my life. From D'Auvergne Bane I have arty humanism. From beyond him maybe is a connection to India. In choir days I felt magic in the music of Georgia and the Caucasus long before I knew my female lineage was from there. Me, my forbears and my children have aligned familial journeys, in which our expressions will continue, even after my physical body has perished and my individual expression has evaporated. Acintya veda veda tattva in Hinduism expresses this, the one and the many. Really, all of us are family, for which we should respect all life. All comes from the essence. So I mull over these latest contemplations. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Satshanti Peter messaged me, interestingly, about another DNA test, called 'autosomal', which I'm not sure I understand so well, but he explains it like this: the mtDNA type he and I share through our long time back mothers is carried lineally only and is from very distant times, it being to the Caucasus mountains that we have traced this shared connection; but autosomal analysis looks at DNA mixing from a broader range of our ancestry, not just of our female long-unchanging type, but having a shorter range of some 400 years. By this Satshanti has discovered for himself a connection to Lebanon, to Portugal, and Ireland. I think I need him to make more sense of this for me. It sounds like quite a genealogical bonus. Maybe I will at last discover from where comes the black hair, ivory skin and glistening eyes of my London bunch. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. On reading Virginia Woolfs 'Orlando', I read that 'he who was English root and fibre, should yet exalt to the depths of his heart in this wild panorama' and this reminds me of how a strange far away place, such as India, could likewise make an impression on me. 'He wondered if in the season of the crusades, one of his ancestors had taken up with a Circassian peasant woman, thought it possible; fancied a certain darkness in his complexion.' And there it is, something I have contemplated myself, since learning of my rare DNA from the Caucasus, that it could have been in the time of the crusades that one crusader, falling in love with one of these famed beauties, could have brought a girl back to England with him, hence how I could then end up so English but so rare. Nearly extinct. Will my daughters have daughters? Will their daughters have daughters? This is not the age of multitudes of children anymore. It is likely that we will indeed become extinct. For that I do feel a sadness. From a tribe to near genocide to depopulation, our mtDNA is not one of the grand mass success stories swamping this earth. Delicate, fading, and nearly gone. If only I could have more daughters, but my fertile days are over. My sister died childless. My mother was an only girl with two brothers. Granny Isabelle's sister, Connie, only had a boy child. I can do no more. It's all up to my daughters now. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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