I found something of interest, looking again at Roman Catholic baptisms for my Sugrue family in Greenwich, which I'd formerly at last accessed from, yes, FindMyPast at Kew Record Centre. What I now found was another baptised child of the family, hitherto unseen, Carmelita Jane. This baby must not have survived so long. What a super name Bartholomew and Catherine had chosen for her, Carmelita, which derives from Mount Carmel in the Holy Land, which means a beautiful lush garden, essentially the beauty of nature. I do wonder if they had been inspired by the lovely grand gardens of Greenwich, the Greenwich hill being nicknamed by them, and maybe others of the Irish community, Mount Carmel, or so I imagine. Even the godmother chosen for Carmelita had an unusually colourful name, Concetta, a name referring specifically to the immaculate conception.
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.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. 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. ![]() My American friend, Satshanti, was messaging me what was for us an amazing discovery. A cave being excavated in Israel on Mount Carmel has been found to harbour our matriarchal DNA N1b and is between 11,000 and 13,000 years old, found there in the remains of a 2 or 3 year old boy. N1b, so rare, and yet found. This boy, as Satshanti said, is one of our relatives and this is 'our cave'. Raqefet cave. The boy would be a brother, son, cousin. From this we can deduce that our people were part of the Neolithic Natufian Culture and Israel was their homeland, how wonderful. A few thousand years later my ancestors had moved northwards to Anatolia, as said Satshanti, as an N1b has there been found at that time. I don't even know how the Caucasus fits into this now. Satshanti says the journey up into those mountains would have come later. The mountains would have been a refuge from the tribal annihilations in the lowlands, as usual. I was so very excited as this was news long awaited, to have a sure ancestral connection to a specific place, and even a name given to that culture, and even more amazingly, some detail of lifestyle. The people back then lived in semi-subterranean round houses, wow, that in itself stirred my emotion. They laid on beddings of mint, sage and sedge grasses (this had been discovered in the caves where the bodies had been laid). They hunted gazelles and gathered almonds and pistachios. They made adornments from bone and little sacred statuettes out of limestone, of both human and animal forms. They were the first nomads to settle into established homes, and this was before farming. Mount Carmel is known to have anciently had a high altar and holy groves. It was such a sacred mountain that not everyone was allowed to step upon it. Pythagorus, the hero of my friend Trebha, said it was the most sacred mountain in the world and went there on pilgrimage. Satshanti sent me some pictures of the cave, one with its wide entrance and views, and of the archaeologists who are still present there. Oh, gosh, I want to go and tune into my ancient people. This is 'our cave' Satshanti and I are saying. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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