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 watched an ethnic geneticist guy on Tiktok, who was doing a 'live', his audience being majorly of Moslems wanting to be told that the Palestinians are the true indigenous people of the Levant, and yet he couldn't give them that. Rather they align more with the Bedouins of Arabia; Israeli Jews have themselves some Mesopotamian alignment. Even religious history backs this up. Indeed the most indigenous peoples, still in the land, appeared to be a few minority Christian groups, kind of like the Copts in Egypt also being indigenous there, the Druze and the Samaritans. The Samaritans shared an origin way back with Jewish peoples, with their holy mountain being Mount Gerizim, atop which they had sacrificed animals to God. Whereas the modern Jews at some point relocated their holiest mountain to Jerusalems Mount Zion instead. Samaritan and Jewish men do indeed have the same male Ydna. It is said that when Jewish people were historically kidnapped into Babylonia, they were the town dwellers, and that the country folk, who remained in the Levant, it is they who would be known separately as the Samaritans. The Samaritans, whose own women were likely enslaved, had to marry women from outside of Judaism, and therefore when the mainstream Jews returned from Babylon they called the Samaritans half breeds and rejected any alignment with them As for the original Palestinians, as in the Philistines of Peleset, they were Sea Peoples, and although modern Palestinians had assumed their name, really there was no connection genetically between the old and the new. Rather, the original people of Palesta had dna closer to the Italians primarily and the Greeks secondly, the closest comparisons being to Italians of Campania, then Basilicata, and in continuing order, West Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, Lazio, Molise, Abruzzo, Umbria (all Italian so far), and then Dodecanese Greek. Palestine is maybe, anyway, not an appropriate name to identify with for these modern 'Palestinians', because they claim to be indigenous according to a people they have no connection to. Although Palestinians often enough identify with their Arab identities, this in itself becomes an over simplification. Yes, as it is to be expected there is majorly the influence of Arab colonisers, the similarities hereon being mostly to the people of Yemen, there is also African dna in the mix, with other than that much similarity even to their Jewish neighbours, that is to Semitic Canaanites, for which, yes, that Mesopotamian element is in there too. This is likely due to some Jews, and Samaritans too, converting or being forced into Islam, maybe inbetween such eras having firstly adopted Christianity. Like really, one does wonder what happened to all those Samaritans, now a tiny community, and to all the Christians, the Middle East having been at one time a greatly Christian land. Thus it may be so that present Levantine Moslems were at one time pressured to to change their religious outlook and indeed did so in order to survive. The Jewish groups with the most Canaanite influence are Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews, Syrian Jews, and all other Mizrahi Jews really, the Mizrahi being all those Jews who never left the middle east, as did the Sephardi's and Ashkenazi's. Ashkenazi Jews have 20% Canaanite dna, their European component being more closely aligned to Italians and Greeks, with their male Ydna shown to be of Middle Eastern origin. So Abraham, we know from scripture he had come from elsewhere, from the north-east, but Jews anyway are Canannites, in part, along with Mesopotamian. I'm curious as to how it is that, with the Jews having kept their purity during captivity, they would be of more distance from the homeland than their more mixed Samaritan cousins. Maybe always the poorer country folk, if that's indeed what the Samaritans were, were less of foreign influence, the wealthier townsfolk being more cosmopolitan. Even some of the Jewish male Ydna, a small part, comes from the Pathans, a people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Was Abraham from even further afield? Much struggle is reflected in the early scriptures, in the times when local peoples were pressured into being monotheistic, despite their natural preference to worship a variety of gods and goddesses, as well as the holy cow and the pillars of Asherah. In later centuries we can see that the locals were reigned in again, this time by Islam. One does wonder whether those locals, subsumed into yet another new religion, were captured enslaved women, sex slaves as such, for this being an Islamic endorsement. Because quite some of the Gazan patriarchal lineage is Arabic. Even a fair amount of the matriarchal dna is East African, indicating that the Arabic men who settled here brought with them not their own women family members from Arabia, but rather slave women from Africa. In this way one can see there has indeed been outside colonisation.
Diving into my son George's archeo-genetics I saw he was of the European tribes, markedly of the Visigoths, but also the Illyrians, Gauls, Franks and Thuringii. His actual closest modern connections were to France and Spain, before even his Italian. It was interesting how his Italian father, Francesco, had been so drawn to this area in which we now lived, especially to the Visigoths, who had sacked Rome, and with him having been so anti-Rome, and of his pro-piracy, which was the past-time of the Illyrians. And, then again, how apt that George had French nationality. George's closest archeo-genetic match was to a Gaul in Lombardy. His second was to a Scythian Moldovan (ah, like his sister Rosina), this being a woman who again had Gaul dna, so being a woman who had married into the Scythians. Thirdly there was a match to a woman of the Thuringii tribe found in Bavaria, her head having been fashioned during her youth into an unnatural state, according to a noble's ideas of beauty at the time, and who was buried with her jewellery. Fourthly there was another Lombard burial, this time the dna being of the Franks. Then there was a bronze age Gaul, then a mixed Gaul Illlyrian found in Germany, then a bronze age mixed Frank Illyrian found in Prague, then a mixed Frank Ostrogoth found in Hungary; and lastly a bronze age burial in Serbia of a mixed Gaul Etruscan. Interestingly, Serbia was listed as one of George's modern populations. And like me he had a genetic connection to King Louis XVI of France. The dna of King Louis XVI was mainly Illyrian mixed with Roman, Gallo-Roman, Thracian and Roman-Hispanian. So George was, through his father, very much of the tribes of Europe. From me he had Roman gladiators, massacred Vikings and Merovingian nobles. And amazingly he had a Greek connection to one of the people who had perished in the Himalayas at Roopkind lake, this being another match to Rosina's own ancestors. Really interesting to see was that George had a match to crusader from Tuscany who had gone to the Holy Land, found there in Lebanon where he had been slain by either the Moslems or the Mongols. A connection to plague victims was made mention of as well. I now turned to looking at my Aunty Lolly's archeo-genetic dna, she being my fathers sister. Her ancient dna was pretty much like mine really, of Celts, Saxons, Franks, Danish Vikings and Vandals. And of modern populations she was mostly Irish and Welsh. Her closest archaic match was to the Bell Beaker peoples. Many individuals of Britain and Europe had good matches to Lolly. Lastly I was looking at my mothers archeo-genetics, aha, so very Viking. Her largest influence was of Icelandic Vikings, after which were Saxons, Celts, Vandals and Danish Vikings. Iceland appeared to be part of the wider domain of her Shetland seafarers, her father being of a Shetland family. One Viking, a victim of the Saint Brice massacre at Oxford, was close in genetics to my mother. Even this connection was classed as very unique, for which all research categories were freely opened up for this individual, which others would have to pay for. Although this young man was a Viking his dna was very mixed, there being primarily Celt and secondly Icelandic viking. This would be attributed to the Viking pioneers having taken native celtic girls for their wives. Other less dominant dna types in this individual were Saxon, Vandal and Pict. Likely then this Viking individual was linked to our Shetlanders and maybe even was a direct ancestor. I'd already come to understand by now that our Shetland ancestors were not exclusively Viking, as had been previously presumed. As it could be seen by the example of early settlers of Iceland, regardless that those pioneers were Viking men, they took along with them many Irish slaves, the most alluring women of which they made wives of. These women were Celts and Picts, and though their men folk had the fate of being enslaved and massacred, as was generally the way of the more attractive women throughout ancient history, their beauty saved them. Another match to my mother was of a Celt in bronze age Scotland, discovered during landscaping work in the garden of Evergreen House on the East Lothian coast. Those remans formed part of a larger bronze age burial ground. Other matches to Icelandic Vikings came up, one being a Gaelic Viking mix and this person being one of the last Vikings to still practise the Norse religion before all would embrace Christianity. All I was discovering was so interesting to me, and yet it was late and sleep was overwhelming me, for which I had to suspend all for now. 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. ![]() In my genealogical research I looked at improving a friend Mary's tree and worked out that she was a second cousin to Bamber Gascoyne, the compere of University Challenge. I messaged her the discovery and she knew it anyway. They meet up a lot and their families are close. This is a grand ancestry, back to Crisp Gascoyne, mayor of London. And then there are the Munro's. Interestingly, Ian also has Monro's who had a mansion, Druids Stone, where really was located a druids stone. Wouldn't that be a hoot if Ian was not only a distant cousin of Jeremy's but of Mary too, as if Ian is somehow the keystone connecting us all, in ways we can barely imagine. What an amusing concept. I looked up any substance for this new connection, but records further back are too lacking. I had a good try at finding something. And Ian's tree is rather fascinating. His Munro's married more than once into Jamaican colonial families. So interesting are Ian and Mary's family histories. And how would you know this of Ian who has not a drop of grandeur in him. Here I am, pursuing my paupers in and out of the workhouse, while a bunch of others around me are of esquires and famous families. I've also looked more at Jeremy's 'Oliver Beckerlegge' of the United Free Methodist Church, taking care of peoples souls, and interestingly getting into trouble again and again for refusing to vaccinate his firstborn. Mary's family tried to keep slavery legal, strongly opposing its abolition. The slaves of Jamaica, whose labours fed Ian's family fortunes in the sugar trade, rebelled and even sacrificed one of their white captives. There is so much of interest, the deeper one looks. Mary's Munro's are most esteemed, her grandmother, Eva Munro, being the head of the entire clan of Munro's, which then passed down to Mary's uncle Patrick, who though a Gascoigne by his mothers marriage, kept his mothers maiden name in order to be rightful chief of the Munro's. Ian's Munro's have to fit in somewhere with that great tribe, but I can't work out how. Did not Mary have the most glorious genealogy of us all, and had she not hippied it all away for a rock star. 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. I was working on my project file, naturally, when my friend Ian turned up. He and I looked together at some of his genealogy, both the Italian Napolitano's in London side, and the Irish Scott's who made their fortune in Jamaica as colonists owning slaves. One of his ancestors, a John Scott esquire, had extra marital children with a slave woman called Nanny, two daughters who he freed from slavery. Ian reckoned he himself would have been making merry with his favourite slave girls too. He did wonder how he'd not profited from some of this great family wealth, but then there it was, further down the line in his family someone going bankrupt. And not only that but his granny Esme rebelled in a most bohemian way by dating and marrying beneath her station, to Federico Napolitano, who it was said pushed her for marriage again and again until she gave in. Federico shut out the rest of his Italian family in horror at his father Giovanni remarrying after the death of his mother Clementina. By all means, Ian came into an isolated family, lost to both Italian and well to do links. His family even covered up from him that they were part Italian, so that he was unashamedly insulting Italians when young, calling them wops, not realising he was one too. Only as a teenager did he learn the truth.
I watched on the internet a whole black American ex slave genealogy series which was so interesting. General research was combined with the addition of DNA study, which much appeals to me. The black gentleman who made the series turned out to be only half African and half European, and he did have pale parents, while being darker himself. This analysis was uncovered by a an admixture DNA test. How fascinating that is. Some slaves had even mixed with native Americans (red Indians) and some with Chinese imported labourers. Many have European Y-DNA in their male lineage, because of slave owners having had children with their women slaves. Therefore it is the matriarchal DNA that has to be followed to source back to an original tribal area of Africa. For almost all this will work, though not for our gentleman producing the film, who was most surprised to find that not only his male lineage, but his female too, came from Europe. Yet another newly developing DNA test, though, can look at all the middling DNA, in between the Y and the Mt, focusing just on this mans black parts, and in this way parts of Africa could at last be pin-pointed for him. It does get me thinking, I should get back into this DNA support of researching, but I also know I need ample money to do so.
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AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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