At last I was making advances in my Norfolk ancestry. In regard to the Bane's-Beans-Beanes I had never got further back than Thomas Bean of Thorpe Market having a father Richard Bane from Northrepps. From various documents I now sussed Richard was born in Trunch in 1677. Trunch, yes, so many Banes and Beans had lived there, there had to be a connection really; all are related somehow. So, Richards son, Thomas, my ancestor of Thorpe Market, it was he who had begun the tailoring trend in our family, carried on down through the generations, but as for his own father, Richard, he was a maltster. A maltster is master of the beginning of the brewing process, soaking in general barley in water to make malt. This barley would be raked on the ground for a few days until germination began, by which the starches were converting into sugar, at which point all was roasted; the longer it was roasted then the darker the malt, lightly for a pale ale. This was big business, as just about everyone drank beer, making for the maltster a great deal of money. Richard Bane had two wives, firstly Mary Cubitt, and then my ancestress Rachel Bayfield, also from Trunch, but lately living with her family in Gunton. Rachel was from a non-conformist family, following a Christianity separate from the established church, for which she was baptised in an independent chapel in a countryside barn near Bradfield. In accordance with the marriage license details she and Richard intended to marry at Norwich Cathedral, in the chapel of St Luke. I've always loved Norwich cathedral and its grounds leading down to the river. The marriage record itself seems to suggest another church was the venue, St Mary in the Marsh, which was in the Cathedral Close nearer to the river. There is no contradiction there, as I discovered. St Mary in the Marsh was pulled down in 1564, the parishioners taking their font with them into that very St Lukes chapel within the cathedral, now being permitted their worship there. St Luke's chapel was one of several chapels radiating out from the apse of the cathedral, and was quite small. So my ancestors did marry in Norwich cathedral; how amazing. I would have to visit this at some point; hopefully. And Richard and his wives graves, I'd discovered to be in Trunch, seeing transcriptions of the writing on their monuments. Richard's two wives, Mary and Rachel, were buried together. Ah, I love family and love my ancestors, hence why I'm so fascinated with the detective work of getting to know something of who they were. This is ancestral worship, part of my spirituality. In connecting with them they become present for me and I honour them. I continued to make so much progress with my Bane's of Trunch, finding the 1680 will of Richard the maltster's grandfather, Robert Bane, who was a worsted weaver. This was thanks to another weebly site dedicated specifically to the history of Trunch, so helpful, and such a kindness to have shared. Some sources reckoned the Bane surname to be of the Huguenots, but as I saw my Banes were in Trunch even prior to the infamous Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre. The first Trunch baptism for my family which I'd found was intriguingly far back for a typical parish register, for John and Marjorie's son Richard in 1560. The Bartholomews Day massacre was in 1572, and it was only in 1560 that the first French Huguenot church was established in a private property by followers of John Calvin, the same year our first recorded Trunch Bane was baptised. Flemish settlers, on the other hand, had been coming to Norfolk since medieval times, bringing along their pet canaries, and notably their skills to do with the wool trade, which brought immense prosperity to the land. It can be seen that my ancestors were indeed involved in the cloth trade. As a worsted weaver Robert would have at least benefitted from the skills brought by the Flemish settlers, 'strangers' as they were known, if not also having their blood within his veins. Not that my mother and I had Dutch DNA. We had plenty of Viking though, for which one would accord more to the theory that the Bane surname derived from the language of Pictish tribes in their description of blonde and fair skinned people. Robert Bane, the worsted weaver, he was born in 1603 and died in 1680, his body infirm, but his mind still sound, offering his soul into the hands of God Almighty. He made sure to give monies to all his grandchildren, who at that time were still teenagers. The mention of all beneficiaries within the will was so helpful for understanding more the Bane family at that time, as it was so with the other wills of the Bane family. I was thrilled with the discoveries I was making. Like, I had got back with them to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and that fascinated me, as it seems such a vastly distant time and yet really was not so long ago, in consideration of the family generations. I'd got back that far before, on my Shetland line, to the royal Scottish King James V, cousin to Elizabeth Tudor, both sharing the same grandfather, Henry VII. Royal connections get dismissed as being too distant, for which they are considered to be irrelevant, but they may be closer than one realises, and really all are relevant; all are family. Of my mothers parents therefore, both the lineages I have traced back to Tudor times; not so with any of the other lineages. Because most record keeping fails to take one that far back. As Tudor history was so very compelling this was great to for the second time connect my people back to such times, firstly to the royals and now to the country folk. Looking at the world my first recorded Banes would have been familiar with, it is likely that John and Marjorie were children when Henry VIII forcibly shut down the monasteries, shrines, friaries and convents, places the general folk would have made pilgrimages to and been greatly inspired by; thus the folk love of communing with sacred relics and seeking of miracles in holy settings was now denied to them. I myself feel my ancestors old fascination for such things; it has revived a little in me. And so I studied up about the dissolving of the monasteries and of sleeping sickness outbreaks, of priors who resisted the dissolution being hung, drawn and quartered as 'traitors', and of many monks and nuns being given pensions. In Henry VIII's time the ex monks and nuns were forbidden to marry, in Edward VI's time they were permitted to marry, in Mary I's time those marriages were annulled and the pensions ended, and in Elizabeth I's time the marriages were once more legitimised and the pensions restored. The destruction of relics, holy crosses, saintly icons and Mother Mary statuettes was brutal; surely this deeply hurt the people. The deities of Mother Mary, such as at holy Walsingham, also in Norfolk, which all would have visited on pilgrimages, Walsingham being the most venerated site in Britain (I've been there and loved the place), were taken in a cart to London and destroyed, reckoned to have been burnt in Thomas Cromwell's garden, with no witnesses attending. One of those Mary's, also destroyed, was a black Madonna of Willesden, in London. Some stories profess the Mary's were hidden and substituted, one (the Mother Mary of Ipswich priory) being smuggled into Italy. The people, who'd had their Mary's everywhere, in chapels, churches, and pilgrimage places, who ever chanted 'Our Lady of Walsingham pray for me; Our Lady of Ipswich pray for me; Our Lady of Willesden pray for me', now had the divine feminine with its ancient links to goddess worship, always on a folk level in the hearts of the people, denied to them; her healing, her mercies, miracles, the protection of old and sick, the feeding of the poor, the vast sacred communities which were like villages unto themselves; all gone. Priories were burnt to obtain the lead, stones and paving slabs were pilfered for new projects, ancient books were used for toilet paper, or roofs simply fell in due to neglect. Walsingham was close to where my Norfolk ancestors lived and they would have gone on pilgrimage there, maybe on horseback, maybe walking, as had thousands of others, including royals and aristocrats; even Henry VIII visited there twice with his Spanish Queen Catherine. That which at one time Henry revered he later destroyed, his wives, the sacred places of Britain, even his very pal Cromwell who directed the dissolution of the monasteries on his behalf, this being in anger at Cromwell having encouraged him to marry the repulsive Ann of Cleaves. And our ancestors would have observed such madness and to survive would adapt again and again and again. The old ways would not be passed onto their children. All would be forgotten.
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Myheritage had updated peoples ethnicities, for which my Mediterranean dna was no longer 11%, but was more like 5%, being of Greek, Southern Italian and Italian. Although I don't have specifically English dna, like my mum and my aunty Lolly, I do have England as an 'additional genetic group', as I do the Shetland Islands. So, yes: Irish, Scottish and Welsh is 66.8%, which includes the Shetland Islands Scandinavian (Viking) is 27.2% Greek and Southern Italian is 2.5% Italian is 2.3% Finnish is 1.2% My mum's update is; Irish, Scottish and Welsh: 66.7% Scandinavian: 30.8% Italian: 2.5% Her specific group is Shetland Islands and a lower confidence additional suggestion is Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. Although my mum had been given 7% English formerly, this time no English came up for her at all. My Aunty Lolly, who I'm sure got different sibling dna than my dad, she having no Greek or Italian, got:
Irish, Scottish and Welsh: 52.5% (specifying Ireland and South Wales) Scandinavian: 25.5% English: 12.9% West and North Europe: 1.9% Her specified groups are South Welsh, South-West England (which would be the Forest of Dean) and England. As a low confidence suggestion she has Southern USA My daughter Eleanor's half sister, Eashani, has actually done her autosomal dna on 23 & Me; being fully Gujurati on her mums side, and on her fathers side English and French (he having ancestors from the Channel islands). My kinesiologist replacement (for a while), Olivier, asked me if I had family links to Iceland, as I have that 'look', and actually with my Shetland Island dna I do indeed have genetic connections to those Vikings who were early on in Iceland, as I have seen, particularly in my mothers archeogenetic dna matches. This sunny clime in the south of France is maybe too much for me, he suggested, and its so that my face was particularly dry and erupting. But, anyway, as my dna has revealed, I am part Mediterranean, a Myheritage update emphasising that this little part of me is southern Italian, both Italian and Greek. On Facebook I joined the Ivereagh Peninsula genealogy group and how welcoming those other members were. My Irish was of County Kerry and I didn't even know if my Bartholomew Sugrue was of the Iveragh Peninsula or not, as this family was still to much of a mystery, but most Sugrue's were indeed from there, and one of Bartholomew's fellow County Kerry men in Greenwich days, Patrick Reardon, who was best man at his wedding to Ellen Sullivan, was indeed from the Iveragh Peninsula, from Waterville.
Well, such fun it was to make time travel pictures for both my daughterx, the dark and the fair, and how well this worked out for them, with beautiful artistic portrayals manifesting. Thank you Myheritage, I so love it. My daughters were as divas with their precious unquique beauty, as art. So this I was long involved in. Viking Rosina Indian Rosina, as is half of her genetics via her father. Sisters down through the ages. It's such a delight for me to have these pictures which show so beautifully these girls I have brought into the world. And it's so that for genealogical purposes I could well use all our pictures as representative of the ancestresses.
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.
On staying with a friend, Andy Worman, in Norwich, I was writing his genealogy out for him, a full map of his ancestors, on various bits of paper. On a trip to the sea we passed through his mothers ancestral village of Hempnall, a place of so many fond memories for him and his brother, Hugh. Many of their relatives had lived there cousins, aunts and uncles, for which they'd all been known locally as the 'second royal family'. Some of them did indeed have an attitude of being important. And yet now not one remained in the village. Andy and Hughs grandfather was well respected in the village, ginger haired, doing good works, not strong enough to be sent to war, and he being a Methodist and a lay preacher. On looking more at their genealogy, I saw that one ancestor, Henry Howe and his son in law, George Wigger (who was a silk weaver) had run the Half Moon Inn on King Street in Norwich. George Wigger had got into some scrapes in his time which were duly recorded in the papers; his being attacked by a lad on King Street; and a drunkard in the pub bashing the eye of Georges wife, knocking her to the ground. One thing about staying with Andy was his mountains of books. In one book it was reorded that in olden times colic pains in ones tummy were thought to be due to a snake having got in there, either through the swallowing of snake spawn or due to one having climbed in through ones open mouth while sleeping.
In one Norse legend, a King Olaf Tryggvason used brute force to christianise the heathen Vikings of Iceland, one story about him confronting a particularly staunch Icelander. I do know from my mothers strong Viking DNA analysis that we have Icelandic Viking connections during those times of transition from the old beliefs into the new religion imported from the Near East. This staunch fellow was tortured and yet still would not give up his spirituality, at which point a snake was pushed down his throat by the Christian converts who applied red hot irons to its tail to force it in. This snake, according to the story, later thrust its head out through the Icelanders abdomen with the poor fellows heart between its jaws. This was enough to get the other Icelanders to leave behind their beloved traditions and to embrace the new Christianity. Some famed monks, Cosimas and Damien, were renowned for getting snakes to leave the bodies of colic sufferers. They are also known to have performed an early transplant, taking the leg of a dead 'Negro' and putting it successfully onto a church servant who had been suffering gangrene. This man was able to live many years more with one black leg and one white. 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.
Ancient dna comparison was blowing my mind and I was both totally focused on and excited about this. I'd been on my terrace looking at some genealogy tiktoks, when I came across one which was so very interesting. An English girl, Bobbie, was showing how to upload ethnic dna to an archeo-genetic site 'myancestry.com' which compared ones dna to dna extracted from ancient bodies.
Oh wow; of course I had to get into this. And I messaged about it to Ella May, who did likewise. She was more speedy about getting her transfer done than I was. And some patience was requuired till all was processed. What emerged was so exciting for me. And as the information was only freely available for a couple of days I had to totally immerse myself in discovering all that was of relevance. By this I arrived at who were my closest ancient peoples, dominant of whom were the Celts; the other close groups being Saxons, Franks, Danish Vikings and Vandals. Vandals - Ho! They were barbarian Central European peoples.
And apart from those there was a link to the Balari tribe of Sardinia.
And to the Vascones of the Basque lands.
Of ancient remains which I specifically genetically matched, they were varied, and one particularly excellent match was to the Cheddar Man of Cheddar Gorge, Britians oldest discovered skeleton, dna having been extracted from one of his teeth. He had lived about 10,000 years ago, had dark skin, black hair and green eyes, wavy hair, was lactose intolerant and was of a hunter gatherer type (acccording to the analysis of his dna).
And I was matched to ancient bodies found at Stonehenge, it now being understood, from looking at the conditions of these remains and from how far some came, that Stonehenge was an ancient pilgrimage place where pilgrims would come for healing, much like Lourdes is today.
And I had matched to Roman Gladiators, to Vikings wounded in battle, to the Beaker culture, to Bronze Age peoples in Britain and France, to Merovingian nobles, to someone around at the time of the French revolution, to Viking men and their Irish women who had settled Iceland, and to the royals of Europe, there even being a genetic connection to Louis XVI.
As far as my nearest modern genetics were concerned, this was mostly Irish, although on one map of links I could see Welsh was closely there too.
I just had to make a tiktok of this fascinating new subject.:
Myheritage sent me a new ethnic DNA update, which at first looked to me the same as before. I made a little video talking of this, very short; and it was only later in the day that it dawned on me that the sub-categories under the listing of Irish, Scottish and Welsh were not just generalised but were specific to me. This was most curious because my Scandanavian Viking at 64.3%, which I had always presumed to relate to my granddad Lyall Inkster who had Shetland Island blood, would only have then in part come from him, because one of thise sub-groups in the Celtic-Pictish category specifically specified the 'Shetland Islands'. Of course, Shetland Islands as a sub category was too obscure to relate to everyone. This update had for the first time localised my my Celtic Pictish Scottish to the distant northern Shetland Islands. At the same time this revealed that those islands were not just a Viking conquered land but was made up still of the original maybe Pictish settlers; my people. My share of Viking blood was still a lot, but was not just from my mothers father I now realised but was from my own father too. And some of my fathers ancestry would always remain a mystery to me.
So the other sub-categories of the Celtic type were of two different Irish types, being from my grannies, and the other was 'southern Wales and southern and western England', this relating to my paternal grandfather, Pop, who was Welsh mixed with the Forest of Dean. Specifically that Welsh was southern Welsh which did reflect my research of his people. The Irish had accorded to it the numbers 12 and 8. These I looked up but myheritage had not as yet identify them with any known Irish groups. Presumably they reflected where my grannies ancestors were known to have come from, Westmeath and County Kerry.
My Greek with southern Italian remained at 4%. This was said to centre around the Aegean and Ionian Seas, reaching to Cyprus, the Caucasus, southern Russia and the Mezzigiorno region of southern Italy; south Italy being 'the first region settled by ancient Greeks outside of their Greek peninsula, going right back to the 8th century before Christ'.
The Spanish was 3.5%, pretty mareh for a minimal DNA to; these people descending from 'ancient Iberian tribes', also extending to the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. And not only southern Italian, but I had Italian in general at 2.7%. And what of the Finnish; just a little, at 1%; this category includes some of western Russia, being associated with Nordic and Slavic cultures.
Ok, so I next looked at my mums Myheritage update. My mum not only had the Shetland Islands also specified as a key group but an Irish location was given (though with no number accorded), this being 'Cork, Kerry and Limerick'. Wow, distinct places being mentioned and yes that was right on, as her Irish ancestors whom I had researched did indeed come from County Kerry. My mother had only 3% more Viking than I did and as I had observed before she had a 7%English which I had not inherited. Her Spanish was marginally tinier than mine at 3.2% and her Italian was 2.8%, just a fraction more than mine. She had no Greek, this naturally being my inheritance from my father.
My Aunty Lollies update, she being all I have had to represent my deceased father, wasn't now showing up any Greek DNA. My dad and she would not have inherited the same shares of DNA. By deduction I understood him to have had at least the same amount of Greek DNA as me.
And now, this was interesting, not only did her Celtic data specify 'southern Welsh', this being from Pop, her father, but also that her Irish was of the numbers 12 and 8! What!! This showed that the Irish showing up in me was essentially from my dads side, both those numbers relating to my great great grandmother Mary Dolan from Westmeath. Had I not even inherited my mothers County Kerry quota, let alone her English. How curious! Aunty Lolly had English DNA at 12.9%, again not passed on to me, this specifically being eastern and central UK. It could be that my own sister did get English and County Kerry, but as she had passed away long long ago this I could not know. Aunty Lolly had a high Viking percentage at 25.5%, so indeed my own Viking came from both my parents. And there was another group Aunty Lolly had, but not me, which was 9.1% northern and western European, this being associated with Holland, France and Germany. I didn't have it! It was so curious that largish sections of DNA, although of lesser than 10%, may not be handed on to a descendant, and yet that something more ancient, such as presumably the Greek, had come down to me. And I so could have been 'English' but by fate was not. The strong Irish in me did then appear to be from my father. I'd guess that was what this data was saying.
Looking at my daughter Rosina's update, she had got so much of my Viking at 38% and less of my Celtic at 13.7%, with the special grouping of Shetland Islands in there. She'd not got my Greek or Spanish, but she'd got some Italian at 1.9%. The tiy amount of Finnish I had passed onto her too. Overall she was a Viking Indian. Her Indian DNA at 44.8% was of the Indo-Aryan ancient tribes.
And looking at my son George's update, he had inherited from his Italian father some exotic ethnicities, such as Middle Eastern and West Asian. And, oh, I then saw it, as an additional specific genetic type there was mentioned not only the Shetland Islands but also Bari in Italy. If I'd needed any more proof that Francesco was his father and not Dutch Allard then there it was. Francesco's people were from the village of Turi near to Bari.
George's general Italian was 33.6% and his Greek & Southern Italian was 19%. He had Spanish at 4%, Balkan at 7.4%, Middle Eastern at 1.8% and West Asian at 0.8%. Some of that Mediterranean in him was not just from his dad but from me too. Unlike Rosina, he got very little of my Viking at only 2.4%, compared to her huge 38.6%, but he got more of my Celtic and Pictish at 31%, compared to her 13.7%. Hence Rosina was more of a Viking and George was more of a Celt. It would be interesting to see my other childrens DNA one day, to know what percentages they themselves inherited. George's Middle Eastern was of the Levant, this being the 'cradle of civilisation' which had been inhabited for thousands of years. His West Asian aligned to Turkey and Iran, being of ancient Persians and the Turk nomadic tribes. I do know I have tiny amounts of these types of DNA too from the testing I've done with other companies. |
AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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