Skip to main content

Knuckle-Walking Through the Neighborhood

National Geographic Image
I have just discovered where most of my ancestors came from, and I am pleased to announce that I am 1.5% Neanderthal.

I have long suspected that because I have been keeping a distant eye on my family, trying to assess what it is that has made us the distinguished gathering of--I was going to say, "f------ morons", but that title has already been awarded--so I shall say "contentious stone-throwers" that we are.

Mari and I, both, have spit into bottles for the sake of science, and had our ancestries explored.  We chose different companies to do the analysis just to see what the different analyses do.  Mari, for instance, learned that about 7.5% of her genes are shared with people in Ireland, which came almost as a surprise to a woman who has been leaning comfortably against her Norwegian ancestry.

She admitted she should have known.  When first we married, we visited her father in Lake Mills, Iowa who, upon learning that I knew more Norwegian than he, dug out a book with his family history, written in an appropriately old-fashioned Norwegian.  I did my best, and said that one of the earliest records of his family was of a band of fellows thrown out of the British Isles for stealing tubs of butter and lard.  As I remember it, no mention of their ancestry was noted but, though they had to leave the butter and lard behind, they carried a load of genes to Norway with them.

I chose the National Geographic genographic project to analyze my ancestry.  In addition to being able to trace maternal lineage, they also can trace male ancestry through the Y-chromosome that only men have.  So I have a story that traces both where my mother's and my father's ancestors came from, and approximately when.

All of us, of course, absolutely every human being alive today, is descended from Africa, where human life first evolved.  If human life on earth ever arose anywhere else on earth, nobody has ever found a shred of evidence for it.  Period!  So much for racial purity!  So much for race as much more than a clumsy suggestion that some people, at the present time, resemble each other:  isn't that a surprise?

I am going to post another blog entry with more details about that, but for now, I am just going to knuckle-walk through the neighborhood, and think about our family.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Best Not Noticed Among Friends

"If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times:  don't exaggerate!" That isn't what this post is about, except that is has to do with the way we use language, or how language reveals how we think.  What has been intriguing me lately is the growing habit of saying everything twice, or repeating the same idea with different words.  For example:  "When the barrage comes, it comes in bunches."  I rather imagine.  A barrage of one is such a lonely thing, by itself. Here is a list of recent examples: "for each respective team" "both teams have only one timeout, each" "there is this sort of, like. . ." "retweet it out" "but lying about the same, exact. . ." "then elevate up" "He's very good at parceing these arguments apart" "and lied, over and over and over again" And then there are just curiosities: "A man who, everything he touches, turns to g...
Post a Comment
Read more