Genetic ancestry really doesn't mean a lot as far as who we are is concerned. But it's still something I'm quite curious about. It's just interesting. I find it especially interesting to explore the variety of shapes, sizes and colours that we humans come in - truly a blessing.
My known family are all white European, probably with drips and drabs of other ethnicities mixed in there that we don't know about. All blue-eyed, some blond, some brown-haired. None of our recent ancestry could be traced back to anywhere else but Northern Europe (with a few migrating to North America over the past couple of centuries, never to be heard of again). Any ancestry from anywhere else is just rumour (such as Scandinavian history, it's just a family rumour). But what I find especially interesting is the physiological features of my family.
Everyone has something unique about them and each of the individuals in my family were no different, but common features kept cropping up, occasionally skipping generations. Things like a heavy brow, jutting and rounded lower jaw, and very wide, high-set cheek bones were quite common. On my dad's side there was the flattened, oval face, oval eyes, fatty lips and the red-hair genes that resulted in light freckling and a reddish hue to hair in bright sunlight.
The combination of the two families coming together, as well as the "all at once" expression of physiological features that normally only appeared sparsely in our family, resulted in a rather strage looking me. To the point people refuse to believe I'm not anything but Northern European.. they might be right too.
I've been asked if I'm Chinese, Native American, Japanese, Irish, German, South American, Bosnian, Spanish and even Aboriginal. Nobody seems to guess correctly that I'm Scottish though. It's really quite humorous. But it did make me interested to wonder if my families do have some kind of "exotic" history?
Then I did some contemplating and some searching. This was of course before I believed we were all descended from the same two human beings. But when I realised our ancestry from a single male and female and then for how long humans have been in existence, and how much we have mixed throughout history, it made me realise that we all probably have a little bit of most ethnicities in us. While we may be majorly one ethnicity, we probably also have either expressed or dormant traces of most other races of the world. Only very few of us could really say that they are almost pure one ethnicity, and those of us that are probably wouldn't even know it.
It's kind of sad actually when you think about all these poeple who fight for dominance of their race, thinking themselves superior, when they probably have a bit of genetic history in them of the very ethnicities they oppress and discriminate. They also shut out something that Allah has blessed us with - diversity.
I am interested in looking further into this with my own family, because it's really fascinating. Has anyone ever looked into their family's ancestry (not using DNA testing, I want to steer clear of that)? How do you go about it? My grandmother did it for a while but she had little success and was only interested in one small line of the family. She kind of gave up and isn't interested any more, I guess I could get a few tips from her, but does anybody else have any?
My known family are all white European, probably with drips and drabs of other ethnicities mixed in there that we don't know about. All blue-eyed, some blond, some brown-haired. None of our recent ancestry could be traced back to anywhere else but Northern Europe (with a few migrating to North America over the past couple of centuries, never to be heard of again). Any ancestry from anywhere else is just rumour (such as Scandinavian history, it's just a family rumour). But what I find especially interesting is the physiological features of my family.
Everyone has something unique about them and each of the individuals in my family were no different, but common features kept cropping up, occasionally skipping generations. Things like a heavy brow, jutting and rounded lower jaw, and very wide, high-set cheek bones were quite common. On my dad's side there was the flattened, oval face, oval eyes, fatty lips and the red-hair genes that resulted in light freckling and a reddish hue to hair in bright sunlight.
The combination of the two families coming together, as well as the "all at once" expression of physiological features that normally only appeared sparsely in our family, resulted in a rather strage looking me. To the point people refuse to believe I'm not anything but Northern European.. they might be right too.
I've been asked if I'm Chinese, Native American, Japanese, Irish, German, South American, Bosnian, Spanish and even Aboriginal. Nobody seems to guess correctly that I'm Scottish though. It's really quite humorous. But it did make me interested to wonder if my families do have some kind of "exotic" history?
Then I did some contemplating and some searching. This was of course before I believed we were all descended from the same two human beings. But when I realised our ancestry from a single male and female and then for how long humans have been in existence, and how much we have mixed throughout history, it made me realise that we all probably have a little bit of most ethnicities in us. While we may be majorly one ethnicity, we probably also have either expressed or dormant traces of most other races of the world. Only very few of us could really say that they are almost pure one ethnicity, and those of us that are probably wouldn't even know it.
It's kind of sad actually when you think about all these poeple who fight for dominance of their race, thinking themselves superior, when they probably have a bit of genetic history in them of the very ethnicities they oppress and discriminate. They also shut out something that Allah has blessed us with - diversity.
I am interested in looking further into this with my own family, because it's really fascinating. Has anyone ever looked into their family's ancestry (not using DNA testing, I want to steer clear of that)? How do you go about it? My grandmother did it for a while but she had little success and was only interested in one small line of the family. She kind of gave up and isn't interested any more, I guess I could get a few tips from her, but does anybody else have any?
