First, let me warn you, gentle blog reader: this is not going to be anything political! I said I wasn’t going to put any political stuff on this blog, except under the most momentous circumstances, and I’m sticking to that. However. . . .I got an interesting tidbit from this site . It claims both President Obama and ex-President Bush are descended from that great Irish hero Niall of the Nine Hostages! I read last week that the town the Obama ancestor came from, had a huge celebration on Inauguration day, and they even made something called “brack”(guess why, hint, hint), which is apparently an Irish version of fruitcake, for the occasion. I didn’t remember seeing anything about the Niall of the Nine Hostages connection, but that’s all right. Heck, Obama is also related to the unlamented Vice President Cheney, too. But since half of Ireland seems to be in some manner related or descended or connected with Niall of the Nine Hostages, one way or another, I’m probably related in some way to Obama too. I’m of Irish descent, you see, although I don’t make a lot of this connection. I can’t say I’m related to anybody Kenyan, though, unless you want to go back all the way to whoever the ancestor of all “modern” humans was. But then, even some of the descendants of that ancestral “Eve” wandered themselves out of Africa around 100,000 years ago and proceeded to end up everywhere, and probably mixed themselves up with whatever “nonmoderns” they encountered along the way, from time to time, and place to place(yeah, that means Neandertals, too, sorry about that, even if the genes don’t obviously show up in “modern” humans). So if you go far enough back, I’m related to an awful lot of people. That’s nice. I don’t mind. Their stories are all interesting, and I’m writing some of them.
Anne G
2 comments:
It's obvious the new President is Irish. His name is O'Bama after all.
I'm of Irish descent too and have become (accidently) involved in the culture. I play fiddle in an Irish-based band.
And I've found that the highest point in Ireland is named after me: Carran Tuathail, Toohill's Mountain.
I wonder how long it will be before everyone accepts that the mtDNA and Y-chromosome haplogroups don't tell the whole story of our evolution. Probably a long time. Many people have too much at stake to be able to admit to Neanderthal, not to mention SE Asian H. erectus and Pekin Man, contribution. Besides which it's most unlikely that the above haplogroups derive from some H. erectus whose ancestors had never left Africa. I'd guess we're the result of several migrations both into and out of Africa. Not to mention around other parts of the world.
terryt:
I do agree with you that a lot of people have a stake in not admitting any contribution other than "modern' humans to our ancestry, although I believe that the "glue" that holds all humans together is the modern human "morph", more or less. Since this seems to have originated in Africa, you could say this is the "African" contribution. But OTOH, once H.erectus and their descendants started moving around, the end result is, that we are "all mixed up" African, European, Asian, etc., etc., etc. to varying degrees. With. of course, contributions from H.erectus, Neandertals, or whatever, from time to time ahd place to place.
Anne G
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