Your
DNA is the blueprint of your creation.
Since everyone's DNA is different, it follows that we are all different. Not alone, but different. Each ancestral generation, each building block throughout history, has added its own two cents worth to this great presence called you, and your DNA. Through the vast networks of your ancestral history you've arrived. Now, we might achieve a deeper understanding of the essence of life, and that's the way life is, and always has been.
Flash! Here's the dramatic results of the most recent DNA research. Two competing research teams, one American and one French, discovered that 20% of millions of Jewish, Arab and other Middle East neighbor races have a genetically flawed gene, Pyrin, which produces less immunology to a fever known as Familial Mediterranean Fever.
Don't worry, you're not likely to walk into the boss and say "I had FMF yesterday" but you might mistakenly say you had a heavy bout of flu. Pyrin is a gene which regulates white cells. It is estimated this genetic syndrome carries back 1000 years or more, maybe to the Pharoes. That was the nub of this DNA research. Of great concern, doctors have been treating these cases as normal, low to medium grade fever without much success. They have been mystified by lack of clinical response to syptoms. When and if diagnosed, a drug, Colchicine, is available. This ancient drug comprises much of the mysticism of the Nile, the Pyramids, snake charmers and communal hooka smoking. Emerging from the petals of the autumn Crocus, the drug was discovered about 500 B.C, curiously, about the same time as the mutation seems to have emerged. Up to about 30 years ago Colchicine had only been useful in the treatment of gout. But don't mess with it, it's a dangerous one. Check it out on the Internet, later.
So where does this leave us? Does this mean that if you're of Anglo Saxon, Teutonic, Gaelic, Spanish. Italian, Greek, Chinese or Japanese origin you could carry other hidden racially mutant genes, a unique characteristic of your race? Other studies have suggested this. Who could isolate such a racial database, and how? Have we sufficient data, for instance, to make tests and differential diagnoses between say, the similar physical profiles of Anglo Saxon, Saxon, Teutonic, Gallic and Norman races. Here we encounter few reliable physical characteristic differentials such as hair, skin tone, color, facial contour, or physical size. Not much which we can 'scientifically' eyeball and identify. In this group there are few unique social custom distinctions, comparable to that which the two research teams might have had to work with. Yet, most certainly there must be hundreds of other mutations anciently and secretly inbred in every race which, for instance, not only sets the Armenian, the Turkish, the Jewish, and the Arab race quite apart from their neighbours, the Afghans, Kurds, Iraqis, Iranians or the Greeks or any other races who seem not to be included, but who may have their own mutant inbred genes causing a multitude of hidden ailments, serious or otherwise.
Or, reversing our whole field, if, after examining the evidence presented, for instance, we discover that a mutant gene 3243 seems to have a strong influence in previously untreatable degenerative, diabetic neuropathy, an apparent aging condition which deteriorates the nervous system, can we reverse our predilections by tracking to a predominant racial strain, even a family history proclivity. rather than waiting for the inevitable manifestation of the condition itself, thus avoiding irreversible damage to an unsuspecting, otherwise normal human being? This type of research is now going on, as we shall see later with Alzheimers.
Would the medical community be equipped to handle the patient who walks in and announces there is a reasonable possibility that he is among the 20-30-40% of his race who is susceptible to an ancient genetic deficiency? What does that do to the organization of the medical profession and their approach to pre-treatment of a condition or disease which has not yet arrived on the scene? It's not exactly a universal vaccine that is required because it doesn't apply to most of the population. Not even to most of the isolated race. Yet, would it not seem reasonable, safer and less costly to treat the mutation rather than the inevitable, sometimes fatal condition? Or, we could the patient at least wear a life name-tag? Or, whoever thought of a surname?
In certain ancient middle and far eastern races and countries there is reasonable certainty of confining a racial study to identifiable ghettoes, the social and geographic phenomena which groups together religious and other unique racial customs, hence the ability of these two research teams to isolate and conduct these two studies in the first place, both arriving at the same conclusion. On the other hand, in the general western European conglomerate there are diminished identifiable racial distinctions. In what we may now call the generic Anglo race, how do we tell the differences? How do we eyeball the Basque from the Spaniard, a Scot from a Cornishman? Particularly after they've arrived in the vast melting pot we call North America. This makes isolation of other racial genetic inheritance even more complex and out of focus.
Unfortunately, the results of the American and French research were relegated to the back pages of the media. Politically and socially, we are still squabbling over the desperate needs of equality, affirmative action and similar activist pressures related to the human social success or otherwise. On the other hand, we are medically very different from one another, as the geneticists have proved and continued to prove. Over 4000 human maladies have been proved to be hereditary, and perhaps that's only the tip of an open umbrella. Our political postures surely cannot be allowed to inhibit our survival. How do we learn to wear the two hats of this dichotomy with equal force?
Where do we begin? If mutations can be 1000's of years old, and, at the same time, only three or four generations old, or even be interconnected, one with the other, the research cannot be limited to just the recent genealogy of five or ten historic generations that Aunt Mamie put onto her family tree, as the results of the two FMF test groups have just concluded. Nor is the human body limited to just one single mutation.
Geneticists have proved genetic links in families many centuries ago. The only continuity is your surname, the only genetic connection, no matter which direction your search may take you. That is the name of the game, the name of the gene. Game over.
For the last twenty or thirty years or so there's been a groundswell, a profound, uneasy apprehension that it may be survival time, for each of us, and our race. Fifty years ago the great fear was the nuclear holocaust. Today its genetics. To reveal what the future holds you may need to look over your shoulder to the past, and, in light of these recent developments perhaps the far distant past of your race. The genetic code, the DNA, now looms large in all our lives, and not just for our own well being, but those who will follow. And, if your reprieve lies in history, you will need signposts.
There isn't a universal central forum of genealogical exchange. All except one, maybe. The WWW Internet. Like it or not, the Internet is the only mass information media exchange which is not pre-conditioned, pre-packaged, editorialized or screened. It is totally accessible. It is free expression. But it is also very random, and equally disorganized. It isn't necessarily controlled and prepared for your instant consumption, either. It may also carry its own inaccuracies. Many don't like or are afraid of Cyberspace for that very same reason. Nevertheless, it is a spontaneous interactive dialogue, untreated, a forum that more truly reflects public interest. On the other hand, it is not pristine. It allows frank, sometimes too frank public expression which can be analyzed all the way down to the grass roots of mankind. The search for identity and survival claims a mega interest on the spawning www.internet.
Not surprisingly, then, emerging in this incessant chatter of exchange is a hitherto dormant but now wildfire, explosion of interest in our personal past, our ancestors, our own personal drive engines, and our genetic profiles. This is a subject which gets very little attention in the conventional media, mostly because nobody seems to know where it's going and how it's going to get there. On the Internet, there are many thousands of genealogical societies of all nationalities, millions of individuals in a world wide quest for their past, family or clan association, or just straight communi-cavorting with their own kind. Their uninhibited driving force is variable and personal. Some are merely curious bystanders, some hobbyists, some desperate pathologists. But, deep down, they're each searching for all those elusive but common ancestors who had a hand in the unique profile.
If all searches are based on surnames (and nothing else exists) then some know-how is required. The purpose of this article and this web site is an attempt to set straight some of the old wives tales relating to the origin of surnames. Your name is the only key to the past, your birth surname, no matter which way you go, no matter which method you use. And for those unsure of their own identity, there are adoption web sites to help in the quest.
Sure, you can change your surname, but it really doesn't go away. Without it you're in deep, extra-terrestial space, without a compass, not even an astrolabe. We will at least open a forum of thought about a subject which has escaped the attention of modern analysis techniques and derives its frequently absurd conclusions from a Victorian melting pot of superficial conjecture, romance, snobbery, class distinction and exaggeration, all embroiled into a variety of self-serving motives and needs. Frequently these authors are our only popular and quick reference to the your enquiries. They are a very lazy man's one-line reference, which is oft repeated by word of mouth. Or, as some people do, you can simply create your own history. 'I came from a bunch of sheep stealers or horse/cattle thieves' is a very popular apology for one's ancestral past.
To digress for a moment. Does anybody know from what source this popular "sheep stealers and horse thieves" derives? Well .... after all the wisecracks have subsided .... there is a common source .... the English/Scottish borders. This area included thousands of clans and families who were a unique community commencing in the 11th century, having their own laws (of which cattle thieving was common practice), their own society, their own 'ruling body'. Collectively, the whole enclave, a buffer zone, was only about 200,000 strong in the 13th century. It was never labelled as a kingdom, but it might well have been in its own peculiar way. After 5 or 6 centuries of infighting, in the 17th century this community was dispersed, it had served it's rather vague purpose in the history of man. Their trails led to Ireland, south into England proper, north into the Scottish highlands, to the U.S and Canada. From Pennsylvania, they went westward through the Cumberland Gap, then to the Wild West. Their brethren from Ireland joined them, particularly after the famine. Some went to Australia. Banishment, slavery and indenture was common practice in those days. In the U.S.A they were known then as the Scotch/Irish and their strange dialects followed them. Their names were mangled, chewed up, misspelled. Their descendents now number in the tens, possibly hundreds of millions. Maybe you recognize basic names such as Elliot, Armstrong, Nixon, Johnston, Stewart, Douglas, Scott, Maxwell and thousands of others which still form the nucleus of our North American society today. If you want to find a surname, you'd better know historically where to look for its source. Those descending trails became widely dispersed, branching as a river to its estuary. The Library of Congress has many thousands of their genealogies.
Getting back .... We are embarking on an age of profound understanding of the genetic impact on our lives. Since the 60's and 70's new professions are emerging. Enter the professional geneticist, the medical genealogist and others. The need to bring the past closer is becoming abundantly clear, and most urgent. There are over 100,000 sites on the Internet dealing with this kind of survival in one form or another.
Highlight. The recent rejection of the Anastasia claim to be descended from the Nicholas, Czar of Russia was disproved by DNA comparison with England's Prince Philip who has a provable connection to that source. The pretender's DNA was not compatible to the Czar's but was traced to a factory worker in Poland about the turn of this century. Even Bethoven is being unearthed. From locks of his hair, (he died almost bald because so many had taken this keepsake, a common locket practice at the time) geneticists are trying to determine whether he really died of syphilis or not. They are also trying to determine the cause of his deafness which may have been the same neuropathy referred above. The next imponderable question 'Are all the Romanovs, Romanoffs, and Romanofs, Romanaks, Romanows, etc, both royals and commoners alike, all related to the same basic DNA blueprint?' The odds have to be at least 90% in their favour. If the odd's are so great with a royal family, why not with not with a lesser family? Is this the common key that made the Romanovs rulers of Russia, and other important positions in life? Haemophelia also runs in this royal line. Aren't we lucky?
So far, in its short life, we've only thought of the DNA as a physical, one dimensional relationship to our body and its physical functions, and our unique DNA identification mostly for criminal detection purposes. There may be much more depth to a particular heritable line than just the one-dimensional superficial blueprint. How far do these unique characteristics go back in time? How many did not arrive here at this time, such as Neanderthal man, a whole slice of humanity which didn't survive. Why? How many survived more than just adequately, they blossomed, exploded. Is this trend traceable to family surnames? Modestly, many of us disclaim aspirations to grandeur. Yet, fifty years ago, it was claimed, for instance, there were two million living descendents of the Norman King Robert the Bruce, a rather energetic and virile King of Scotland, who, is claimed, had 26 legitimate children and another 28 of the little tikes outside the blanket, as the saying goes. His DNA must have been a procreative blueprint driven by rocket thrusters, a real powerhouse. Is the drive to survive part of the DNA, too? There have been many allegations of racial characteristics prevailing in groups but I'm not going to touch that one with the proverbial ten-footer.
Digressing again, I will, however, relate something which you might find amusing. Getting back to those "horse theives", or the Unruly or Reiver Clans as they we were sometimes known, each clan usually had a nick name. Consider some of the following mostly Scottish Clan nick Names; The sturdy Armstrongs: the jingling Jardines: the gentle Johnstones (and Neilsons): the fiery MacIntoshes: the proud McNeills (and Seatons): the manly Morrisons: the worthy Watsons: the pudding Somervilles: the saucy Scotts: the huaghty Hamiltons (and Humes): the gay Gordons: the lucky Duffs: the trusty Boyds: the wild McGraws (McGraths): the brave McDonalds: and so on. Or, consider the English clan war cry: A Fenwick, a Fenwick, a Fenwick; 500 Fenwicks came over the lea. Are these to be considered not only racial, but even family characteristics which prevail within those races?
There are now family groupings which take a very active interest in their surname medical history. One such, on the Internet, report their well organized re-unions more or less dedicated to investigating the excessive intrusion into the line by Alzheimers disease. Thousands attend the family re-unions. Every room in town is booked. The family have documented the incidence of this condition from the late 19th century when they emigrated to the U.S of A from the Ukraine. In their continuing investigations they have even charted their ancestors passage from 16th century Germany, then by a grant of lands in the 17th century from Katherine the Great of Russia. The migrants from Germany settled in the Ukraine in two small villages, Frank and Walter, near Odessa. The present inhabitants of these villages also reveal the same gene, the same statistically excessive trait. While there is much to be discovered by medical genealogists this is a but one of thousands of examples of a growing apprehension about this DNA connection and its historic trail of potent misery. Such cases have been documented since the early part of this century, without even the benefit of the DNA.
The DNA is not only a blueprint of the living, for crime and other identification purposes, it is also a trail to the past, perhaps our only legitimate trail. It is the profound heritage which makes us different and can only be traced by the surname. It also seals the network relationship of family ties. How meaningful this new tracing facility will become depends on our future needs for survival, how fast can we get it up and running as a viable and reliable tool. However, if we suggest that this modern, 'instant snap shot' of the DNA, as we know it from the O.J trial, etc., is a quick understanding of all the contributors from the past, we may stagger into a minefield of complete misunderstanding. If it has been proved, or at least indicated, the DNA is as effective and unique an historic tool as it is for those presently living, it opens a new and formidable world of research which only the modern computer can accommodate and support because of the size of the complex networks and databases involved. Our database has been in continual development since 1971 on one of the first microcomputers ever produced. This immense work has been recognized as Research and Development, allowable by Revenue Canada.
Digressing again .... The DNA can also be of immense commercial value. Picture this. Let's say that the Norman race lives 4 years longer than the average, or vice versa. It was proposed that applicants for life insurance be given spit bags, to be mailed back in. If Norman (or any other identifiable heritable racial DNA division) revealed an actuarial longevity longer than average, then he might get a break on his premiums. Or he/she might only identify a preferred (competetitively) customer, which is the inevitable reverse side of this coin. Can you imagine, not only non smokers but Normans maybe offered a break some some time in the future. This is merely one of many commercial applications.
Nevertheless,
to get at the truth of history we have to question it, corroborate it as far as
possible. There is much legend in history. For instance, we could believe
implicitly in King Arthur of Camelot, the Round Table, and the Holy Grail fame,
Charlemagne, the murderous Prince John who cruelly victimized Robin Hood and the
lovely Maid Marion, St.Patrick and the snakes, McBeth, Dracula, Rasputin,
Frankenstein and a thousand others, not to mention the jingle bells of St.
Nicholas. It's not that some of these people didn't exist, its what we've
created them to be. Perhaps, hundreds of years from now, Snow White, Pinochio,
Tom Sawyer, Marshall Dillon (even Arness, together with film documentaries) will
all become real people in the minds of some. Every decade in history has been
distorted by self-serving reporters, the paparazzi, as we know them today.
Romances have been written, fantasies have flourished and each generation
embellishes on the previous one.