T'was the Night before Christmas... Some thoughts about Progeny

The Christmas season is truly upon us here at Archaeosoup Towers...

The halls have been 'decked', presents have been wrapped, Mrs Soup has a gorgeous Turkey brining in the workshop and my lovely Mum is asleep in the guest room... And here I am, early on Christmas eve (5:02 am) typing away because I have caught my obligatory festive cold and cannot sleep (because I cannot breathe).

However, just as many people in around 24 hours will be eager to hop out of bed to begin the process of opening presents and depositing a confetti of shredded wrapping paper all over the living room floor - I find myself, this morning, eager to jot some ancillary thoughts down in a blog-post.

This post is, once again, with regards to one of my more popular (or certainly one of the most frequently watched) videos 'Hidden Histories: What is a Celt?'

I think it is worth while taking a few paragraphs to briefly explore an irony implicit in the responses posted to that video - This is the concept of progeny.

The main reason I made that HH video was to explore the question of genetic and cultural legacy, using 'Celticism' as a case study. My goal was to explore the complex relationships between cultural identity, genetic legacy and a broader mythology of time and place...

I was not aiming to tear down the proud legacy of Celtic culture, art or language - Afterall I am a proud Man of Wales, a Welsh-speaker and a great fan of all things 'Celtic'. Rather I was was encouraging an assessment of what these associations and ideas actually mean... And thus what they do not mean.

While many people appear to 'get' what I was doing, there remain many who either willfully ignore or twist what is said in the video - Or worse still, 'agree' with me only to refer to other 'stocks' of genes from other 'peoples' and places.

For example comments along the lines of...

   "Excellent video - However, I have always felt that the true Irish are comprised of the DNA from Scythians."

or

   "Viking DNA is not responsible for all of the red hair in Britain."

...revolve around the ironic notion that there are/ were pure stocks of forerunner DNA. That somehow there is such thing as 'Viking' genes or 'Celtic' blood and that, depending on the commentor's perspective, modern 'Celts' are either pure, impure, or mixed from a very limited palate of genetic paint.

However, that was/ is the whole point of the video - to question the notion of such purity, stocks of genes, and to highlight the wondrous spectrum of humanity which makes up the beings we are...

And ultimately to encourage a more nuanced and real understanding of the past, beyond cartoon characterisations of people, places and times - and our relationship to them!

As far as I can see there are at least two issues at work here:

1) The Cultural Perception of Genetic Legacy.

It is oh-so-hard for people to divorce how they think of family from how they think about genes and genetics. Often people will talk about having a 'line', usually a patronymic line of ancestry which they can trace back through time, giving them their identity (and genes). 

This is not only convenient for claiming rights to property, tracing bonds of affinity and friendship through marriage and trying to understand where one comes from; it is also hard-wired into our brains! We find it very difficult - Heck, I find it very difficult - to conceive of my patronage as anything more than a line. At most, many people think in terms of coming from a 'community', a little like a phratry, with shared cultural rights through a perceived genetic brotherhood or bond... an ancestral father / mother or group. 

Though, usually we conceive of a line - My father, his father, his father and so on...

However, this is not the case.

The above diagram is based on an excellent article written by MF Bonnan (see here). It illustrates that at every stage in one's family tree there are a number of genetic influences at play. Every generation brings a multiplier effect and before you know it, rather than a single line reaching back into time immemorial, you are connected with every other human being on the planet. As shocking as it may seem, you are not just you... You are also a human being and a member of a broader species.

This network reaches across the world and down through the ages and is the reason why, rather than a single thread, you are made up any number of influences from across time and around the world. Go far back enough and we will find things are very different from our parochial assumptions.

Mrs Soup is an excellent example. She is from Ballymena in Northern Ireland. So she's 'Irish' right?

Well, back one generation her Father is from the Republic of Ireland and her mother is from Nothern Ireland... Still 'Irish' though, yeah?

Back a few more generations, in one part of her Father's side of the family tree, takes us to to County Kerry... Still very Irish!?

No!

By this time, that one branch of Mrs Soup's ancestors were from Germany! They had been invited into the area following the great famine to begin farming abandoned land. Re-building communities ravaged by a lack of food.

So - If one goes back a few generations and chooses ONE element of ONE parent's family tree, things quickly change - And we haven't even researched all of the other branches!!!

In the same way that many people (often Americans) say to Mrs Soup.

   "Oh hey, I'm Irish too." (ignoring the political complications of the North/ South divide) "I'm 1/16th Irish on my Mother's side"... She could (and sometimes does) quite happily respond.

   "Go that far back and I am 'from' South West Germany!"

The funny thing is - She is absolutely Northern Irish, she loves being from Northern Ireland. But she is painfully aware that that doesn't mean that *echo voice* 'She and all of her line have always resided upon the emerald isle...'

2) Misunderstanding of the Role and Meaning of Mutation.

People frequently point to genetic markers to 'prove' their patronage. Whether these be 'obvious', physical features which show up in the one's phenotype or more subtle genetic 'signatures' made up of 'junk' DNA, accumulated over time; these are often used like lines back into the past.

Firstly, the above point re: cultural perception of 'lines' absolutely applies here. We get all sorts of genetic stuff, seen and unseen, from all sorts of people in our past! Sometimes these features will show up in our physical features and abilities, sometimes they will not - But they are there, like genetic baggage. However, while this baggage can be useful for seeing what is 'under the hood' it does not act as a single tracer back through time. 

There is a popular perception that a genetic test will tell you where your 'line' (see again where this concept is hard to escape) has come from. One swab of cheek cells, some money and lab-time are all you need to see this thread through time...

However, rather than a thread, a tapestry is revealed. There will be interesting genetic threads here and there; perhaps a particular mutation shared with many others in Anatolia, which indicates that someone, somewhere in your vast family tree was born of a certain community and picked up this trait. Though like sand on the beach, the tides of time shift and re-configure people, place and culture with each generation.

Over the years people move, marry, inter-marry, run away, change name, change culture, hide, kill, rape, lie, pretend, invent, adopt, seek kinship and embrace all sorts of social 'truths' in the pursuit of as good a life as they can manage. This results in a wondrous array of genetic influences in our (your) ancestry and, beyond the use of surnames in the Middle Ages, an increasingly difficult network of branches, cross-overs and dead-ends for 'the individual' to navigate.

Not to mention the interesting convergent 'evolution' which appears in phenotypes! For example, there are many ways to 'be' blond. The genes responsible for expressing blond hair in different parts of the world are... different. 

That is to say that you may be blond but it doesn't mean you have a Scandinavian or Near Eastern heritage. You may have got that gene from a family connection with the Solomon Islands! And even if your family does have links with Scandinavia, blond hair is a fairly recent sexual-selection ie that feature became culturally attractive and therefore propagated over time... It's not of a 'pure' origin.

...*and breathe*

So, there we have it - It is now 7am, I have listened to the latest News Quiz Podcast and I am getting hungry - time for breakfast.

In conclusion, I would encourage you - dear reader - to take a moment and try to imagine the vastness of your heritage. The vast distances and spans of time which your forebears have navigated, resulting in you.

This is remarkable. Far from simple and took a very, very, very long time.

I am not a Celt denier... Or rather a Briton-basher. I also love my modern Celtic culture. 

However, I am not willing to say that I am so very inbred as to have one line in my unimaginably large and old tapestry. Maybe several of my threads are indeed from these islands and the continent, perhaps some of those unnameable ancestors even fought the Romans for home and hearth in ancient times.

But those Iron age folk, connected by virtue of my genetic code, may never have know each other! They may not have called each other 'Brother', they certainly didn't call one another 'Celt'!

Who knows, perhaps there's a runaway Roman Auxiliary from Africa in my past?

However more than this, beyond the romance of 'Celts', 'Germans', 'Barbarians' and 'Rome', beyond even the inconstant and fickle boundaries of Europe - waxing and waning with ages of ice...

I am a human being.

So are you.

Cheers! x

PS: Merry Christmas! :D