Genetics of the UK

[elecplus]

Where are you?
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-ne ... er-n326036

Genealogy is one of my favorite hobbies

[Muirium]

The Picts were awesome. We still don't understand most of their images strewn all about the place:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts

Edinburgh is encircled by standing stones, cairns, carvings, and hill forts from that same history. Long before writing appeared. So much still a mystery.

[seebart]

Highlanders, outlanders, scottlanders.

[andrewjoy]

The north never forgets !

[fohat]

My ancestors have been in the US since before the Revolution, but still the majority are from Oxfordshire (or regions nearby) and lowland Scots (mostly via Ireland).

[mr_a500]

I'm a 10th generation Canadian (1st generation born in Nova Scotia in 1754) - ancestors from Wales and Devonshire. (also northern France)

[Muirium]

People move around a lot, even in past centuries. My ancestors are from all over Britain, despite everyone being working class on both sides of my family! There's not a corner of Scotland without Muirs in it somewhere, and so too my family tree.



My mum's side are from south east England at first glance, until you soon find they're Welsh and just as scattered across the west of England as the inscrutable Muirs are up here.

The people who stayed put for the long haul were far from everyone. Both the rich (who upped to London and left their estates to house developers) and the poor (who had to keep moving through such forgotten organised violence as the lowland clearances) moved around more often than not. Humans have legs and a natural wanderlust; all they need is reason to leave.

[DanielT]

Humans have legs and a natural wanderlust; all they need is reason to leave.

Yep, so true. I have Greek and Italian ancestors, and also the dominant Romanian ancestors moved a lot. It's the human nature.
The Italian part is a mystery to my family, my grand-grand-grand father moved to Romania from Italy, after his move he refused to talk about his past and never spoke Italian again.

[seebart]

all you guys know a lot about your ancestry! I have no clue beyond my great grandparents.

[Muirium]

They were good at keeping secrets then! Must have had something tasty to hide…

In Britain, anyway, there's a huge interest in family histories. More than in general history to be honest, which I find perplexing as the former makes little sense without the latter. The BBC has a long running show where celebrities of various kinds get to tour their family's past. They usually end up far overseas! This was the heart of Empire after all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/welcome.shtml

[DanielT]

all you guys know a lot about your ancestry! I have no clue beyond my great grandparents.

I've been lucky to know the members of my family who still remembered. One interesting piece of family history is a photo album with old photos from the turn of 20th century, some have traditional clothing. A photo I really love is one with my grad-grand parents walking on the main boulevard wearing very elegant cloths, another one is with them on a family picnic back in the 1920's next to a Ford T made in Romania. back then Ford had a big assembly line here.

[Khers]

all you guys know a lot about your ancestry! I have no clue beyond my great grandparents.

I'm in your camp seebart, don't know very much about my ancestors beyond a couple of generations back (from maybe mid 19th century). Given that all generations I do know of come from the same two parts of Sweden (my mothers side stems from one part of Sweden, my fathers from another), I wouldn't expect very much interesting to show up though.

In recent years swedes have definitely gotten more and more interested in what their ancestors did. In the wake of that television shows like the one Muirium described have shown up on TV over here as well, where someone, probably famous, digs into his/her family history. Rather uninteresting tbh, why would I be interested in where a certain b-list celebrity stems from?

[seebart]

all you guys know a lot about your ancestry! I have no clue beyond my great grandparents.

I'm in your camp seebart, don't know very much about my ancestors beyond a couple of generations back (from maybe mid 19th century). Given that all generations I do know of come from the same two parts of Sweden (my mothers side stems from one part of Sweden, my fathers from another), I wouldn't expect very much interesting to show up though.

In recent years swedes have definitely gotten more and more interested in what their ancestors did. In the wake of that television shows like the one Muirium described have shown up on TV over here as well, where someone, probably famous, digs into his/her family history. Rather uninteresting tbh, why would I be interested in where a certain b-list celebrity stems from?

right, I prefer to know the history of my keyboards!

[mr_a500]

Oh crap. I was just looking over my family history document and I found one ancestor born in Scotland (1709). Ach! It cannae be!

[Muirium]

Nova Scotian. It runs in the family, laddie!

[seebart]

Oh crap. I was just looking over my family history document and I found one ancestor born in Scotland (1709). Ach! It cannae be!

how far back are you going? How about the middle ages?

[mr_a500]

I've got it going back to Adam and Eve. (the snake was a different branch of the family)

No, the earliest trace I have is 1487. Before that, who knows? Maybe Julius Caesar's midget half-sister mixed with Alexander the Great's great great grandson's third nephew's idiot stepson.

[XMIT]

I'm ethnically Puerto Rican. All four of my grandparents and one of my parents were born on the island. 23andme tells me that my father is about 100% Spaniard, and my mother is mostly North African and/or Ethiopian.

My wife's family can trace back to the 1600s when they came to America.