Who am I? Who are you?
There's something I've wanted to do for quite a long time, but I'm far too stingy to pony up the $100 it takes.
I want to have my DNA examined in The Genographic Project.
As the National Geographic web site says, this is not traditional genealogy. It's deeper than that. In my case, the project will look at my Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which will tell me where the ancestors on my mother's side came from.
While some people who know me may suspect that the correct answer to this question is Mars, I believe that most of my ancestors were from central Europe in the grand and beautiful country of Bohemia. Don't bother looking for it on a map, since it isn't there anymore. A few other stragglers may have been Danish - which would mean origins somewhere near a Krispy Kreme - and some may have been German.
Nobody really seems to know for sure. On my dad's side, there is also Bohemian and Swiss, neither of which can be traced in this project because, alas, I do not have a Y chromosome. I have flat feet instead. The interesting thing about this is that a friend of mine (Jenny to your right in the links), my source to all things European since she lived there for one year as a teenager, says that I look quite Swiss. Couple this with the fact that a very nice Swiss man named Yves once befriended me and he looked a lot like my dad, and I think Jenny is pretty accurate.
With my luck, I'm sure that the test would come back and completely discount all of this. I would be a cross breed with roots in Ireland and Tibet. Come to think of it, that would be pretty cool, too. Alas, then I'd have to find new teams to root for in the Olympic curling and luge events.
I find all of this fascinating. I was reading up on this project and it has come up with some startling results. The article was about an "African-American" man who turned out not to be African at all. In fact, he even had Jewish roots. I think it's interesting that, on one hand, we completed discount our roots. Our ancestors came to America only a few generations ago, and yet we know very little about our own ethnic makeup. At the same time, we embrace broad cultural definitions of ourselves without really understanding what they mean. I would love to know more about my genetic roots. It probably wouldn't explain a whole lot about me - okay, I share DNA with Otzi the Iceman, now what? - but it certainly would be interesting.
I like thinking about ethnicity. Not in any sort of Aryan race sort of way, but just in enjoying the wide variation in humanity.
I want to have my DNA examined in The Genographic Project.
As the National Geographic web site says, this is not traditional genealogy. It's deeper than that. In my case, the project will look at my Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which will tell me where the ancestors on my mother's side came from.
While some people who know me may suspect that the correct answer to this question is Mars, I believe that most of my ancestors were from central Europe in the grand and beautiful country of Bohemia. Don't bother looking for it on a map, since it isn't there anymore. A few other stragglers may have been Danish - which would mean origins somewhere near a Krispy Kreme - and some may have been German.
Nobody really seems to know for sure. On my dad's side, there is also Bohemian and Swiss, neither of which can be traced in this project because, alas, I do not have a Y chromosome. I have flat feet instead. The interesting thing about this is that a friend of mine (Jenny to your right in the links), my source to all things European since she lived there for one year as a teenager, says that I look quite Swiss. Couple this with the fact that a very nice Swiss man named Yves once befriended me and he looked a lot like my dad, and I think Jenny is pretty accurate.
With my luck, I'm sure that the test would come back and completely discount all of this. I would be a cross breed with roots in Ireland and Tibet. Come to think of it, that would be pretty cool, too. Alas, then I'd have to find new teams to root for in the Olympic curling and luge events.
I find all of this fascinating. I was reading up on this project and it has come up with some startling results. The article was about an "African-American" man who turned out not to be African at all. In fact, he even had Jewish roots. I think it's interesting that, on one hand, we completed discount our roots. Our ancestors came to America only a few generations ago, and yet we know very little about our own ethnic makeup. At the same time, we embrace broad cultural definitions of ourselves without really understanding what they mean. I would love to know more about my genetic roots. It probably wouldn't explain a whole lot about me - okay, I share DNA with Otzi the Iceman, now what? - but it certainly would be interesting.
I like thinking about ethnicity. Not in any sort of Aryan race sort of way, but just in enjoying the wide variation in humanity.
posted by The Arendts at 2:24 PM
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