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Subject: [WARREN-SUFFOLK-UK] dna and genealogy
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 00:07:54 EDT

Hope this site proves useful in some way
bright blessings
Sandie
List admin


http://www.infokey.com/hon/dna.htm

Your Surname, Your Genealogy and Your DNA

Your DNA is the blueprint of your creation.
Your genetic codes propelled you and yours to this place at this time

Is the DNA the secret of life, the driving force, that elusive key for which
man has beam searching since the beginning of time. Is it the fountain of
life itself? Have we found it right here, lurking on our own door step. It's
not out there amongst the twinkies in outer space, after all, it's deep down
inside every vibrant and mysterious fibre of our being. Locked away are the
secrets of history, the present, and quite probably the future. And
eventually, some day, the DNA will reveal all of its infinitely microscopic
and profound secrets.
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.

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