For the sake of argument? No. For the sake of, for goodness sake can’t we work together on any level toward peace on earth, are the divisions genetic or just biological for all creatures? Most people now are buying the DNA test for the admixture, ethnicity as some call it. And testing to learn? Race? The races are on, population explosions all over the world and the struggles for resources and these tests coupled with life and history tell us where to run to in our races and where and who we have run from.
I have certainly used DNA for ancestry, and so far, of all my lines tested, of the genealogies through my 16 2nd-great grandparents, the families are who they were thought to be. And proven with au-DNA aka at-DNA, y-DNA and mt-DNA and utilizing X genes. You can see other stories in the contents of how to use DNA for genealogy to prove the many different ancestors each person has and see below to find the link to my DNA for genealogy and anthropology blog, Cherie Lynn’s Herstory.
We all know that long ago and far away we all were tribal. Were we all thousands of years ago, tens of thousands of years ago, all living happy peaceful pastoral lives?
Come on, give me a break. Only humans with too much time on their hands say this peace stuff is easily achievable.
We live in the woods, lots of critters and it is dog eat dog. Not really, the only dogfights have been those whose master’s do not have them in human areas on a leash and they attack like their humans would if given the chance.
I watched two crows begin to kill and eat a squirrel. I will tell you I intervened and in hindsight I should have left nature to nature. Moreover for my own life and death, I believe I should have befriended the crows and not saved the squirrel because if I fall in the wood, I wonder who will eat me first.
From the kitchen window, I can see the clearing where squirrels find nuts, birds find worms and bugs and bigger birds and critters find lunch on the smaller creatures.
Anyone can see where I am going. The crows were hungry. The two of them were working in tandem, it seemed to my uninformed eye. One crow seemed to take hold of the squirrel and flip it in a snap of pitching and it landed hard, shaken and dazed with every sling – over and over.
I thought god, just kill it and eat it, the squirrel was far from dead and I couldn’t watch any more. I went out on the deck and I still see the eyes of one of the crows as it seemed to glare at me for interrupting and depriving them of sustenance. They cawed their protest and left as the squirrel ran into the thicket.
I work and write in view of these woods and I hear the wilds. I have to go look when the rackets start. All kinds of teamwork among different birds screeching to call friends for help and I suppose intimidate the hungry, bigger, stronger predator.
My Dai is just one SNP off from Otzi the Ice Man and I was glad to see some of those scientists give us a possibly realistic account, at least not romanticized and idealized with pastoral bullshit, of what might have happened for Otzi to be shot with an arrow and left to die. The scientists tell us at least 5,000 ybp we were not sitting around like some little flowers in your hair commune of peoples – there were already marauding bands of crows looking for dinner. (I apologize to the crows, it is just life and everything has to eat.)
Of course it is vicious especially when there is not enough to eat and drink. Have there always been population explosions and people on the move to find resources? Well, yes.
So genetics tell us the white skin is very recent. I do not give a flying flaming about the argument of exactly when – do not waste my time. White skin was recent and that means we were all brown and browner and maybe yellow and yellower. Neanderthals had what skin? We know many, some had red hair – I love it. My dad had carrot red curly hair and blue eyes with sparkles and my mother dark olive skin, brown eyes and black straight hair. I have lived my whole life with these two skin colors tossing me back and forth like a ball. I can catch for either team. So let’s take skin color out of the mix for tribal affiliation.
Tribes are just proximity, kin, tribes are the itty bits of each ancestor that we carry within us, the DNA bits and pieces, of the few ancestors that we can see in the DNA readings of ourselves.
I believe we are responsible to our ancestral pieces of ourselves, our ancestors. Responsible to remember them and to fulfill them; after all, we were made in the image of… according to the legends… So like, I am so beautiful, made in the image of the Great Spirit – A great winged bird and I took food from the mouths of my cousins those crows that day.
Way back in the olden days, imagine the first time two different tribes of people came face to face. Even if they began getting along, if the science is par for the course, soon enough some fever would have come up because of strange cooties from one tribe to the other, and someone, from one or both tribes, would have thought to blame the other.
Some would feel guilt and the others would feel themselves the injured parties and here we go. The myths are written in burials – and all because of microscopic bugs that were not the fault of either tribe but began a ten-thousand-year rivalry between uninformed dumb-asses.
Blame and guilt and original sin – dear G-d have mercy.
But what happens to the little bits and pieces of of our ancestors’ DNA — their souls really — that we can see in our own test results?
Native Americans and others, pooh-pooh the people like me with tiny bits of Native ancestry. Do those bits have a voice? Do they reach from deep inside me, calling out to be remembered? Do the smallest bits of me yell as loud as they can, I am here, I am here, don’t only look at them – I am part of this whole also.
Shall we throw away all innate or tiny memories of all past lives? Shall I honor the predator in me or the prey, the largest piece of me or the nearest?
Today, tribes are still seen as far-flung and near. Tribes are seen as mixed and others seen as unmixed.
DNA shows us, one way or another, no matter how isolated a group or tribe we might be part of, if we read the earliest SNPs in all of us we are all related. So I would say since we are all kin, then lets all kiss and make up and get along. Oops, and the full moon reminds us – human stories began with fratricide and domestic violence.
This thanksgiving time is a struggle for countless people to remember the truth and search for it in fleeting memories of past lives. This time of year there is an abundance of Native American and First Nations stories but they are rarely the truth. With today’s level of testing I doubt I can ever recapture a name of any tribe around the entire world.
In my life as it was ‘mixed’ to the degree it was ‘mixed’ I have often wondered had I come out darker skinned like my mother would ‘they’ have kept me. Plainly, probably not. Where do the myths of humanity come from and where to the myths take us? Had I been darker, at one time in history, I might have died at birth.
This year the DNA of people’s history has been in the forefront with politicians taking DNA tests and,separately, tribes and rumors of tribes voicing their needs and wants. I see in the larger tribes with lots of members, there is a position of not taking new members.
I read a wonderful story about a tribe who is just regaining their voice and hope and pray to reassemble their members, their parts, their people, their kin. They might have better hearing and want to listen for the tiny bits of their members lost and scattered throughout this land, locked in mongrel bodies like mine.
For Mamma:
Our Colors ~ That Is My Mother You Are Talking About.
Souls can just wander – the mongrels who are many pieces of many peoples – never a home – anymore.
Two spirit people
Marionetta Strung-Out 