Genetic Ancestry

I am very curious about my origins and like to learn as much as I can about my ancestry. I think its a shame people aren't more interested in their ancestors. You owe your very existence to the fact your ancestors did their jobs and you exist and you have been raised more competently than they were if your lucky. It is important to be grateful to your ancestors and to remember them. Your ancestors should be honored and judged generously. You should follow their example and become and ancestor yourself.

Genealogically I have traced my ancestry as far as I can based on the written records available in English. I have had my DNA tested with a company called Family Tree DNA (user# 80593). My father was a Mennonite so I have also participated in the Mennonite DNA project. I have also participated in the Dodedcad project which is a genetic census of people with European Ancestry. I have also completed a Prometheus report with SNPedia which analyzes my DNA for genes that have been identified that coo relate with certain traits.

Some of the things I learned from Family Tree DNA are that on my ancestors from my maternal side have been in North America for centuries. My maternal matches are mostly in the areas of the original thirteen colonies in the United States. My grandmother traced her Stevenson line to Lynn, Ontario which interestingly was established by British loyalists during the American Revolution. The genealogical records for my maternal side are very weak and I  am yet to find a paper trail to my American ancestors. I think my maternal ancestry (Ferguson) is in part made up from British Empire loyalists who came to Canada during the American revolution and Scottish/Irish immigrants who came to Canada and eventually set up home steads in Saskatchewan. My Family Tree DNA Ferguson matches have traced their Ferguson origins to Argyll, Scotland. The Mervyn line of my ancestry can trace their origins to Armagh, Northern Ireland. I share little DNA with people of Irish ancestry, but I share a lot of DNA with people of British/Scottish ancestry so I think the Mervyn line (I think the surname is welsh in origin) are descendants of welsh settlers in Northern Ireland. My mitochondrial DNA is haplogroup U4. In geneticist Brian Sykes book "The Blood of the British Isles" says that U4 is most likely brought to Britain by Viking homesteaders. The furthest upstream ancestor in my mitochondrial lineage (mitoline) is Katherine Campbell born in 1890.  My Campbell matches in Family Tree DNA trace their Campbell ancestry also to Argyll, Scotland. U4 is a haplogroup which 2% of Europeans belong to who's progenitor lived around 18,000 years ago possibly around the Black Sea.Brian Sykes has given her the name Ulrike due to its slight over representation among people of Germanic ancestry. Some of the mammoth hunters in the Ukraine area were members of the U4 haplogroup and also the original speakers of the indo european languages.

Family Tree DNA and the Dodecad project both say that I am the descendant of people living around 1000 AD in the following areas at the following percentage of contributions to my genome:

32% are from the Northern European Plain
32% are from the British Isles
24% are from Scandinavia
12% are from Eastern Europe

The Dodecad project in addition to my DNA, use my craniometric measurements and place my in the European subgroup of Irano-Nordic which is typical of people with Northern European/Scandinavian ancestry. Interestingly your mother is craniometric measurements place her in the Proto-Europoid group so if you wanted to know if you take after your mom or me you can objectively determine it by comparing your indexes to ours. In addition according to an analysis of my DNA SNPpedia Promethease program if you inherited the following traits you likely got it from me;

* All the genes for cancer, obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Eat Vegetable based diet, don't sit around for more than 4 hours a day and don't eat to many carbohydrates.
* Light skin of the type 2 variety which is a 7 - 13 on the Fitzpatrick Scale (wear sunscreen). Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs1426654(A;A).
* The VAL/VAL version of SNP which puts me on the warrior end of the warrior/worrier personality spectrum which performs better on tests which the optimum strategy changes. This trait is useful in threatening environments where maximal performance is required despite threats (warrior strategy). The worrier strategy is more useful on tasks where maximal performance is required on tasks of attention and memory. SNP rs4680(G;G).
* SNP for better performing muscles. This SNP is over represented among endurance Olympic athletes and is nearly found in 100% of Olympic medalist athletes in sports requiring highly intensive muscle performance like sprinters. SNP rs1815739 (C;C).
* The gene that allows us to eat dairy well into adulthood. GS101.
* These genes are associated with gluten intolerance. GS221
* 4.4X increase risk for exfoliation glaucoma. SNP rs2165241(C;T).
* 3.9X increase risk for macular degeneration. SNP rs1136287(T;T).
* Moderately increase hippocampal volume. SNP rs7294919 (C;T).
* Increased risk of baldness. SNP rs2073963(G;G).
* A couple points on the IQ and a couple years on the lifespan. SNP rs9536314(G;T).
* Increased longevity and less mental decline with age. I carry the gene SIRT1 which is being research to understand how people live beyond 100 years. SNP rs3758391(T;T).
* Stronger bones. SNP rs2707466(A;A).
* Lose weight with any exercise. gs282.

If your children have curly blonde hair when they are toddlers that may probably be from me. Freckles, blue eyes, and reddish-brown hair are probably from me. The ability to smell asparagus in the urine and rolling your tongue are from me as well. Despite cancers like colon, prostate and leukemia and conditions like heart disease and diabetes my grand parents lived into their 80's and my paternal grand mother is still alive in her 90's. I think their average lifespan is 85. You could live to 100 if you have a healthy lifestyle. Be careful about your weight and make sure you fill up on vegetables. If our diet isn't half vegetables we can easily attain body fat percentages above 25% and up to 50%, and because we remain usually thin through out our teenage years we are fooled into thinking we can eat whatever we want which helps us develop bad eating habits that when after 30 the weight starts to show and we have a hard time losing it.

My paternal ancestry is well documented. My father was a Mennonite. The Mennonite Genealogical Society keeps genealogical records on Mennonites in what called a GRANDMA database. My fathers entry number is #633711. My mother was not a Mennonite, so when my father died when I was four we were living on Vancouver Island where their are few Mennonites. Because of this I wasn't raised a Mennonite. Interestingly my father a grandparents were born in Mexico. They are descendants of a group of Mennonites which settled in Mexico from Canada because they were unhappy with the Canadian governments attempts to assimilate them. My grandfather moved his family back to Canada when my Dad was around 14.  My dad spoke low German and learned English when he moved to Canada. My great great grandfather Heinrich Abrams settled in Manitoba in 1875 from the Ukraine. http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Abrams,_Heinrich_(1832-1910) .  Heinrich was born near the Vistula delta in Poland. Our Mennonites ancestors began settling the Vistula delta in the late 1500's from Friesland. I have participated in the Mennonite DNA project. For some reason my ancestor Heinrich was born Abrahams, but shortened it to Abrams. I and two other Abrahams lineages though we aren't connected geneologically, we all are matches on our Y chromosome, which like surnames is inherited from father to son. Comparisons of our Y chromosome place the Abrahams progenitor in Friesland around 600 years ago. We are all members of the haplogroup R1b, which geneticist Brian Sykes named Oisin. Our furthest known down stream marker is L51. Genetic geneologit Ken Nordtvelt places our lineage in the Frisian branch of R1b, which is consistent with Mennonite history. From the 3rd through the 5th centuries Frisia suffered marine transgressions that made most of the land uninhabitable, aggravated by a change to a cooler and wetter climate. Whatever population may have remained dropped dramatically, and the coastal lands remained largely unpopulated for the next two centuries. When conditions improved, Frisia received an influx of new settlers, mostly Angles and Saxons. These people would eventually be referred to as 'Frisians', though they were not necessarily descended from the ancient Frisii. The progenitor of the R-L51 lived around 4500 years ago in central Europe.

So here is a the quick summary of my ancestry, I will go into further detail in later posts.

Cosmic Inspiration from Neil De Grasse Tyson

Neil De Grass Tyson redo of Carl Sagan's Cosmos should be required viewing for all. It is an inspiration and it gives the pursuit of science a spiritual quality. He completely expresses the intent that I created this blog for my children and grand children. I just wish I wasn't such a bad writer, I wish I was able to express my intentions as well as Neil De Grasse Tyson did in the following excerpt;

" 5 simple rules. Question authority. No idea is true just be just because someone says so. Think for yourself. Question yourself. Don't believe anything just because you want too.  Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, its wrong.  Get over it.  Follow the evidence where ever it leads. If you have no evidence reserve judgement. And perhaps the most important rule of all: remember you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things.

Newton, Einstein and every other great scientist in history, they all made mistakes. Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves...and each other.

Learning the age of the earth or the distance to the stars or how life evolves, what difference does that make?  Well, part of that depends on how big of a universe your willing to live in. Some of us like it small. That's fine. Understandable. But I like it big. And when I take all of this in my heart and mind, I'm uplifted by it. And when I have that feeling, I want to know that its real, that its not just something happening inside my own head, because it matters what's true, and our imagination is nothing compared with Natures awesome reality.

I want to know what's in those dark places, and what happened before the big bang. I want to know what lies beyond the cosmic horizon, and how life began. Are there other places in the cosmos where matter and energy have become alive.. and aware?  I want to know my ancestors---all of them. I want to be a good strong link in the chain of generations. I want to protect my children and the children of ages to come. We who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, we begun to learn the story of our origins--we are star stuff contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness. We and the other living things on this planet carry a legacy of cosmic evolution spanning billions of years.  If we take that knowledge to heart, if we come to know and love nature as it really is, then we will surely be remembered by our descendants as good strong links in the chain of life. And our children will continue this sacred searching, seeing for us as we have seen for those who came before, discovering wonders yet undreamed of ...in the cosmos."

I can really get behind the message Neil is conveying. The importance of skepticism is something I definitely will blog about more. The importance of ancestry. The importance of wonder and knowledge and science. All things I want to pass on to my grandchildren.

Most people are raised and taught a narrative that explains the world. They are taught social norms they think will lead to prosperity and happiness.  Everyone thinks they are doing the moral thing. Whether its the suicide bomber that blowing up innocent people in the name of Allah, the communist dictator who is starving millions to make sure everyone gets their fair share, and the politician who borrows money from unborn generations to promote their ideologies. When we are children we don't question, because children have to learn fast and if its working for their parents why waste time testing it. When we are adults we continue this habit of mind and politicians and marketers use it to get control of our money, lives and future. The problem is that every one has a narrative and follows the social norms they were first introduced too as children, and they are often come at the expense of others and/or not sustainable long term. I'd like to teach my children and grand children to test the narratives and social norms you were given as a children. Make sure they are in sync with reality. Make sure they contribute to the health and resilience of the next generation. Be a strong link in the chain. As my favorite philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche advises " transvaluate your values."