Roots

This is my DNA ancestry. 

I received this update just before we left to visit Ireland.  Heretofore, the oral tradition in my family has always been that I was ½ Irish and ½ German. 

Mom's laborious genealogy research bore this out tracing our immigrant ancestors back to both Ireland and Germany – at which point the trail went cold.  Mom’s work predated the internet so much of it was conducted in person searching dusty birth, baptismal and death records in small Midwest communities and a trip to Salt Lake City, Utah to delve into accounts maintained by the Church of Latter Day Saints – the Mormons.  Nevertheless, the pie remained 50/50.  Easy peasy – half and half.  Looking at that regional map pictured here - it is no longer a simple 50/50 sprit. 


When I submitted my DNA for analysis in October of 2016 the original ancestry map looked like this. 

click on a map for a closer look

As additional data and DNA was collected it was updated in 2018 to this.    

And now the most recent update at the very top of this post.  The Irish half is actually becoming more refined and focused upon specific regions of Ireland.  It is the 39% that is traced to England, Wales and Northwestern Europe that is a puzzle.  Very little is specifically German. 

This is complicated on a number of levels but what is clear is that roughly half of my DNA reflects the history of Western European migration patterns and invasions.  If you go back far enough it was the Celts who dominated much of what is now Europe and the British Isles.  Tribal and warlike the Celts had no written language and as a consequence there are no complete records.  What we do know is that the Romans displaced them and the Celts retreated to Britain and Ireland.  Following that the barbarians displaced the Romans.  Armies ebbed and flowed and conquering Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans left their mark upon this part of the world both politically, culturally and ethnically as well. 

Modern studies suggest that the earliest populations weren’t necessarily wiped-out but adapted and absorbed new arrivals.  Invaders and migrators left their seed in their wake and as a consequence the story has become both clearer and more complex.  Trace DNA is quite persistent which makes my roots both diverse and a wee bit ambiguous. 

Stay-tuned as there’s likely some additional research needed.