Archive for the 'History' Category

01
Aug

The Swastika: Can it be Rehabilitated?

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: History

Whenever a prisoner is released from jail, an important question must be answered: can they be rehabilitated? In other words, will they integrate into and become a productive member of society? Are they at risk of causing further social disturbance? Can we be reasonably certain that they will put their past behind them?

Now this question is being asked not of a human being but of a thing: the swastika. Some individuals and groups are saying that after years of being associated with the Nazis and the horrors they perpetrated, the swastika deserves a chance at rehabilitation. Most recently, this demand has been made by the International Raelian Movement, the religion/cult generally known for its images of little green men and weird sexual practices (they later clarified their position by stating that they didn’t advocate promiscuity but felt that people should be free to express their sexuality in any way they wanted as long as they didn’t hurt anybody else). But even before this, some people had expressed reservations about the across-the-board demonization of the swastika. Indian-American activist Rita Chaudhry Sethi, for example, called the swastika an “extremely common, ancient Hindu symbol” and wondered why South Asians should be criticized for displaying it simply because Adolf Hitler chose to appropriate it.

Indeed, the swastika has a long and, before the Nazis, illustrious history. In Indian-descended religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, the swastika symbolized the cycle of life and rebirth and the movement of the universe and the planets. It was a sign of harmony and prosperity. Even today some homes and places of worship in South and Southeast Asia place a swastika in the doorway just as some Westerners keep a lucky horseshoe. One Buddhist temple in Toronto has a swastika at its entrance. But the swastika can be found even further afield, such as in pre-Hispanic Mexico. And surprise of surprises, there was even one on the floor of the Ein Gedi synagogue in Israel.

All this changed, of course, when the Nazis decided to claim the swastika as their own as a symbol of the Aryans, the people who conquered Northern India about 1,500 years before Christ and gave that region the Indo-European languages spoken there today. For this reason, the swastika tends to elicit strong reactions in Western countries. Germany, for instance, has banned the swastika and other Nazi regalia in an attempt to eradicate a less than complimentary part of its past. Prince Harry (son of Charles and Diana) was roundly condemned for wearing a swastika to a dress party. And here in Canada, an Ontario teacher of Ukrainian descent was temporarily suspended from her position when she had her students paint the swastika, which she said was a good luck sign in her native Ukraine, on their Easter eggs.

So can the swastika be rehabilitated? Without ever forgetting the atrocities committed by the Nazis, can we now allow the swastika to take its place in the sun? I will admit that I myself could probably never wear, say, a swastika necklace. To me, it would feel like an affront to my many friends and family members who suffered because of the Nazis, like my high school ex-boyfriend’s father who, as a soldier in the Canadian Forces stationed in London, narrowly escaped death when a bomb from the Luftwaffe just missed the church in which he was attending Mass; or my father-in-law, who as a small child in England was forced to go into a bomb shelter; or my aunt and two uncles who served in the US army during World War II.

However, a small part of me hopes that the swastika loses its stigma, which after all it did nothing to deserve. At the very least, individuals like Rita Chaudhry Sethi and the Ukrainian-Canadian teacher, who come from cultures where the swastika as a tradition pre-dates Hitler by hundreds if not thousands of years, should not be shamed for using it. I am not sure whether the swastika’s reputation will be restored in my lifetime. But hopefully someday the swastika will return as a symbol of peace and good luck.

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25
Jul

Discovering African Ancestry Through DNA Testing (3/3)

By Cynapse 1 Comment
Categories: History

See also: Part 1, Part 2

In the final installment of the series on DNA ancestry testing we will look at mtDNA and the maternal line. Read part 1 of the series to learn the difference between mtDNA, yDNA and autosomal DNA.

To quickly recap: a patrilneal test can determine haplogroup and tribal association as dictated by the father’s father’s father’s … father. My test results traced back to a strain I-Haplogroup (I1a) originating from and most commonly found in Scandinavia. Independent research verified that my paternal great grandfather was a native of Scotland, where the I-Haplogroup is alleged to have spread via Viking invasion. Needless to say, the yDNA test provided no information about which African ethnic group I may have descended from.

My Ancestral Journey – Mama Edition

The mtDNA test can determine haplogroup and tribal association by way of the mother’s mother’s mother’s … mother. MtDNA Haplogroups are denoted by different labels than male haplogroups, though the geographic regions represented are roughly the same.

Given the previous test results, I knew better than to have any explanations in terms of discovering exact African ancestry:

  • mtDNA, like yDNA, only traces a single gender line of ancestry. Nearly all of the family tree is left untested
  • Autosomal DNA can test both male and female DNA but is accurate for only a few generations back and sometimes cannot differentiate between closely-related populations
  • My maternal grandmother is visibly and verified to be mixed. As she is from the Caribbean, her mother/grandmother could be from … virtually anywhere.

Genebase mtDNA test Interface

Genbase performs mtDNA testing based on a buccal swab from the user or a member of the user’s family. The latter option allows users to trace lines not directly accessible from their own sample (e.g. a father’s matrilenial line).

mtDNA Haplogroup Identification
L1 Haplogroup

The default mtDNA test can predict a user’s haplogroup. My test predicted membership in the L-Haplogroup. An additional SNP backbone test confirmed my subclade to be L1C. The L1 Haplogroup appeared approximately 150,000 years ago in East Africa and is closely related to the original L0 group (Mitochondrial eve). The L1C subclade is commonly found in central and southern Africa, particularly among Pygmy ethnic groups and Bantu-speaking African groups.

Multiple years passed before I had a single “close match” on DNA Reunion (matches users to other users). The original assumption was that there weren’t many black users on the Canada-based Genebase system but a quick user profile search dispelled that idea. This was an early sign that the mtDNA result might contain another “surprise”, despite being within the African realm. Continue reading ‘Discovering African Ancestry Through DNA Testing (3/3)’

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13
Mar

Languages of the Bible

By Emilia Liz 3 Comments
Categories: History, Language and Religion

A few years ago a broadcaster from Alberta, Canada was asking members of the public their opinion on the nation’s bilingual policy. According to one woman, Canada did not need any such policy. If English was good enough for Jesus, she said, surely it was good enough for Canadians.

Of course I had a huge laugh over this. In Jesus’ time the languages spoken in what we now call England were Celtic; the ancestor of modern-day English was introduced several centuries later when the Germanic Angle and Saxon tribes invaded the island, giving rise to the term “Anglo-Saxon.” But the Alberta woman’s statement raises the question: what language did Christ actually speak?

One can be forgiven for thinking that Jesus’ mother tongue was Hebrew. After all, Hebrew, in which the Old Testament was written, is considered the language of the Jews, and Christ himself was a Jew. In his daily life, though, he conversed in Aramaic, a closely related language that the Jews adopted during their exile in Babylonia and that more recently was used in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. Some words of Aramaic origin in English include the name Thomas (meaning “twin”) and “abbot” from “abba,” a term for father. Jesus might have known Greek as well. At the time of the New Testament, Greek had become a “lingua franca” in the Mediterranean area, and as Jesus had dealings with non-Jews, he may very well have used Greek on these occasions. It is unlikely, however, that he spoke Latin, which was known by few in Palestine other than the Roman administrators.

As stated earlier, Aramaic and Hebrew are very similar. They both belong to a group of tongues known as the Semitic languages, some familiar examples of which are Arabic, Phoenician, and Ethiopia’s Amharic. The Semitic languages are in turn part of a larger group known as the Afroasiatic family, which includes a number of tongues spoken in the Middle East and North and East Africa.

Many Semitic languages in the Bible, however, are today either extinct or used only by small groups of individuals. To a large extent, these languages were pushed to, or over, the brink by their sister tongue Arabic, which expanded following the rise of Islam. Among the now-dead languages are Moabite, Edomite, and Ammonite, whose speakers are mentioned in various parts of the Old Testament. Ruth, to whom a book of the Bible is dedicated, was a Moabite woman. Aramaic is now spoken by about half a million people in Lebanon and Syria. Although it is under constant threat from the more dominant Arabic around it, efforts are being undertaken to preserve the language.

Not all the tongues in the Bible fall into the Semitic and Afroasiatic categories. Others belong to the Indo-European family, a group that encompasses most modern-day languages of Europe and several in Western Asia and Northern India. Greek and Latin are well-known examples of Indo-European languages that make their appearance in the New Testament, which in fact was originally written in Greek. The Persians, of whose empire the Biblical heroine Esther became queen, also spoke an Indo-European language.

A lesser-known Indo-European people described in the Bible were the Hittites. At one time rulers of a large empire in the Middle East, their most famous member was Uriah, an officer in the Israelite army whom David had killed after his (David’s) affair with the former’s wife Bathsheba. Unlike Persian, Greek, and Latin, though, which live on today in various forms – as Iranian, modern Greek, and the present-day Romance tongues respectively – the language of the Hittites died without leaving any descendants, so to speak.

The most extraordinary Biblical language concerns the Elamites, a people mentioned in Genesis and Acts of the Apostles. They originated from what is now Iran and later conquered Babylonia. Interestingly, their language belonged to a family known as Dravidian, the most familiar member of which (to Westerners at least) is Tamil. Though Dravidian languages are at present largely confined to Southern India and Sri Lanka, they were believed to have once been spoken over a much broader area, hence the presence of the Elamites in Biblical lands.

So if my friend from Alberta were to meet Jesus, she would be well advised to bring along a Greek or Aramaic interpreter!

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01
Mar

Discovering African Ancestry Through DNA Testing (2/3)

By Cynapse 3 Comments
Categories: History

Please read Part 1 if you have not already.

Like many who use DNA for ancestral discovery, I didn’t understand entirely what was going to be tested when I first signed up with Genebase. The common mistake is to think that the tests will determine the entire ethnic makeup of your mother or father (not to mention yourself). As explained in part 1 of this series, the yDNA and mtDNA tests simply look down your line of fathers and mothers respectively. In the proverbial family tree, they each follow a single branch, leaving virtually the entire bush untouched.

Of course I figured this out as I read Genebase’s excellent tutorials – which only became available over the past year or so. Indeed, you will find several websites with complaining about Genebase’s processing time and customer support. Most of the complaints registered before 2009 were warranted but now the website is comprehensive and the turnaround time for processing samples is usually much shorter than the estimated 6-8 weeks.

So what was I looking for from this test? Primarily some sort of connection, no matter how arbitrary, to the motherland. Africa’s diverse cultural landscape was compressed to a single label -black- with the Atlantic/Arabic slave trade and the label “black” roughly translates to “lower caste” in practical terms. Virtually any negative stigma that applies to some portion of our population -criminal tendencies, low IQ, lazy, irresponsible- is automatically assumed of the entire population. These images did not reflect my family who count professors, engineers and executives among their ranks, and so they served as my role models as opposed to some street stereotype. Regardless, it became tiresome to hear the self-congratulatory tone of some of the older locals in my rural setting: “You should be thankful you are here under our thumb; otherwise, you would be in Africa eating dirt half naked”. Of course Africa was not always in that state (it still isn’t entirely that way) and in later years I noticed a decidedly less bitter tone among African immigrants when compared to locally-born and Caribbean-born blacks. The primary reason, I realized, is because these African immigrants had a connection to their roots and culture – a culture in which they were the primary actors rather than a (barely) tolerated annoyance. Theirs was not merely a story of slavery, segregation clawing for mere survival. Most of Africa sported a pretty decent civilization at some point, from Egypt’s pyramid-building predecessors in Nubia to the gold-soaked trade routes of Ancient Ghana to the mysterious stone structures of Great Zimbabwe. I wondered whether I had even a tenuous connection to any of these ancient cultures.

Also I was generally curious about what might turn up. Between both sides of my family there is reddish hair, slanted yes, grey eyes and a wild variance in skin tones. Such variation in appearance, even between full siblings, is typical of many families with Caribbean or American roots (I have both).

My Ancestral Journey – Papa Edition

The fist test results I got back were for yDNA which determines the deep ancestry along my paternal line (father’s, father’s … father). I was curious to see which haplogroup passed down his line – perhaps the A-Group common in Ethopians or Khoisan? Maybe it would be the B-Group most common among Western Africans (the largest source for the slave trade)? Alas, the answer was neither -

Y DNA Haplogroup Path to I

Migration path of I-Haplogroup

Genebase’s test results show that I actually belong to the I-Group, a European-based haplogroup that evolved from our earliest ancestors in East Africa. The series of letters shows the exact path of migration and mutation, starting from the original ancestor, changing into the important Egyptian-based F-Group (considered to be the source of all non-African populations) and eventually splintering from the J-Group and K-Group after migrating into Europe. The map provides a more graphical version of my ancestor’s journey. Genebase provides the following description of the I Haplogroup:

The founder of Haplogroup I lived approximately 25,000 years ago in the Balkans during the last Glacial Maximum.  He is the direct descendent of Haplogroup F ancestors who had journeyed from the Middle East into the Balkans.  Today, the highest frequencies of Haplogroup I are found in the Balkans, near the Dinaric Mountain chain in Croatia.  Haplogroup I is strongly associated with Croat populations, namely Slavic people living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other nearby countries.
…
As the ice sheets retreated at the end of the Ice Age, these ancestors continued their journey northward into Northern Europe, in particular Scandinavia (a region in Northern Europe named after the Scandinavian Peninsula).  Today, a large portion of Scandinavian populations in the Adriatic regions, including Denmark, mainland Norway, Sweden, and Finland trace their ancestry to this line.  Vikings also likely descended from this line.  The detection of low frequencies of this haplogroup on the British Isles, France and some Celtic populations may be the result of more recent Vikings raids in these regions.

The last sentence was of particular interest – I have a very Celtic name uncommon among western black populations. Regardless, shock led to questioning, which led to the gnashing of teeth by older relatives and a begrudging admission that my great grandfather was in fact a Scotsman, presumed to be from the highlands. The I-Group isn’t very common in Scotland but was common among the invading Vikings. Thus, my paternal line may not have been in Scotland for very long.

At this point, I could have taken a subclade test to determine where within the I-Group my paternal line resides. However, due to certain genetic markers the initial STR assessment was able to determine also certainly that I belong to the I1a subclade, most commonly found in Sweden and relatively rare in Scotland. It is possible that my great grandfather may have been the long-term product of a Viking raid either directly on Scotland or a nearby region such as the Orkney Islands.

Next, it was time to compare my yDNA sample to all the other users in the database. Who might match me the closest and where would they reside?

Selecting Test Stringency in DNA Reunion

Genebase allows users to determine how strict to make the search by setting a minimum number of matching markers and maximum genetic distance (marker values that differ). After clicking Find Matches, the user receives a list of close matches, where they reside from and the option to guess how many generations ago the respective family lines diverged. Genebase also provides a tally of ethnic backgrounds and a google map of current locations for all matches. Note that this data is user-input and sometimes subject to what people THINK their background may be rather than what a “perfect-world” DNA test might show.

Finally, it was onto the really fun test – which “indigenous” ethnic group most closely matched my yDNA sample? My African reunion in shambles, this test was more a matter of determining which part of Scandinavia may have produced the offending Viking.

Selecting Test Stringency in Indigenous DNA

Once again, Genebase provides the option to set how many overlapping markers to test. More markers generally ensures more accurate results but may result in fewer populations to compare. Users should try to match on the largest number of markers that still provides realistic population samples (see below).

Selecting Comparison Populations in Indigenous DNA

Genebase analyzes yDNA samples and preferences to provide 1 or more population sets for comparisons. Data is taken from many journals created worldwide, providing a best-line-of-fit approach to matching indigenous groups. A good strategy might be to try different options and if one particular ethnic group keeps appearing at the top of the comparisons then there is a good chance your paternal line has something in common with the paternal line of participants in that ethnic samples.

Indigenous DNA RMI Matches for yDNA Sample

From the results, it can be seen that my two top yDNA matches were both Danish – presumably from different journals, which adds credibility to the result. The rankings are being determined by RMI (relative match index) value, a ratio indicating the likelihood that the sample matches a given group vs the rest of the world population. For instance, these test results suggest that my yDNA line is 29.38x more likely to belong to the top Danish sample compared to the rest of the populations in the world.

Notice there is a group called U.S Caucasian. There are several non-indigenous samples like this across the journals (African American, Brazilians of non-black Decent, Asian-American …) and they seem to serve as controls. For instance, if US Caucasian shows up very close to the top of a yDNA match list, there’s a chance the sample are not matching closely to any indigenous group. A possible solution might be to increase the number of matching markers and re-run the test.

As for interpreting my results … Denmark is at the crossroads of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian worlds, so it’s reasonable to assume that my paternal line moved form Scandinavia to the British Isles by way of invasion, later moving to the West and obviously crossing paths with the Afro-diaspora.

This is about as far as a yDNA can get one for the time being. What is it worth? Depends on what you’re looking for. Due to the not uncommon relations between slave owners and their female slaves, a sizable portion of African American males will have a European y haplogroup (mostly the R-Group which is dominant across Europe) and an African mt haplogroup. Thus, western blacks taking DNA tests must acknowledge the very real possibility that no direct African link will be found by tracing the paternal line.

Next up: the maternal line

Continue to Part 3

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28
Feb

Discovering African Ancestry Through DNA Testing (1/3)

By Cynapse 0 Comments
Categories: History

Every Black History Month, many Americans and Canadians of African descent are confronted with one simple question – why do we need a Black History Month? After all, there’s no month dedicated to white history or gay history. The black history tradition dates back to 1926 and was founded by American historian Carter G Woodson, who sought to preserve and propagate knowledge of the artifacts and publications about the contributions of African-Americans to American life. The holiday was originally called “Negro History Week” and later expanded to a month-long celebration.

Of course this all took place before the rise of mass media, the internet and, most importantly, the legal rights that allow blacks in the United States to control their own destiny. Now in the digital age, discovering black history is as easy as visiting Wikipedia or scouring for an old copy of Encyclopedia Africana. So, why are so many black people still deeply attached to a concentrated celebration of widely-available information?

Part of the answer may be that assorted factoids about George Washington Carver and Harriet Tubman are the most intimate history many blacks have – due in part to slavery and the destructive breeding practices learned from that era. History within individual families can be hard to follow, with available information starting after the slave ship landed on American soil. The very label “African-American” implies a lack of knowledge about actual ethnic identity – a Somali has a considerably different culture and history than a member of the Ashanti tribe. Comparatively, the term European-American is rare except when in use by white nationalists. The majority of white Americans will refer to their heritage by nation – Irish-American, German-American, etc – and celebrate the specific contributions of those ethnic groups to American culture.

Fortunately, African-Americans no longer need to rely entirely on historical records to determine their ancestry. Specifically, DNA Ancestry testing has become tremendously popular over the past few years by promising to discover long-lost African history through genetically linking users to pre-defined samples of African ethnic groups. Some services, like Ancestry.com and DNA Consultants, offer comprehensive testing while other services like African Ancestry concentrate specifically on African heritage.

But what benefit can be gained from such services and how believable are the results? I’ve spent the better part of a year overseeing tests for myself and others as well as doing some research into the benefits and limitations of DNA testing. A summary of DNA Testing as well as my own experience will be spread over three blog posts. Readers are encouraged to submit their own experiences with DNA testing.

What can a DNA Test Tell you?

Present DNA ancestry testing is based on scientific findings that all present-day human beings can be traced back approximately 150,000 years to common ancestors in East Africa. Various waves of early humans migrated from Africa to different parts of the globe and their DNA mutated in tiny increments. These natural mutations, known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP’s for short) occurred randomly every few thousand years and were passed down from generation to generation. While these mutations are complex and there can be many different sequences (also known as Haplotypes), mutations are generally quite similar for early humans that migrated to the same part of the world around the same. Haplotypes are thus clustered into haplogroups, which are understood to have a common ancestor. There are separate male (Y-Chromosome) and female (X-Chromosome) haplogroups which are distributed geographically.

Y-DNA Haplogroups

Three types of DNA tests can be used to determine ancestry:
mtDNA – Short for mitochondrial DNA, mtDNA is carried by both males and females. However, mtDNA is passed exclusively from mother to child, meaning an mtDNA test can only determine your mother’s contribution to your genetic makeup. Since this relationship is true all the way up your family line, mtDNA ancestry tests can determine the origin of your mother’s mother’s … mother. Because mtDNA is only inherited from mothers, it does not change (or mutate) significantly over time (due to the slow-changing nature of SNP’s). This slow rate of mutation allows scientists to determine the long term origin (also known as “Deep Ancestry”) of your maternal line.
yDNA – Y-Chromosomes works in a similar manner to mtDNA, except that they are only passed from father to son. Thus, only males have yDNA tests. Females wishing to discover their deep paternal lineage must have a paternal male relative take the test (e.g. father, brother).
(side note: human females obtain X-Chromosomes from both mother and father; thus, “X Chromosome” cannot be used interchangeably with mtDNA in this instance)

Autosomal – Every human has 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes. There are equal copies of the autosomal chromosomes in males and females, allowing genetic identification based on the heritage of both parents. However, autosomal DNA is not “deep”, as the 22 pairs are inherited randomly from parents (for a given pair, one chromosome comes from each parent; each parent can pass 1 of 2 chromosomes, meaning 4 possible configurations per pair). No two people -except for identical twins- have the exact same autosomal DNA, which contrasts with the direct inheritance of yDNA and mtDNA.

What can’t a DNA Test tell you?

So with all of this technology, it should be easy to figure out where you originally set up shop before the transatlantic trip, right? Not quite. Apart from the fact that an overwhelming percentage blacks in the western hemisphere are of mixed heritage, the current testing methods have noteworthy limitations

  1. yDNA and mtDNA tests are single-line. This means that they measure straight inheritance via mother or father only. Thus, one cannot use mtDNA to test whether a mother’s father is part-native because the mother’s mtDNA comes exclusively from her mother. Similarly, yDNA only provides information on a line of fathers. Thus, even combining mtDNA and yDNA tests will not allow a person to determine their entire ancestry.
  2. Autosomal DNA can only reliably measure back to the grandparent generation. Typically, autosomal DNA used in paternity testing, crime scene investigation and other situations where either exact identity or close family relationship needs to be established.
  3. Autosomal DNA cannot determine what percentage of each ethnic group is in a person’s total makeup

Ergo, it may not be possible to tell whether you are a direct decedent of the Zulus unless either your mother’s mother’s … mother or father’s father’s … father happens to belong to that ethnic group. If you are so lucky it will still not possible to determine just how “Zulu” you are.

Discovering your Ancestry through Genebase

There are many different websites and offline services offering DNA testing as a way to discover heritage. Being Canadian and somewhat concerned about how foreign governments might use a DNA sample, I chose the Vancouver-based Genebase (note: many Americans also use this service).

Genebase offers mtDNA and yDNA test kits of varying comprehensiveness (and prices) for ancestral discovery. The initial tests are STR (short tandem repeat) tests that can be used to predict haplogroups. Additional SNP tests can be ordered to confirm haplogroup, and most recently Genebase has added subclade tests for further confirmations.

For example, a male users interested in his paternal ancestry could order the Advanced Paternal Ancestry Package (Y-DNA 44 Marker Test). After the test predicts that he belongs to the J haplogroup, he could confirm this by upgrading with a Y-DNA DNA haplogroup Backbone SNP Test. If the client wants more detail he could choose to order the Y-DNA J Subclade SNP Test and use the results to determine the probable region form which his earliest haplogroup member originated.

Apart from haplogroup identification, Genebase offers two other useful ancestry tools for incoming DNA samples -

DNA Reunion – yDNA and mtDNA STR markers can be compared to all the other users in the DNA database. The software ranks user matches according to number of overlapping markets to be compared between two users and the genetic distance (calculated by number of markers that have different values). For the example above, the user might upgrade from a 44 marker test to a 67 marker test, since having a larger pool of markers to test will improve the probability of finding matches. Using the search preferences, he can direct DNA Reunion to return a list of users who have a maximum genetic distance of 1 (ie only 1 marker different) out of a minimum 18 overlapping markers. The results might show that the majority of users matching this criteria reside in Egypt, suggesting (though not proving) that user’s deep ancestral roots may lie in that region.

Indigenous DNA – Similar to DNA Reunion, except DNA samples are compared to indigenous (and some non-indigenous) groups from around the world. The software makes STR comparisons over several different journals using a selectable number of marker matches. Again, the results do not strictly prove ancestry but are an excellent aid for determining probability.

Autosomal test kits are also available and are used in DNA Reunion – however Genebase only uses autosomal DNA to match near family relations to others users in the database. This contrasts to many other ancestry services which use autosomal DNA to predic ethnic identity.  Still, autosomal testing could be used for cheap, legal paternal testing.

At one time DNA kits used to be available in Best Buy but these days it seems the only way to get a kit is to order directly from the Genebase website. The kit is mailed to the user’s home with a return envelope, small swab brushes and full instructions on how to collect a buccal swab. Once the sample is returned, processing takes place over the next few weeks and the results are uploaded to a website. The user can then view the results and start using the tools described above.

Continue to Part 2

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22
Sep

A Dog’s World: The Word Behind Man’s Best Friend

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: History and Language

Nowadays it seems there are as many if not more lists of dogs’ as of babies’ names. Few potential pet owners, however, show much interest in the name “dog” itself. Which is a pity, because this hoary old noun, to paraphrase The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt in an article about motherhood, has a history stretching back across time and place.

“Dog” hails from the Old English word “dogca,” which actually referred to a specific kind of dog, a mastiff. “Dogca” in this sense was borrowed by several other European languages. In French it became “dogue” as in the breed the dogue de Bordeaux, the best-known example of which is the character Hooch in the Tom Hanks movie Turner and Hooch. The previous term for dog in Old English was “hound.” Ironically, while “hound” eventually took on a more restricted meaning – that is, of a hunting dog – “dog” came to signify the animal in general.

“Hound” is noticeably similar to the word for dog in the other Germanic languages. These include the Dutch “hond” (as in the breed the Keeshond) and “hund” in German and the Scandinavian languages. More distantly, it is related to the Latin “canis,” which gave us “canine” and “kennel” among other words. Even the Ancient Greek name for dog, “kyon,” has left its mark on the English language. “Kyon”’s most famous contribution to our vocabulary is “cynic,” which originally meant “dog-like” – and which would therefore have made the phrase “Garfield the Cynical Cat” a literal oxymoron. The Greek philosopher Diogenes, founder of the school of thought known as Cynicism, was called “The Dog” during his lifetime. He was alleged to have stated: “I am Diogenes the Dog. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy and bite scoundrels.” Thus he and his followers were termed the Cynics, or dog-like ones.

Words for dog related – albeit more distantly – to “hound” can be found in other branches of the Indo-European language family.* Latvian has “suns,” Armenian “shun,” and even the classical Sanskrit of ancient India boasts “svan.” Linguists believe that the root word for “dog” in the original tongue spoken by the Indo-European people, who are believed to have lived in the Russian steppes 3,000 years before Christ, was something like “kwon.” The “k” then became an “h” in the Germanic languages and an “s” in Eastern Europe and some parts of Asia. The fact that such a wide range of languages use a derivative of “kwon” suggests that the earliest Indo-Europeans possessed domestic dogs, along with animals like cows, pigs, sheep and horses that also have similar names in these languages. On the other hand cats, who were only introduced to Europe in Greek and Roman times, lack an Indo-European root word; “cat” appears to be a borrowing from a Semitic language similar to the Arabic “qett.”

So the next time you pat your furry canine friend, think of the history behind his or her name!

* “Indo-European” refers to a group of languages spoken in most of Europe and a number of places in Western Asia and India. Well-known examples are English, Russian and Hindi.

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22
Jun

How About A Trivia Question For Pocahontas (Part 2 of 2)

By Ben Griffin 0 Comments
Categories: History

See Also: Part 1

Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were Sioux (Lakota) Indians and Geronimo was an Apache Indian. Three is not many, but these individuals are known and the larger tribe or nation they were born into. This is different from Pocahontas, Pilgrims, Puritans, Squanto or the Mohawk where we know the group or the individual, but not both. This is a change.

Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Geronimo were 19th century American Indians that attached themselves to a rising power at the time, the United States. The wars with Plains Indians permitted no chance of victory for these Stone Age peoples against an advancing industrial civilization. Fighting however meant glory, a struggle with wins and losses. It gets your name in the media and creates history and stories. Simply fighting, even when you can’t achieve victory, prolongs the inevitable, but gets your voice heard and ringing through the ages. This was bad news, but sometimes that is the only way to get news out of your people. To let them know you are still out there, surviving against long odds against an implacable foe. You’ve got spirit on your side while they have superior arms, technology, and numbers, but still you battle them for decades and instil terror in them because they can never be sure where you will strike next.

We can easily conjure up mental images how Apache and Sioux Indians lived. Writers and Hollywood took this image and ran with it. Some of the portrayals were inaccurate and romantic on the silver screen and in print, but they discuss real real Indians and the world came to know them. They are American Indians that came from the Midwest, not the east coast. From the Midwest are the “real” American Indians. They seem like the first but they are not.

Not only do we know their names and nations of Crazy Horse, Geronimo and Sitting Bull, but also how they lived. Their famous hand signals, headdress of eagle feathers, their very manly and exciting methods of hunting buffalo, their famous tepees-cone shaped animal skin tents where smoke comes out and pipes are smoked for various reasons. These Plains Indians are icons of masculinity. Hunting buffalo on horses and chasing those vast thundering herds under the big sky is far more heroic than fishing or farming. One reason why William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody took his Wild West show, with Sitting Bull, to Europe.

In Canada a non-white, part European person in Louis Riel became famous when he led the Red River Rebellion against Canada in 1869-70. Again, west of the Great Lakes, on the wide open prairie of Manitoba he had room to manoeuvre. Riel is an important figure in Western Canadian history, a Métis, who was of French and aboriginal background. Riel is not well known among the general public, but he has no equivalent east of the Great Lakes in Canada. The Red River Métis were fur traders who worked with the Hudson Bay Company and were buffalo hunters that ranged across the western frontier until it closed late in the 19th century. The Métis hunted buffalo in wagons with their families, which is not as exciting as riding a horse, but their resistance to the government of Canada has put them firmly in the history books.

Another example that when you rebel against the government, they record it, the media reports this as news, and you get a measure of recognition you otherwise probably would not get had you not protested.

George Washington in a HouseThere is a legacy east of the Great Lakes that that remains from the colonial period. When looking at portraits of George Washington, one sees images of a cultivated man who looks like he could have been born in Europe. In fact, growing up in the mid 18th century, until his twenties, he considered himself English. It seems to have taken a successful war to create Washington‘s fame and an assertion he was no longer English. A new man in the New World made a new American country and the world wishes to find out more about him. England and other European powers do not give up their political grip easily, it has to be wrested away.

A portrait shows George Washington as a boy who has just chopped down the mythical cherry tree. The picture is an idealistic portrayal of a plantation in a well maintained landscape of gently rolling hills, green grass, and well built brick houses. This is could easily be an estate in Europe, safe, relaxed and comfortable. It is a far cry from the wilderness of the dusty Wild West with its sod huts, tepees, rain storms, tornadoes, floods, saloons, poker, six shooters, Winchester rifles, cowboys, Indians, buffalo, Rocky Mountains, tumble weeds, cactus, deserts, cowboy hats, cowboy boots, ranches, longhorn cattle, and cattle drives that shout, “not Europe.” A geographic space distinct from Europe, was not colonized by a European power, and thus permits a non-European people to emerge from it.

It was lands from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic that were directly governed by England and France. Through the charter of the Hudson Bay Company, so was most of Canada. Here were the colonies of England and France that had New France, New England, and Nova Scotia. How can you have Indians living in a region called England or France? Even if they are prefaced with the word “new”? The great powers of the day dominate the lands they control, and people who do not appear to be from England, France, Scotland, or Europe are dimly seen, faint in the distance. This cultural legacy lingers on through the centuries even as formal political control has ceased.

What is to be done? History cannot be changed, but interpretations can be, and new knowledge acquired that was not popular before. Trivia perhaps is one answer, it can be so trivial, yet it is fast and easy, built upon what we already know in small increments. Some trivia is unimportant, and should be forgotten, but not all of it is. Pocahontas is already in the media, in our consciousness, so modestly increasing what we already know about her is entirely feasible. One or two small questions that prod our thinking can be a start.

And the answers are Pocahontas spoke an Algonquin language and was in the Powhatan tribe.

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