It perturbs me to no end that people feel justified in reciting their national lineages by percentage. For example, people often say things like, “I’m 25% Norwegian, 25% Irish and 50% German.” This induction stems from the speaker’s belief that, for example, one of his or her grandparents is Norwegian, one is Irish, and two are German. This is hogwash. Understanding national lineages in this way fails to address two very important issues: the dynamicity of national borders and the reproductive co-mingling of people throughout history.
If you look at a world map for each decade over the past thousand years (which represents a mere 40 generations or so), you will notice that national borders change dramatically and do so quite often. If I have been told, for instance, that I had a German great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandparent, this person may have lived in what is now Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, western Poland, eastern France, Slovenia, northern Italy, Switzerland, or the Netherlands.
Nationalities are very rarely genetic or ethnic constructs; they are governmental constructs that history shows ever to be in flux. In a single lifetime, it seems a marked event that national borders change and atlases must be re-issued. Therefore, it is not surprising that most people do not realize how artificial those borders really are. From a perspective of familial history, there is no such thing as “Germany” or “Ireland” or “Norway” or any other country. These names simply represent the confines that have been set upon geographic locations by the governing body at a given point in time.
Furthermore, just as there is no static country called “Germany,” there are no static “German peoples.” If it is in fact the case that I am 50% German (disregarding the border issue), then it must be the case that the two grandparents from whom I derived each quarter of my genetic makeup is each 100% German. The likelihood that anyone today is descended from a single “pure” line, or a small set of “pure” lines must be remarkably small (except, perhaps, among certain isolated indigenous populations). The history of the world reveals that humans have conquered and have been conquered from the very start.
No doubt, when the Norman French invaded England in 1066, there was a fair amount of sexual activity, almost certainly French men having their way with Saxon women. The children, who then grow up in a society where French culture and heritage was prestigious and Saxon roots were swept under the rug, may have been unlikely to think of themselves as Saxons, but as French.
Going further back, there is convincing archeological evidence that in the first century BCE, Scandinavian, Celtic, Iranian, Baltic, and Slavic tribes had contact with each other. Did they intermarry? Did Celtic warriors from Gaul kidnap Slavic women from the Dnepr River region? When the Franks from north of the Rhine conquered Gaul in 406, surely they must have taken advantage of the fertility of the vanquished. As the Frankish kingdom of the Carolingian Empire grew across most of modern-day France, much of modern-day Germany, and some of modern-day Italy over the following 400 years, it is hard to believe that sexual fraternization and co-habitation was not prevalent. All of this, of course, does not even consider the Roman empirical soldiers who no doubt found sexual outlets all across Europe for the better part of 500 years.
When a person today makes a statistical statement about his or her national lineage, it is well to assume that the statement is meaningless. There is, incidentally, a massive genetic study underway (to be completed in 2010) called the Genographic Project that is collecting DNA data from people all over the world. The study involves the investigation of predictable genetic markers that have been preserved in some populations and lost in others, thereby providing evidence about human migratory patterns and intermingling behavior. Although nationalities cannot be demystified with such a method (since they are governmental in origin), it is hoped that humans can soon find out accurate details of their cultural and geographic history.
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were you going to post all 25 of your blogspot entries on here today?
I only ask because I would like to post something of my own eventually and I'm not going to bother if it's only going to be on the list of recent blog posts for 6 minutes.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/sawaboof
"...There is a crushing guilt that comes with being a Catholic. Whether things are good or bad or you're simply... eating tacos in the park, there is always the crushing guilt."
-30 Rock-
Please accept my apologies. I did not realize I was hogging the "recent post" space. Thank you for pointing that out to me. Sometimes I just excited. I will not post for a while.
no worries...
don't just not post for a while. Maybe once or twice a day. Because your posts are interesting.
It's just when posts go off the recent list, their chances of getting read go down by a lot.
You'll have to forgive my blunt, and seemingly rude ways--you see I'm both German and Italian... ;-)
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/sawaboof
"...There is a crushing guilt that comes with being a Catholic. Whether things are good or bad or you're simply... eating tacos in the park, there is always the crushing guilt."
-30 Rock-
I don't like when people give percents with their lineages. It's one thing to say, I'm German and Irish, because cultures are passed down through families and such. But who cares about percentages? It makes it seem as if you don't care about the cultures you came from, in my eyes.
I am proud to be able to say that I am Irish, German, Italian, Scottish, and Swedish, and I have no clue how much of each.
And that's comin' at ya' from yer local redneck hippie.
--
The Story of Myself