Rediscovering Latinidad Season 6 Episode 6 Los misterios del ADN: Los Celtíberos, Los Irlandeses Negros y ¿Fue Cristóbal Colón un Judío?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
Dear listeners, we are excited to have you join us
for another season of Rediscovering Latini Dan. We hope you
enjoy this sixth season as we port a tremendous amount
of time, research, and loyalty into our episodes. We also
know that these are unprecedented times, and then many of
our listeners or their family members may be living in
fear and certainly anger about the recent developments with immigration, deportation,

(00:35):
and birthright citizenship. We hold space for all of the
emotions here, and we hope the information we provide you
will help you not only in your journey to discovering
your ancestors, but also leading you to documentation that may
secure your safety. We will list all resources in the
show notes and update them as we uncover more. Now,
we hope you enjoy this episode.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Welcome back to Rediscovering Latini Dodd Season six, Episode six.
I'm Edward, I'm Briar Rose, and today we have a
fun episode. We're combining two ancient DNA tales and we
have a very special guest here. So one story is
an ancient Jewish tale and other story is an ancient
Irish slash Spanish tale. So who better to join us

(01:24):
than and Irish and Jewish genealogist. Please big welcome to
our guest, Melanie McComb, a senior genealogist at American Ancestors,
which was founded as the New England Historical Genealogical Society.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Melanie, thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
Thank you for having me, Edward and Bryer.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, so yeah, let's let's start up a little bit. Melanie,
tell us a little bit about yourself and about your
career and what it's like to look into both your
Irish and Jewish backgrounds, because I think a lot of
our Latino listeners have this mixed backgrounds.

Speaker 5 (02:00):
So I'm originally from Long Island, New York, and my
family background is as you mentioned, it's mixed. So my
father's side is Irish and some parts of his family
came directly from Ireland, some came through Ireland through Prince
Ebert Island, Canada, so I also have a little bit
the Canadian part as well for several generations. And on

(02:20):
my mother's side we have Eastern European Jewish as well
as my One of my great grandfathers was actually from
Latvia and his family from Lithuania before that too interesting.
So and I originally didn't start out in genealogy.

Speaker 4 (02:37):
I actually went to school to study zoology in upstate New.

Speaker 5 (02:42):
York and then it just didn't quite lead into the
role I was going to go into. So I really
ended up in a corporate role doing a lot of
you know, hr technology solutions. But I was still doing
genealogy on the side ever since college. So I've always been,
you know interested because I felt like a lot of
parts of the family it was always like we never

(03:03):
really knew where our family was from, with the exception
of my maternal grandmother, who we knew about exactly where
her family was from. They were from Dylanstown, County Louth, Ireland.
People actually went and visited the cemeteries and the churches
and things there.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
But I felt like the other parts of the.

Speaker 5 (03:19):
Family, nobody really knew where everybody was from very well.
So I think that was really a big part of
driving my curiosity in genealogy. And so I was doing
genealogy since I was about eighteen years old, and I
eventually started going to genealogy conferences and including like the
New York State Family History Conference and eventually to roots Tech,

(03:41):
and that's when I made the jump to say okay,
I want to do this professionally, and my husband and
I at the time then moved to Boston within a
not too long after that, and then I was able
to get a speaking gig at American Ancestors doing it
talk on PI genealogy, and then I was able to

(04:05):
get into a role where I was basically subbing on
the weekends on the reference desk, and then when a
job opened up, I applied for it and made the leapover.
So and I've been with the organization now, I think
going on I think over over six years now.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
So got it well Again, just to circle back, what's
your feelings about having two different backgrounds, like is it
are you able to relate to both of them?

Speaker 3 (04:30):
Has it been a journey?

Speaker 4 (04:31):
Yeah, it's definitely been a journey.

Speaker 5 (04:33):
I think it's definitely been in some ways that sometimes
it can be hard to really sync up with everybody
based on which culture you're identifying with at the time.
I largely grew up while I grew up on the Island,
which usually is a very Jewish area, the towns I
was actually living in and the schools I was in
was largely very Christian based, so I felt like a

(04:53):
lot of my peers were mostly either Catholic or a
Methodist or other Christian religions, and I was really one
of the few Jews I was actually there. So yeah,
so growing up I felt like I was. I was
really and I was even acknowledged by the principle. I
remember even in elementary school as being one of the
few Jewish students. Even though my family was Reformed, we weren't,
you know, we weren't like, you know, an Orthodox, you know,

(05:14):
you know family, but you know, I was still kind
of acknowledging that, you know, there were still the holidays.
So while you know, the holidays were acknowledge at least
in the schools and everything too, there wasn't really that
community that you'd see. I used to even go to
church occasionally with one of my friends when they would
go to the local Catholic church, just to kind of,

(05:34):
you know, spend time with her, kind of kind of
absorbed that culture a little bit too. But I didn't
really grow up from a very religious standpoint. For both,
I'd say it's more cultural. So we did both holidays,
So I grew up with both doing Christmas and Hanukkah
and you know, celebrating those holidays from that standpoint and
doing a little bit of some of the others too.

(05:55):
But you know, I would say it's it definitely was
something where I felt a little bit like an outsider,
especially being Jewish growing up there, because I did experience
a lot of anti Semitism in schools as well. You know,
I had people say pretty hurtful things. I mean, even
for a school that even offered a Holocaust class that
I even took, you know that it was just surprising

(06:16):
how much it was still I wasn't I wasn't feeling
as accepted and everything too, And so I think that
really started to drive my interest in pursuing it more
as an adult, where I really try to embrace both
parts of each culture. You know, even though I call
myself as a blog at the Shamrock Genealogist, I still
very much embrace my Jewish roots as well and embrace

(06:39):
those traditions as well too. So so it's been an
interesting journey where, especially in my career, being able to
help people on both sides, you know, of you know,
do two different countries of trying to learn about their identity,
whether they're going back to Ireland or they're looking at
their Eastern European Jewish. So I feel like I can
straddle that line because I am both worlds.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, I've spoken before in previous episodes like I similarly
was grew up Jewish and you know in Virginia where
I really was like one of few Jewish students, So
I can certainly relate to just not even being aware
of Jewish issues like just and like you bring up
things and your friends have no idea what.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
You're talking about.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
So that's that's a good jumping off point to look
at the case of Christopher Columbus. What happened was last
October there was a bombshell or depending on how you
view it, maybe a fizzle, but a Spanish documentary came
out claiming that Columbus and his son had quote Jewish

(07:43):
DNA on their male line the y chromosome side, and
also saying that Columbus's son Ernando, who they dug up
and tested, also had mitochondrial DNA. The direct female DNA
was also quote had features compatible with Jewish origin. Before
we delve too much into Columbus, I know some people

(08:05):
may be like, uh, I hate Columbus. He's genocidel, He's
like Hitler with a bad bob And look, I'm not
here to convince you otherwise, but at the very least,
Christopher Columbus is an interesting case study if you want
to you know, if you're lucky and your family treet
goes back to these sixteen hundreds, fifteen hundreds, fourteen hundreds,

(08:25):
or if you want to learn about the original European
settlers in your corner of Latin America.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
I think Christopher Columbus.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Is a good case study to show you that no
matter what the documents say, you may need to take
it with a grain of salt.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
And also it's just fascinating too.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
How if this DNA tests are correct, then it shows
that even one of the most powerful Spaniards of the time,
who gave Spain unlimited territory, unlimited access to treasure, still
felt that he needed to hide his own identity and
had trouble juggling these multiple identities, like what we were

(09:03):
just talking about. Now, so actually saw the documentary, or
at least parts of it. It's a little boring. I'm
not gonna lie. It's like those discovered channel shows that
stretches thirty minutes into almost two hours. It's called Cologne adne,
Suberdadero Origan or Columbus DNA. It's true origin, and it's
kind of almost two hours of Maripovich. They literally line

(09:26):
up a whole row of empty chairs and each chair
has a different flag on it representing all the different
theories of where he could have come from. You know,
did he come from Italy, did he come from Portugal?
Did he come from Galithia in northwestern Spain? Was he
the son of a Castilian woman? Was he the nephew
of King Ferdinand? Believe it or not, some historians have
argued that.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
And one by one.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
They go through and they claim that they've tested this DNA,
and they sit down the historian who represents each theory,
and then, you know, one after the other, the host
of the show is like, I'm sorry, but you know,
Portugal is not the daddy, and then they just like
go through a whole bunch of these until finally we
have the last theory that does work, which is Jewish DNA.

(10:10):
So supposedly according to the documentary, and again huge red flags.
We only have the documentary to go off of. We
have none of the DNA results have not been publicly released,
there's been no report, it has not been peer reviewed.
So we're relying off of one researcher in his lab
and the related documentary filmmakers who made the TV program

(10:34):
off of this. But they claim that studying again this
male Cologne line and this female line from Columbus's son,
they match a Western Mediterranean Jewish angle. And I guess
they say that he could have come from Italy because
supposedly Jews were already expelled from there. He couldn't have

(10:57):
come from Sicily because he didn't use civilian language. So
that leaves the eastern coast of Spain and the Balaric Islands.
And you know, there's lots of further talk.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
Now why is this even a question?

Speaker 2 (11:10):
When you know, we grow up, we hear learning that
Columbus came from Genoa, Italy, And there's a whole bunch
of documents that talk about, you know, Christophoto Colombo, the
son of Domenico Colombo, the wool weaver of Genoa, Italy. Like,
there's a whole bunch of documents about this Genoese dude.
Apparently at least one of the documents was forged so

(11:31):
we don't you know that that sort of authenticity is
called into question. And then on top of the uncertainty
about the documents, there's also just Columbus had weird habits.
Apparently he made a lot of references to the Old
Testament in his writings. At one point during his fourteen
ninety two diary of his voyage, he said that the
sea rose similar to how the sea ros for Moses

(11:55):
as he was leading the the Israelites out of Egypt.
Some people claim he had a squiggle on his letters
to his son that represents two Hebrew letters. And he
also had a lot of Jewish associates, these converted Jews,
one of them a courtier in the court of the
King and Queen of Spain, Luis Santanjil. He helped fund

(12:15):
and helped argue for the first voyage to happen back
in fourteen ninety two. Columbus brought a lot of conversive
Jews over on this voyage. The surgeon, the barber, the translator,
This converted Jew named Luis de Torres. He spoke Hebrew
in Arabic, so it's possible some of the first languages,
like the first you know, Eastern Hemisphere, languages spoken in

(12:38):
the America's was Hebrew. So there's all these there's there's
they're just all these questions because he leaves a lot
of documentation with this question about where he came from.
There's also a huge question of timing of the first voyage.
I'll end it here. So the expulsion of Jews from Spain.
Right the official decree March thirty first, fourteen ninety two,
Jews are given four months to get out of Spain.

(13:00):
So the deadline was originally July thirty first, it got
extended ten days. In that ten day window, you have
Columbus setting sale on August the third, so he leaves
right before the final deadline for Jews to leave Spain
or convert or die. And then the previous night before
Columbus set Saale, August second, happened to be the Jewish

(13:22):
fast of Tisha ba Av, which marks the destruction of
the Jerusalem Temple. So historians have seen all these conflicting
signs and they've been wondering. There's just been a huge
question mark which hasn't been neatly answered. With the oh,
Columbus came from Genoa, Italy. So I guess to turn
back to you, Melanie, we had this huge, high profile

(13:43):
TV documentary. What's your reaction to we hear these results,
but we don't see any of the scientific argument to
go with it.

Speaker 5 (13:52):
Yeah, and I think there's definitely a lot to break
down on this documentary. I mean, first is, obviously is
one is the fact that it was released as a
documentary before a peer reviewed study was even done to
we even have independent experts actually look at the evidence.
It just makes me think, like, why are we doing
this kind of documentary just to put it out there
for not really want to have it stand up against

(14:13):
time from other experts.

Speaker 4 (14:15):
And all that too. There's also a.

Speaker 5 (14:18):
Huge question about even his remains. His remains, I think
we're removed like what three or four times over several
hundred years. I mean, I think there was a photograph
in one of the articles that I saw online where
it showed his body was just in these fragments.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
It looks like a cereal box.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yet it's like Columbus flakes and a whole bunch of dirt,
like there's really nothing left.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Of his body.

Speaker 5 (14:39):
Yeah, So it makes me wonder, obviously, is how do
we know that his body was preserved in a way
to know that oneed was actually his remains and they
weren't mixed in with someone else, because all it could
have taken is that one of those samples, and the
documentary even acknowledged they had several failures too in getting
these samples out, is that, how do we it didn't

(15:00):
come from someone else's remains that were mixed in as
part of that. I mean, if you're gonna be sending back,
you know, bones overseas several times, I mean, there's a
chance that, you know, something else could have gotten into
there or the body was mixed up. And I thought
there was even a question that was mentioned in the
documentary that they didn't really acknowledge that why if they

(15:22):
couldn't look at the remains in Santa Domingo and the
other places where he was buried, I mean, well, how
can we not rule those out as possible places to
match up against his son's bones and even his supposed
brother who was not even really his brother. He might
be like a second or third or fourth cousin or
something where he was some kind of relation, But DNA
wasn't even proving.

Speaker 4 (15:43):
That kinship, which I found kind of surprising.

Speaker 5 (15:45):
Because if you had really good to why DNA samples,
they should have showed up as like an exact match
if they were brothers, like they really should have been
very closely related. If they're showing the distance is so
far to put them that many you know, kinship beyond that,
you know, makes me think something's wrong with that particular
paternal lineage.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
So yeah, just to break it down for our listeners. So, yes,
they tested this guy, Bartolomy Cologne, supposed brother of Columbus.
It turns out they're not really brothers but more distant relatives.
So yeah, huge question marked there. And also to briefly
talk about Santa Do Mingos, So Columbus kicks the bucket
in Via Delid, Spain, fifteen oh six. He requests to

(16:27):
be buried in Santa Domingo, apparently of Bartolo May this
supposed brother is supposed to have named it after Domenico Colombo,
which is crazy. So this Dominican city is named after
Columbus's father.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
I wish Fausta was here to hear that. But so
what happened was seventeen ninety five because of all these.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Wars going on, the French briefly have control of Santa
the Mingos. So the Spaniards are like retro, we better
get Columbus out of here, so they supposedly ship him
to Havana, Cuba. He stays there in seventeen ninety five.
Then Cuba becomes US territory in eighteen ninety eight. Once
again the Spanish are like rot row, we need to
get him back to Spain, so they bring him back
to Sevilla, where he's in the cathedral. The boxo Columbus

(17:09):
flakes is in Sevilla. It's gonna sound like I'm making
this up, but I actually have a family story related
to the Sonta the Mingo burial. Supposedly eighteen seventy seven,
My third great grandfather, his name was Juan Agustine Cohen.
For longtime listeners, this is the pirate Cohen's son. He
was in sont To the Mingo and supposedly he was

(17:30):
in the cathedral. The priest was doing some excavation, and
that's the moment where they find the supposed box of
Christopher Columbus's remains, and they opened the lid and it
says on the inside like the most illustrious Don Cristobo
Cologne and there's like several bones, like clearly not a
complete skeleton, far from it. And my ancestor's daughter wrote quote,

(17:53):
upon opening a vault, they found the remains of Cologne
with inscriptions. Papab very happily told this to mama. So
since eighteen seventy seven, Dominicans have been very proud claiming
that they have the true remains of Columbus. They've built
a ginormous monument to him, but they've also not allowed
these remains to be independently examined. Like what you said,

(18:17):
So are these really Columbus's bones?

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Could they be?

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Some of them and some of them are in sevilla.
It's really unclear, and nobody wants really straightforward peer review'd answer.
So huge tangent, Melanie, keep telling us more about some
red flags, which are which you're popping up for you.

Speaker 5 (18:33):
I mean, also, just from a y DNA perspective, is
that I would be looking at a more extended relatives
to really establish his paternity line. And I'm curious about
why there wasn't really as much of an effort I
think to look into Dominico Colombo's line to find out, okay,
because I thought that he might have had another son.
I thought Giocoma Colombo might have been another possible son,

(18:54):
and or they might have known something about him and
his brothers and they're just sent line on Like I
would think that would be a really easy way if
we knew exactly where that family was buried, and if
we wanted to test the Genoa connection, is well, let's
see if we can find that family that might be
buried out there and try to test those remains against it,
because an at least if we see that we have

(19:15):
a profile that's and the markers are lining up with
the DNA, that at least one establishes the paternity of
him being the son of Domenico and also just the
Genoa connection. And I feel like, why was that not
even acknowledged as well as a possibility of trying to
get into that.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
I mean, they were testing all these other theories about who.

Speaker 5 (19:33):
Was the father of Christopher Columbus, but well, why didn't
you look into Dominica more than and his family.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah again, I read more of a write up than
the watch the whole almost two hours of this, But
it seems like they just tested random people in Genero
with the last name Colombo and They're like, yeah, they
didn't match up, but yeah, that hardly sounds like a
rigorous scientific breakdown, right right.

Speaker 5 (19:54):
I mean, you need to do a family tree, and
you need to document and do descendant research, just like
they were when they found like that Christopher Columbus Junior.
I think that they were trying to look at DNA
for him on to look at it descend it from
that way.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
I mean, I mean other red flags.

Speaker 5 (20:09):
I mean i'd say, I mean, I think I think
the whole idea of you know, the you know, like
you said, mentioning about the Old Testament. They were all
taught the Old Testament is by scholars in Europe. That
was very common. That doesn't mean that they were Jewish,
even if they were taught Hebrew. I mean, that was
all part of Biblical study. So so that was something
that I've definitely even seen brought up when people try
to mention about different colonial origins of Jewish ancestry and

(20:33):
it's like not really, no, they were just learning that.
It wasn't like looking at the early Sephardic Jews that
came over from Recife, Brazil, Like yes, those actually been
documented as coming over, but even then they were speaking
more in Spanish language than and really getting into as
much Hebrew so that you would see it some other ones.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Am I am I correctly remembering that Martin Luther knew
Hebrew in order to better understand the Bible.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
I think it's very possible. I mean a lot of
those Yeah, I mean he wasn't full.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, Martin Luther was like as antisemitic as they come,
so clearly not Jewish, but was interested in Old Testament
Hebrew itself.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
But it would have been one of the classical languages
you would have learned. You would have learned Hebrew, you
would have learned Latin, you would have learned all these
other languages because you would have been using this to
read religious texts. You would have been just knowing how
to communicate with different people across the world as part
of it. So and especially if you know someone like
Martin Luther's doing his own fecies, I mean, yeah, he
probably did needed to know Hebrew to really understand some

(21:34):
of the original texts that he wanted to study as well.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
So one critic of this study pointed out, how it's
you know, not a good idea to equate nationalities with
genetic groups. Quote, there's no total correspondence between a person's
DNA and their ethnicity. What do you feel about that? Like,
you know, ancestry happily gives us a breakdown of nations
where our ancestors come from.

Speaker 5 (21:55):
But yeah, so I'll say that, like DNA generally is
very good for giving you those continental origins, so with
confidence you can at least say what continent your family
came from, so where you're from Asia, or you're from Africa.

Speaker 4 (22:07):
Et cetera.

Speaker 5 (22:08):
It's getting better about getting into country origins. So there's
this idea in DNA that's called a especially for autosomal DNA,
called a reference panel. So they test people that have
had their family living in a certain region for many,
many generations. So they don't want people that are moving
all over and have all this different migration going on.
They want people that have stayed in a long time

(22:30):
because that's your control. So that when we look at someone,
let's say that's been living in Italy for you know,
that family that's been there for thousands of years or something,
you want to look at someone that's been in one
area when you're trying to compare maybe an American with
it possible Italian and to see if they have the
same genetic markers that break them break them up.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
So when it comes to Jewish.

Speaker 5 (22:50):
Ancestry, there is actually more genetic markers they've found for
Ashkenazi Jews because of the Central European and the indogamy
and the and are marrying that's going on for hundreds
of years, they are genetically distinct from other Jewish populations.
But they're finding that the while the Sephardic is starting
to slowly show up in the DNA, it's not as

(23:12):
big a population, and it very much represents as like
being like Middle Eastern or southern Southern European. So you
can't really distinctively say, oh, this person is definitely Sephardic Jewish.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
No, you say that.

Speaker 5 (23:26):
They're basically of they have people from the Iberian Peninsula,
and you know that they have or they have Southern
European or Mediterranean. And that's that's what I think is
probably what's going on in the Happler group being reported
for Columbus, is that they're probably saying, hey, he's got
this European, you know, Happal group, but it doesn't mean
that he is a Sephardic jew in that way, it

(23:48):
just says that he has that particular regional DNA that's
showing up. And another thing to point out is that
so one of his So what of these sons they
hasn't heard. Sorry, they tested Hernando and they tested his
mitochondrial DNA.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 5 (24:06):
But that's his mother's direct maternal line, right, even if
let's say, let's let's say we reasoned that, okay, maybe
there was some Sephardic Jewish markers that came up. Let's
just say that first for argument's sake, all that would
prove is that his mother's direct maternal line might go
back to maybe a Sephardic jew. That doesn't prove his

(24:26):
father's line. So why was his why DNA not tested?

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Right? Right? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (24:34):
And apparently about the mother like her? So, her name
was Beatrice Endrique de Aana. She was from Cordloba. Her
family was more farmers, kind of a lower class, and
we can extrapolate all we want. Apparently Columbus knocked her
up and wasn't really involved with her afterwards.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Didn't marry her. Is it that? Yeah? I don't I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Were they drawn together because they had Jewish ancestry, but
they couldn't marry because of society. But again, and that's
just extrapolation. This is far from concrete proof. Yeah, I
guess so you kind of addressed it before I had
thought again talking about extrapolation, I thought, oh, okay, Jewish
DNA on the why chromosome, does that mean he was

(25:16):
a Cohen because a lot of Cohens do have that,
you know, come from one common why chromosomal thing, But
it's because that has Middle Eastern origins and it's you know,
and they're saying, oh, this is a Western Mediterranean origin,
Like it's probably not that. So yeah, it's hard to
tell what they're calling as quote unquot Jewish.

Speaker 5 (25:36):
And the whole idea of the Cohens and the Levites,
those are ribentical lines.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
You can't really see that. You can't see that in DNA.

Speaker 5 (25:42):
That's really going to be like you see maybe the
names on tombstones, and you see the symbols that are
used on gravestones, but you have to actually trace those
lines to really know if they go back to a
rabbinical line. So those are a little bit different. So
you're not going to see that representing the DNA.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Okay, fair, fair, Yeah, so I guess the last overall,
you're not really convinced by this.

Speaker 5 (26:05):
I'm not convinced. And I think in just reading up
on some different articles on this, it sounds like this
kind of theory comes around every few years or so
and someone tries to speculate on his new ancestry, and
you know, I don't know. It almost seems like maybe
maybe different groups don't want him anymore, you know, based
on his you know, his his his legacy, and you

(26:28):
don't think many people would want him after all of it,
with what he did to the Hispaniola and indigenous peoples,
you know. So, I mean it's and he largely came
back to Spain as a failure, so I mean, so
for what he didn't accomplish. But yeah, I feel like
there's a lot of speculation. One thing I also want
to address to is the whole idea of that being
in the fourteen ninety two So yes, he yes, because yes,

(26:51):
I even used this in a lecture recently. I said, yes,
Columbus in fourteen ninety two, Columbus aale the ocean blue,
you know, and the Jews got kicked out of Spain.
The same time, you know, so I don't think them
necessarily that they're they're connected in that way because for
a couple of reasons.

Speaker 4 (27:06):
One was that.

Speaker 5 (27:09):
When the inquisition was going on, there was a lot
of paperwork involved. If they had ever suspected him of
being a crypto jew one, he would have been investigated,
probably could have been executed. Honestly, there would have been
a paper trail they would have investigated.

Speaker 4 (27:22):
Why would they give.

Speaker 5 (27:23):
Him the financing and the royal proclamations and everything to
do this voyage if they didn't check him out and
really check out his family. I mean, just to think
that you want him to engage in this huge endeavor
and you're not going to do a background check, Come on,
royal family. I mean, I mean, like back then, you
would have done something with your inquisitors.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
Look at that.

Speaker 5 (27:44):
And also, it wasn't even just in fourteen ninety two
that he left. He tried years prior from King John
asking him for funding to do it, and the king declined.
So it feels like almost like well this monitor said no,
I'm just going to go to the next one. I mean,
it's just kind of like felt like he was just
going to go to the next person.

Speaker 4 (28:02):
I'm just going to finance his voyage. He's just kind
of going around.

Speaker 5 (28:06):
So it just makes me a little suspect of his
motives that I don't think he was really pursuing. I think,
like one author said about that he was going to
set up a safe haven for Jews escape in the Inquisition,
I think that's bogus. You know, I really feel like
he was I want to make a mark, I want
to make a man of myself and show like I'm
going to find the trade roots to India. I'm going

(28:28):
to be famous. I'm going to make, you know, the
colony so much money. And I think he just wanted
that notoriety of what he what he wanted to do.
And I don't think he was, you know, acting with
benevolent you know conditions, even if he did have crypto
Jews on his crew, which we don't even know if
he even knew about, to be honest, I mean, I

(28:49):
mean we don't know.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
I mean, he might have just been in the business.

Speaker 5 (28:51):
Of I need a crew and didn't really care what
their background was.

Speaker 4 (28:55):
Essentially mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
I s don't think it's really funny though, that when
he hired an interpreter. He's like, yeah, I'll need someone
who knows Arabic and Hebrew.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
It's but hey, yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Clearly, the most generously that we can say is when
they were doing this in fourteen ninety two, they did
not have a clear idea on what they were doing,
and there's clearly a lot of playing along as as
they want.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Briar, do you have any questions or want to chime in?

Speaker 6 (29:20):
None at this time, I'm just so invested in this
conversation fully listening.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Sorry, very good, very good.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah, so thank you for unveiling about this Columbus DNA story.
I'm going to wrap up our discussion with a poem here.
It's by Yessenia Montilla, who's an Afro Latina poet in Harlem.
It's from her book Muse Found in a Colonized Body
and hopefully you see the connection by the end of it.
This is called La Bodega, a gentrification story. Outside the Bodega,

(29:52):
it is spring, a sixty degree evening, and the men
are playing dominoes. Their granddaughters with pigtails and pink bomber
jackets and matching leggings, are hopscotching. I take a turn
before going inside on the line, I hold on to
a bag of beahiel una yaudia dos yukas iunkarton wuevos.

(30:12):
Tonight dinner is a taino feast, and this is where
my mind has wandered. When the white woman slides in
front of me, she slams her diet coke, bag of butter, lettuce,
box of rice roni, and a can of tuna on
the counter. El Bodeguero looks in my direction. He knows
I carry inside me the kind of ancestors that would
cut a bit, but I say nothing. The air that

(30:35):
comes through the door is so soft, like a lover's
sweet hands, and I'm feeling generous. You should carry organic eggs,
then I don't have to go the subway so out
of my way. The Bodeghero asks, are you going to
buy all my organic foods if I order them? She
responds yes, me and all of my friends. I stop
paying attention. Behind the glass counter are three Dominican newspapers

(30:58):
on display. One of the cap stops me Exclusivil kean Erra,
Cristoval Cologne. In an instant, I am giggling uncontrollably. I
have no idea who he was, but I know at
the very least he was the kind of human that
landed in a place some called paradise, and instead of
enjoying the view, he asked for organic eggs and cut

(31:21):
the line. And with that we close our discussion on
Christopher Columbus. And now we're turning from Christopher Columbus and
his DNA story to now the DNA story of Spain,
Ireland and a larger Western European DNA story. So before
we get into the facts, let's talk a little bit.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
On the myth. So, Melanie, there's this persistent story. I
think we've all heard it that there's the quote unquote
black Irish.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
What some people say is, you know, the Spanish Armada
fifteen eighty eight. I guess some Spanish ships got wrecked,
and I guess all these Spanish dudes swam over to
Ireland and that's why some Irish people are brunettes. What's
your understanding about this story is.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
It is there some truth to it or what's what's
going on here?

Speaker 4 (32:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (32:10):
My understanding of the legend that that's gone around is
exactly what you said, is that all these different sailors
were marooned on the West coast of Ireland after the
Spanisher model of fifteen eighty eight, and that they intermarried
in the family and suddenly all of the genes of
the Spanish resulted in these darker hair, darker eyes, darker complexion,

(32:32):
like lack of freckles, you know, like you would.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
See in a lot of Irish.

Speaker 5 (32:36):
And you know, it's it's simply not true. It's really
just a myth that's out there because there has been
a presence of you know, quote this black Irish or
the complexions and the dark dark hair and darker eyes
for a long time, even before the Spanish ra motto.
So but it was something I definitely was even told
growing up, this whole idea because I had I had

(32:57):
very dark brown hair it's died now obviously, and brown eyes.
And my dad would even say like, oh, it's the
black Irish, you know, and it's like, you know, and
so it is this myth that keeps coming up a
lot over time to explain these basically just your dominant
genes taking over. So it's just these dominant alleles that
are just you know, if you have a parent that

(33:20):
is that has that gene for dark hair or brown eyes,
that's going to take precedent over somebody that has or
sessive aliole, like you know, if you were blue eyes
or something like that. So that's all it really is,
but it's but it's also something that's evolved too. It's
not even more just this the black Irish being just
the Spanish influence. It's also come up in several different

(33:42):
other places. But there was also just this idea of
really anyone being considered quote an outsider, was considered black Irish.
And it's actually documented that a lot of Catholics even
called the Protestants black Irish, so it was used.

Speaker 4 (33:57):
As a derogatory term for them.

Speaker 5 (34:00):
And the idea of black Irish even came over to
America because I think partially because of the famine, the
year eighteen forty seven was they considered like the most
deadliest year of the Great Famine, so much so that
it was called Black forty seven. So this idea of
and that came from the idea that the potato blight

(34:21):
or the fungus that destroyed the potato crop turned the
food black, it just rotted. So I think this idea
of like black was just associated with this black death
and this you know, this this this bad energy coming over,
you know, so much so that even the Irish were
that were immigrants were called things like black Irish, the
shanty Irish. I mean, my grandmother used to joke that

(34:45):
my that her husband's family was a bunch of horse
thieves in Ireland. It's all those kind of like you know,
terms of like you know, like there's a class system.
But yes, totally totally a.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
Myth, got it.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Yeah, So we're about to get get into the DNA.
But so there there's a question about where the Irish
look comes from, right, the pale skin, the red hair.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
The blue eyes.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
So one thought, and we're going to spell out the
entire genetic history shortly, but one thought is that it's
these So there were basically three waves of migration into
you know, Western Europe. You have Ice Age hunter gatherers,
you have these farmers, these these these Neolithic farmers, and

(35:31):
then these these pastoralists who come in during during the
Bronze Age. And because they've been able to do DNA
testing of all these distant people from the past, they've
noticed that these initial two waves of settlers, the hunter
gatherers and the Neolithic farmers, they didn't have the genes
for light hair, lights, light skin, blue eyes. The people

(35:54):
who are you know, light eyes. The people who brought
it in were the third wave, these a pastoralists who
came in. I'm about to delve into the whole thing.
Don't worry. But it's interesting that there's a certain point
in genetic history where the quote unquote Irish start to
look quote unquote Irish.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
So yeah, so we'll move on.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Now we're once again joined by Melanie McComb from American Ancestors,
and we discussed Columbus and now we're going to talk
about our other DNA story, the Celts. So even with
the language that we use, Latinos Latin America, we're drummed
in about our quote unquote Latin origins the Roman Empire,

(36:38):
and you know, the the Latin derived language which we
and our ancestors speak Spanish. But we have to remember
that before the Romans, there were a whole bunch of
people who settled Spain. And as we approach Saint Patrick's
day in a few days, now's a good time to
remember that Iberia, Spain, and Portugal has a strong Celtic

(36:59):
background as well. So yeah, I'm going to give a
very brief overview about the Celts, and then we're going
to dive into Celtic culture the connections.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
That we have. So what is a kelt? Admittedly I
did not know this.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
I've consulted my experts at Wikipedia and YouTube, and apparently
Celts refer to three things. One is this is more
of a language group as opposed to people. I thought that,
you know, Celts were just like a group of people,
but apparently it's a whole bunch of people who spoke
a family of languages. It's like if we referred to

(37:32):
Europeans as the Romances, like this is a whole bunch of.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
People we're talking about here.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
We have the continental Celts, we have the insular Celts
on what's now Britain and Ireland. The origins which we'll
get into the genetic origins later, but apparently they came
from Central Europe, Austria, Switzerland, and some of them ended
up in gaul With's France, leading into Switzerland and Italy.

(37:58):
Some of them came down into Spain. They became the
celt Iberians. I'll get into them in a second. There
even was an offshoot they settled in Turkey in a
place called Galicia, and so Celts were there in Roman times.
And then for the insular Celts, we have Ireland, Britain
and Brittany, the little if you see the picture of France,

(38:20):
a little like part that sticks out into the English channel,
and of them we have the quote Braythonic branch, which
is Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and then we have the Gaelic, Irish,
Scottish and the Isle of Manx. And since then there's
been another idea. So there's a historical Celts, and then

(38:40):
now there's kind of a more modern definition of Celts
where people of these languages that either spoke Celtic languages
or you know, spoke them until recently they're starting to
reclaim this identity. You also have a number of Pagans
who you know, modern Pagans, who are looking back to
these Celtic roots to help inspire their practices today. So
the celt Iberians we had originally the Iberians, the original

(39:05):
quote unquote inhabitants of Iberia. The Celts apparently invade, They
fought each other for a while and then they made up,
they intermarried, and so the ancient Greeks and Romans who
came up with the word celt keltoy celte. They refer
to these people as the celt Iberians, because they represented both.

(39:26):
I found one account of an ancient Greek author, Diodorus Sicculus,
who came from first century BC Sicily, and he wrote
about the celt Iberians. And here's what he had to say.
These people, it would appear, provide for warfare not only
excellent cavalry, but also foot soldiers, who excel in prowess

(39:47):
and endurance. They wear rough black cloaks, the wool of
which resembles the hair of goats. As for their arms,
certain of the celt Iberians carry light shields like those
of the Gauls, and certain carry circular wicker shields as
large as an aspis. And about their shins and calves
they wind greaves made of hair, and on their heads

(40:10):
there were bronze helmets adorned with purple crusts. These Greek
and Roman authors often throw in little details to try
to show how barbarian and yucky they are. So, Diodora
Sekulos writes, and a peculiar and strange custom obtains among them.
Careful and cleanly as they are in their ways of living,
they nevertheless observe one practice which is low and partakes

(40:33):
of great uncleanliness. For they consistently use urine to bathe
the body and wash their teeth with it, thinking that
this practice is constituted the care and healing of the body.
As for the customs they follow towards malefactors and enemies,
the Celtabarians are cruel, but towards strangers, they are honorable

(40:55):
and humane. Strangers for instance, who come among them, they
want and all in treats to stop in their homes
and their arrivals one another.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
In their hospitality.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
For their food, they use meats of every description, of
which they enjoy in abundance, since the country supplies them
with a great quantity of honey. Though the wine they
purchase from merchants who sail over the seas to them.
So again, Greek writer from first century BC describing the
celt Iberians, Melanie.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Let's talk about the Celts. What's your understanding about them?

Speaker 4 (41:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (41:26):
So, honestly, there's been a lot of lore over the years,
and I definitely had a lot of myths actually debunked
to I recently attended the thirty six International Congress of
Geological and Heraldic Sciences, and one of the presenters was
actually doctor Brewce Durry from Scotland, and he actually talked
about how there is this idea of this idea of

(41:48):
Celts as people was debunked essentially and talked about some
of the different linguistic differences like you mentioned, but also
talking about the archaeology of what existed.

Speaker 4 (41:58):
So it's definitely some.

Speaker 5 (42:00):
Thing that I think we've kind of had ingrained in
us for a long time, especially if you were of
Irish or Scottish descent or even the Celtic Iberians, is
that you had this distinct identity really being of a
different people from Britain. And I think that's something that
really evolved was a more modern concept over time, you know.

(42:23):
I know it's something that I've always kind of grown
up with where I've always admired, for example, like just
some of the Celtic crosses and the architecture and the
art that came out of it. But I really learned
about how that was really more of part of one
of the revivals that was really done in like the
you know, nineteenth century and later of just bringing back

(42:44):
this idea of showing something different from Britain and this
this art, this renaissance essentially taking place.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
M Yeah, and the art, I mean, our listeners are
probably familiar with that, you know, the Celtic knots, the
very involved patterns. I'm sure we've seen a lot of
friends the tattoos of this stuff.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
So I guess there's certain aspects of culture. I mean,
it's interesting. I had assumed before I looked into it.
I was like, oh, okay, Astorias Galicia they have bagpipes
and you know, the scottiship bagpipes, so clearly.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
That must be a connection.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
And it's like, well, people just had animal bladders and
they liked blowing.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Into them and making music.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
So that's that's interesting that that's not necessarily a connection.
There are there any unifying cultural signifiers which which you're
aware of, or is this more just wishful thinking.

Speaker 5 (43:31):
I mean, I think it's a little hard to say,
because I think it's just the Probably I think it's
just referring to just this pre Christian culture essentially of
all these different peoples you know, that are living together
in different regions. But I think it's just that idea
of you know, here, all the people that weren't conquered
by the Greeks or Romans, you know, for example, were
the people that Caesar's army saw. It's almost like they

(43:53):
were just describing more different peoples that inhabited the areas.
But I'm trying to think of it like specific in
civic unique identifiers. I think that's a little hard to
say outside of maybe just their language, like you said,
being more of that parent language that they oversee. But
I think that all of their different customs are going
to very much differ based on which tribes and areas

(44:15):
you're really looking at.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
To really see what's actually different.

Speaker 5 (44:19):
I think it's just really just this idea of looking
into them as just these are these these pre Christian
peoples that are just living in these different parts of
Europe at this time, and that have existed, you know,
even earlier than some of the other civilizations that came
up throughout Europe, like the Romans.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
To turn specifically to Ireland, were they one people or
does it seem like there were multiple cultures on this island.

Speaker 5 (44:45):
It definitely seemed like there were there were multiple I mean, so,
I mean, especially depending on which parts of Ireland. I mean,
we know that Northern Ireland obviously gets a lot of
you know a lot of interaction with other people from
like places like Scotland and people that were going back
and forth over you know, lots of years as well.
So there may be a little bit more of that
Gaelic connection up more or maybe more north.

Speaker 4 (45:09):
That is more that it connects a lot of the.

Speaker 5 (45:11):
Irish and the Scottish together than maybe for other parts
of the mainland.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
That could change.

Speaker 5 (45:16):
And then that's something that could probably be seen, you know,
looking at like I said, some of the just different archaeology.
That's that's different over that time.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Got it. Yeah, another connection.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
And again I don't know if this is correct, but
there was a claim about Pilgrimage is being a common
like Celtic fringe trait. In particular they mentioned, you know, Santiagretella,
very famous pilgrimage site and pilgrim route through northern Spain.
And then in Ireland you have apparently the Kruach Fadrig,
the big mountain in County Mayo which pilgrims go and

(45:49):
march up. But I guess is there something of that
or is that just more like Christian Europeans love to hike.

Speaker 4 (45:56):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 5 (45:56):
I mean, I know that there is a lot of
discussion about out even just the idea of like the
influence of the Druids and everything has well with Britain
and thinking about stone structures, and there's even a whole
debate even over things like you know, like for ex
afl like Stonehenge in England, like who actually, you know,
did the Druids created was it actually at the right
time frame? So I think we just don't really know.

(46:17):
I think that sometimes we're seeing some of these structures
and I think it's trying to attribute who actually created
them and how we can actually put a peoples to that.
I think that's the hard part is can we really
actually say which you know, quote Celtic tribe you know,
created this structure or was it just something that was

(46:38):
just developed by the people that just lived there at
the time and it really has nothing to do with
a specific identity, but maybe it served a need at
the time, whether it was a military structure or something
for you know, housing food or or some other means.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yeah, and we're going to talk momentarily about the genetic
evidence and what some of that may but you raise
a really great point that when it comes to the Celts,
we don't really have their own story. I mean, yes,
we have some mythology and legends passed down through time,
but when it comes to written sources, it is mostly
these Greek and Roman writers. I'm joking, but you know,

(47:18):
looking at Celts and going ew. So you know, it's
it's hardly an objective source that we know about the
Celtic culture itself. And you raise a good point. It's like,
were they just lumping all these people together out of
ignorance or what did they know?

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (47:34):
Right, I mean besides like seeing like maybe some of
the earlier like earlier saints like Saint Frigid or something
like that. You're right, we're getting basically the conqueror the
story of the conquerors and how they're looking at people
as other versus. I think if we looked at maybe
more of like earlier folklore, that might at least give
us somewhat more of an idea of maybe how these

(47:56):
people were revered. So like Saint Bridget obviously is a
very he's saying to the time she was born and
killed air in the in the fifth century, and you know,
she basically helps found a convent with several other women,
and she's very much seen as like an earlier person
that's kind of revered in that way, and so she
might have been quote part of this you know Celtic

(48:18):
beliefs and you know the pagan beliefs and everything. But
sometimes you just get more of those stories. But that's
all in the local folklore of different areas or you know,
like I think I heard of that that there's one place,
like in one of the places in Ireland, I have
some family from where supposedly you can clear like warts
or something by like putting like something on your face

(48:40):
and touching something like a well or something you know there.
So there's all these kinds of like different like sites
that there's this mythology that just kind of evolved and
it's kind of just turned into these like stories of.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
What's happened there.

Speaker 5 (48:54):
And I think that, you know, the archaeology is kind
of just showing more like okay, we're finding you know,
different places and art work and things that were done.
But I think it's hard to say exactly, you know,
get what that identity might represent. And that's where we're
getting some glimpses of at least of their culture more so
than what we're getting from, like you said, the Conquerors.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to touch on some little mythology
bits from Spain itself, and then I'd love to talk
a little about what you all feel about this culture.
But yeah, so apparently Galicia, which does have, you know,
northwestern Spain, a lot of Celtic influence through the ages,
even if their particular Celtic language died off. They have

(49:37):
a lot of interesting stories. Moros moras. It's these spirits
that guard treasures in ancient stone structures. This is related
to the ancient megalithic sites, you know, the Spanish versions
of Stonehenge, like these large stone structures that were constructed
many generations later. They're like, oh yeah, they're treasures and
they're guarded by these moros moras. The moras in particular

(50:00):
are considered these beautiful women who can be shape shifters.
There's another story about the Santa Compagna, a holy group,
and it's a procession of souls, dead souls led by
one living person who either has a cross or a candle.
Not surprisingly that's a sign of illness or death. Megas,
their version of which is Lo Mega no but you know,

(50:21):
obviously witches both forces of good and also evil depending
on how you you know what they think of you.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
And also ana mais de pole or the thoughts.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Of wolves, crows, owls, beetles as these spiritual guides or omens,
so like a strong spiritual, just spooky cultural touchstone which
has been inherited, and also some Celtic peoples to go
through them. So again the celt Iberians, we're talking west
central northern Spain, Portugal. Some of the Celtic peoples include

(50:57):
the Lusitani, which Lusitania became the Roman name for Portugal.
The we got Galaisian, which unsurprisingly became Galicia down the road,
and the tord Detani. You also have the Vascones, which
have some Celtic roots but don't have a Celtic language.
We'll get into that in a second. The east coast,
as I said, those were the Iberians and older population

(51:20):
of Iberia, and then southern and southwestern Spain you have
the Tartessin and they were mixed Iberian and Phoonetians. So
just the thought of like we talked before about you know, Celts,
there were many people Celtic peoples here in this one,
you know, corner of Europe where all these different people
of different origins living together, fighting, intermarrying. So this was

(51:41):
that rich you know, rich Gaspacho of Genes or the
cultures which then the Romans and then the Arabs later
added to Briar and Melanie. What are some of your
favorite either Irish cultural traditions or Celtic if you want,
I'd love to hear a little about it.

Speaker 5 (51:59):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, obviously one of my traditions
I think I mentioned earlier is I really just adore
like the the revivalist of the Celtic crosses and the
knots and everything. To me, it's just it's a very
romanticized view of it. I mean, but to me, it's
just it's it's it feels like it represents culture, even
though it's not accurate, if that makes sense. Like you know,
it's it seems like it's something that I think a

(52:21):
lot of us can identify with and feel like.

Speaker 4 (52:24):
And and it really.

Speaker 5 (52:25):
Is this very much like we're you know, we are
not part of you know, great Britain, Like we're not Britain.
We are we are Irish, you know, And I like
that identity of you know, showing that that strength with
that and also just you know, even just the obviously
there's a very strong connection with keeping with Catholicism and
Christianity as well, and just showing that, you know, because

(52:46):
I see that represented in a lot of like the
gravestones of you know, some of my ancestors as well,
and some of them do use like Celtic knots or
other types of imagery and everything too, so so I
think I just appreciate that from like a little bit
of a heritage standpoint, like I said, knowing that it's
not fully accurate, but as a way to just represent Ireland.

Speaker 4 (53:08):
That why you.

Speaker 7 (53:09):
Said it perfectly.

Speaker 6 (53:10):
I can't say too much about Irish traditions that I
had growing up that I guess I didn't realize were
like Irish.

Speaker 4 (53:18):
For example, like.

Speaker 6 (53:19):
On Christmas Eve, we have to clean the whole house up,
like that was a whole thing, and then I find
out later that's actually like an Irish or you know,
it's a New Year's Eve tradition there. And in my
research on that celebration, there's also tying back to our
previous episode from last season, there's in some areas of

(53:40):
Ireland they actually put pictures of the deceased out on
New Year's Eve to welcome them into the new year,
which ties back to our Danelos Martos.

Speaker 7 (53:47):
It's just a different time stay, yeah, And I mean
I wear my clattering and it's nice to be able
to flip it depending on whatever.

Speaker 6 (53:57):
And I've seen my my friends who have Irish ancestry
like taking that back and when I I guess this
is a little bit more mixing tradition with my own
form of progressive. But when I became engaged, I actually
I may I actually.

Speaker 7 (54:15):
I asked my husband. I was like, you know, if.

Speaker 6 (54:17):
I'm wearing an engagement ring, you should wear one too,
and you should have one with the Celtic nons on them.

Speaker 7 (54:21):
So he did our whole engagement. So it was a
nice way to tie that back. Yeah, so little things,
little things.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
Yeah, sorry, So you mentioned about flipping the clot ring,
you know, the hands of the heart ring.

Speaker 6 (54:33):
What does that mean if the hands if the heart
is like facing toward you, so like if you're looking
at the heart and it's looking like at you on
the ring, that means that you are taken, you have
a significant other. And if it's flipped traditionally that means
that you are unattached romantically.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
Got it?

Speaker 4 (54:51):
Interesting? I mean I didn't.

Speaker 6 (54:52):
I didn't start wearing that until I was in a relationship.
Then I was like, oh, I mean, but I always
had necklaces. Is that I always had like bracelets, And
it was always the other way.

Speaker 7 (55:03):
And I never asked why.

Speaker 6 (55:04):
I just thought like, Okay, that's just the way you're
supposed to wear. But my mother must just was like, oh,
I'm not going to explain this to her right now.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
Just put it on this way, got it.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (55:15):
It's kind of the idea of like why you don't
usually put rings on your left hand, you know, like
on your ring finger unless you actually are, like you said,
engaged or taken.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
So in engage you are married.

Speaker 5 (55:25):
So it's kind of the same idea, like there's certain
things you just do just to signify that as a symbol.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
Very cool one less common cultural touchstone. Music is obviously
a big one, and also too, you know, there's this
notion of you know, romanticize, like some people really don't
like when people from Spain and you know, Brittany and
Ireland are jamming together in these you know Celtic or
New age music festivals. But that's kind of beautiful too,

(55:53):
that people are taking their music and like jamming together
and not just sticking to their own particular cultural things.
One great crossover which I learned about Loreena mckinnett, awesome
new age artist.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
She does a lot of Celtic style music.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
She visited Santia Coma and she did a whole CD,
The Mask and Mirror, based off of her visit, and
you can kind of hear there's like Castanetti kind of
sounds in there, and yeah, like particular drumming and like
Gregorian ish chance, So yeah, it was it was cool
to hear us she was incorporating Spain into her usual
Celtic repertoire.

Speaker 5 (56:29):
And speaking of music, I do have some extended cousins
that still engage in Irish step dancing that they of
the some of the some of the cousins of mine,
like second cousins, they're continuing that tradition where the boys
and girls are. She's still learning that the step dancing,
even on the Mile of New York, so you know
they are.

Speaker 4 (56:46):
Still learning of that.

Speaker 5 (56:47):
And that's another thing I always think is another traditional
thing we kind of associate with Irish culture too, so
I've seen something like that, Wow.

Speaker 6 (56:55):
We're going to be having an episode on dance either
the following season, season seven or in another season.

Speaker 7 (57:01):
But I actually already have a location in mind.

Speaker 6 (57:05):
I don't want to overwhelm my daughter, so I'm kind
of waiting for her to be done with certain sports,
like feeling like she wants to be done with it.
So I already have an Irish step dance school in
my area of Brooklyn picked out just in case she
wants to try. And then I've also found Latin dancing
for children, so.

Speaker 4 (57:21):
It's like nice, Yeah, that's fun.

Speaker 6 (57:24):
Yeah, it's a nice way to like keep things going
for the little ones without trying to overwhelm them, you know,
just like exposed but not overwhelmed.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
And definitely music is a good way to you know,
if you play it for your kids, and it's like
an easy way to introduce culture without right being overwhelming
about it for sure.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
Beautiful.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
All right, any more discussions about Celtzer Islands before we
go even deeper and talk about the larger Western European DNA.

Speaker 6 (57:50):
Can I ask in your profession where you're researching Irish DNA,
the availability of resources for those in the area of
Northern Ireland versus you know, the what is I guess
the mldial now like the southern part where my family's
from Waterford. So what can you see or what have
you noticed in the differences and how far back can
you go, depending in the regions and the accessibility of

(58:13):
the resources, what sort of hurdles have you our clients
are yourself found in both of these regions?

Speaker 5 (58:18):
Sure, yeah, And obviously it largely depends on, like you said,
the what counties the family was from and the religion
that they follow, because that is going to be a
big driver of what records and repositories are available.

Speaker 4 (58:31):
Because a lot of people like to.

Speaker 5 (58:32):
Assume that when there was the Four Courts fire in
Dublin in nineteen twenty two, they assumed that all the
records were destroyed in Ireland. And yes, there were a
number of records that were destroyed, including a lot of
earlier census records and probates and court records, but it
wasn't everything. A lot of the church records still survive

(58:53):
in a lot of different areas.

Speaker 4 (58:55):
So while a lot of the.

Speaker 5 (58:56):
Church of Ireland records were gone from the fire of
the Catholic record still survive, so you could find a
lot of those parish registers still available and digitized. If
there are other religions, there there is the there is
the Representative Church Library, which deals with more of like
the Anglicans, so like Church of Ireland.

Speaker 4 (59:17):
Records that are there.

Speaker 5 (59:19):
There are there's even Quake, there's even Quaker records. There's
all kinds of religions you can find. And then I
usually another thing they also say is like, well there's
no records before the famine. I'm like, well, that's not true.
So there were a number of records that were created
during the time of the famine.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
As well as earlier.

Speaker 5 (59:36):
So I usually am able to show them things like
the tie of the plotmin books, so when they had
to pay the ties to the church, or if they
were if we know based on Griffith's valuation, which was
done in the during the time of the famine, well
who was their landlord?

Speaker 4 (59:53):
Because if you could find the landlord's.

Speaker 5 (59:55):
Papers, that is a whole nother area you can go into.

Speaker 4 (59:58):
So there is quite a few records you can can
get into.

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
I would say, it just really depends, like I said,
on exactly what counties, what talentands, and what was important
to the people that were holding those records, what they
what they kept, because some places are going to be
a little better than others, like for example, there are
some places like down in the south, like in Mayoe
and Cork, where there are going to be there are
gonna be some gaps. But then you also have people

(01:00:21):
that were like genealogists that basically did like whole studies
of families, like we have a whole collection of the
the Robordos wire papers where he looks into like families
of the Barra Peninsula, like in Cork, and it's a
huge amount of information because he just went out and
interviewed people, He went to all these different archives, and

(01:00:42):
sometimes that's another way that people can substitute their Irish research.
So there's definitely a lot out there. It's just a
matter of, like you said, of just getting a little
more information of knowing exactly where they're from, whether using
you know, naturalization records in the United States or DNA
to just narrow it down.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Got it, well, yeah, good stuff, all right, So now
we're going to dig even deeper and talk about prehistoric
times and all the DNA I mean to get a
little ahead of myself. You know, a lot of Western
Europeans the male line, they have the particular Happla group.

(01:01:18):
So you can divide it up based on what markers
you have in your y chromosome. A lot of us,
myself included, and I think Fausto mentioned it too, and
Julius as well in previous episode. We all stem from
this common male line of R one B Happla group.
And there's a million different branches. You know, some went
to the forgive me for saying British Isles somewhere in.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
You know, Western Europe, Spain.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
But there's one particular one that keeps bringing brought up,
and it's King Nile of the Nine Hostages. Melanie, do
you mind getting a little into King Nile and what
all that's about and why he's the baby daddy of
so many and I sort.

Speaker 7 (01:01:57):
Of note that Fausto is tied back to him.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Okay, okay, and this is and this is keep in
mind Dominican family.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
So going back to King Nile.

Speaker 4 (01:02:08):
So right, so King now the Nine Hostages.

Speaker 5 (01:02:11):
So he was a Irish king that had lived in
Ireland from and he's the ancestor of all the big
dynasties that you see early on in the sixth to
tenth centuries. So it's based on the different sons that
a lot of the families are coming out and a
lot of these bigger families.

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
That people are tied back to.

Speaker 5 (01:02:31):
So and I think I actually have one of my
family lines does go back. I can't remember if it
was my I think my Darty line actually technically goes
back to Neil and nine hostages so as well. So yeah,
a lot of the Irish families do go back to them.
And it's so it has a big impact on looking

(01:02:51):
at in like the Y DNA for example, is that
there are different projects people are can join where you
can actually see if you were part of some of
those earlier clans in Ireland that connect back to to
this king. So it's obviously, you know, it's it's not
very easy to go into, you know, the genealogy of

(01:03:14):
it directly on the back, but like you said, it
goes back to that R and B one, you know
Haplo group that we see in a lot of the
DNA that can go back, you know, many thousands of years.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
And is it just the thought of like you know,
if there's a high status male, he's just able to
have a lot of partners or like, is that why
the male line is so common or well?

Speaker 5 (01:03:34):
I think the story goes is that like he he
received five hostages from the different five provinces of Ireland,
and that's where people actually have their ancestry going back to.
So you go back to Ulster, Connick, Leinster, Munster and
Meath and there was and then he also got hostages
from Scotland, the Saxons, the Britons and the Franks. So

(01:03:54):
so all of these are representing all the different families
which represent Ireland and Scotland and like and probably been
et cetera. So it's really representing all those groups in
that regard.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Okay, and forgive my not having looked into this beforehand.
So what's the deal with these nine hostages?

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
Why? Why? Why was King Nile taking hostages?

Speaker 5 (01:04:15):
I can't remember exactly why they were they were given
that why he was given the hostages. So but basically
everybody kind of goes back to those provinces.

Speaker 6 (01:04:24):
So it's fascinating that so many people can be tied
back to him all over.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:04:30):
Yeah, And and I will say that when Fostone told
me that. I was like, I was like, oh, really, Like,
I mean, obviously, like obviously anything could happen. But I
was very surprised because he's you know, Dominican, like you know,
one hundred percent there for a while, so that's why
I was surprised.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
But presumably from Spain, yes, so somehow there's some movement
from and.

Speaker 6 (01:04:51):
As you can recall from our previous season episode first,
has not been able to trace back to Spain yet,
so will you will?

Speaker 7 (01:04:58):
I have faith in him, he.

Speaker 5 (01:05:00):
But yeah, my understanding was that he was basically kind
of a war lord. He's he basically fought everybody, the English,
the Scots, the French, and the Romans and that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:10):
So the legend was.

Speaker 5 (01:05:11):
That like he was on a raid in Wales and
he captured a young slave and brought him back to
Ireland who then became Saint Patrick.

Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
And that.

Speaker 5 (01:05:21):
So there were others that I guess were quote being
I think given to him as enslave. So it's really
kind of like, I don't know, it kind of reminds
me more of almost like a Viking warlord in a
way of what's.

Speaker 4 (01:05:33):
Going on almost that time.

Speaker 5 (01:05:35):
So it's really kind of just showing that like, okay,
if all these people that are quote the hostages, they're
really just representing the different parts of Ireland that people
are coming from.

Speaker 4 (01:05:45):
So it's you.

Speaker 5 (01:05:46):
Know, it's just it's obviously, you know, a you know,
a bit more of a legend, I guess you'd say,
on how we're tying back. But I think if it's
it's no different than if you look at let's say,
someone like like Charlemagne or something like that, where like,
you know, you look at any of Charlemagne's children, Charlemne
pretty much populates most of Europe.

Speaker 4 (01:06:04):
Yeah, it's it's just it's just the way the math
works out.

Speaker 5 (01:06:06):
I mean, I think they even tried to compare to
like like what like a Genghis Khan or something like that.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
You know, so another warlord, you know, that.

Speaker 5 (01:06:13):
Would go across conquer all these different areas, you know,
and yeah, I'm sure children that were you know, that
were probably his children born on the way. Obviously, would
you know, propagate more people over you know, over the world.
So so I think.

Speaker 4 (01:06:26):
It's a lot of that that's kind of that same idea.

Speaker 5 (01:06:28):
I think it's just like you said, it's just a
little more like you said, maybe more romanticize the story
about the king, but you know it wasn't the nicest story.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Let's say, yeah, yeah, I'm very glad you make that
Warlord collection. That's kind of a good way to look
at this distant past.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
So I'm going to lead us through a half million
years of Jedick history. Let's buckle up.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
So, and first I want to say a lot of
my understanding of all this comes from one man, in particular,
the geneticist Received Cohn. He's an excellent writer about this
ancient DNA and just the past fifteen years, basically people
have been able to dig up enough bodies and get
DNA from them and test them because you know, a
modern person can only give us like a few centuries

(01:07:10):
back reliably about where where your ancestry comes from. But
if you find someone who's five hundred years old and
you dig them up, let's say Klumps's son, that that
should give you an idea of assuming the DNA is preserved.
You know, that brings you back a few more centuries.
So people have been able to go back hundreds of
years than thousands of years, and just the amount of

(01:07:31):
data that researchers have been able to, like we've really
been able to piece together the population and migration history
of the world, like starting from Africa moving all over,
which is astounding. So yeah, if you're interested in more
of this, Rezib Khan really delves deep into this. So
the oldest human DNA that we've collected yet on record

(01:07:54):
comes from Spain four hundred and thirty thousand years ago
in a cave called Sima de Lusuezos, amusingly Cave of
the Bones in Bordigos in northern Spain.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
This is such ancient DNA.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
This isn't even a Neanderthal, this is a Neanderthal's ancestor,
so probably Homo heilbergensis. So really distant ancient human DNA.
Neanderthals stick around in Spain for quite a while. The
last one of the last spases where they hung out
before they went extinct was was Gibraltar. But if we

(01:08:25):
look at more recent the Homo sapien history in Spain,
we're looking at three population waves Ice Age foragers, Neolithic farmers,
and then step or think of giant pasture land pastoralists.
So to go quickly through the three Ice Age forager
they arrive the first Homo sapiens, these hunter gatherers, they

(01:08:47):
arrive around forty thousand years ago, and from then through
twelve thousand years ago we have three waves. First the Aurignation,
they were the ones the famous cave paintings of Altamira, Spain,
again northern Spain. Then the Gravedian there if you're familiar
with the Venus figures, back when prehistoric men love thick women,

(01:09:09):
these are the.

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
People closely associated with these figurines.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
And then the Magdalenians who did a lot of bone carvings.
So towards the end of this migration twelve thousand years ago,
that's only up the first four iceh foragers arrive in
Ireland in Britain, so the first human population there. The
ice agens it warms up. The Middle Eastern folk develop agriculture,

(01:09:33):
and you need land if you're doing agriculture. So there's
waves of these neolithic farmers some geneticists to use the
abbreviation EEF early European farmer. A wave of them go
through the Mediterranean that in boats. Basically they arrive in
Iberia around fifty seven hundred BC. And then there's another

(01:09:55):
wave that go by land up through the Balkans, Central Europe,
and this is the wave that arrives at Great Britain
around forty one hundred BC, Ireland thirty eight hundred BC.
This culture one of the So what happened is before
we had DNA, we found all these different kinds of pots,

(01:10:16):
all these styles of pots through the ages, and we
couldn't tell.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
It was like, is it like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
iPhones where somebody makes a style of pot and suddenly
everybody wants that style of pot, just the way everybody
wants an iPhone all over the world, even though we're
not related, you know, closely.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
Related to each other.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
Or is it that it was a population of people
coming in and bringing their style of pottery with them.
So this particular style of pottery is the Cardium pottery
culture in Spain with genetic evidence. Apparently in Stonehenge some
people were buried, like some high status men were buried

(01:10:55):
there and they tested them and they think that they
are related to these Neolithic farmers from Anatolia, from Turkey
who spread through Europe. So probably the people who did
Stonehenge were these early European farmers question Mark and then
here come the warlords. They come from the step So

(01:11:18):
think of Ukraine, Eurasia just you know, the Mongols would
later hang out there, the huns, all these you know,
long tradition of men on horses wreaking havoc. The original
men on horses who reaked havoc stormed out of Ukraine
around well, so they went through central Europe. They reached Spain,
Spain and the you know, Ireland, Britain around twenty five

(01:11:41):
hundred b SAT. These people were the first ones to
really harness the power of the wheel, so they had carts.
They had oxen who pulled those carts. They rode horses,
they had meat and milk and wool on the hoof.
They raised goat sheep.

Speaker 3 (01:11:57):
So you know, they weren't settling in settlements like these farmers.
They were going. They were riding their carts, taking their
animals with them. They wore the leather from from the animals,
so they spread really quickly. And because they were warlord.
It's just like our buddy Slash ancestor King Nile. There's
population replacement, which trigger warning. It's a nice.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Scientific terminology for murder and rape. So and the turnover
is dramatic. You have in the quote unquote Celtic fringe.
This this Happler group R one B, which traces back
to these pastoralists, these men on horses wreaking havoc from
from Eurasia. Eighty five percent of men in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany,

(01:12:46):
the Basques of Spain eighty five percent trace back to
this one Hapler group, which was not on the scene beforehand.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
So clearly they were.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Killing all the indigenous men, taking the women, and you know,
propagating their race from their their bloodlines from that. So
that's kind of where a lot of Western Europeans we
trace our male lines back to this huge, huge invasion
and massacre, which mirrors Latin America as well.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
Because of conquest and later slavery.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
No matter your color of your skin, a lot of
Latin Americans end up tracing the male line back to
Spain and then tracing it back to these Eurasian men
on horses wreaking havoc. It's also thought that this same
R and B group spread the Indo European languages, and
that includes the Celtic languages. Literally everybody from from Bengali

(01:13:48):
to Gaelic, and just that huge swath of people, literally
half of humanity, speaks an.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
Into European language.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
So just this immense quest and culture what's fascinating. There's
one big exception, and that is the Basques. The Basques
have a very strange language. Melyssa brought this up in
a previous episode. They're unrelated to any Indo European language.
But they have eighty five percent R and B happler group.

(01:14:18):
But what they have is twenty percent of them have
a maternal happler group, the mitochondrial DNA, the female line,
remember from our buddy Ernando Colonne. A fifth of them
have the maternal happler group U five, which goes back
to the Ice Age foragers. Apparently most of them had
this U five hapla group. So the theory, the working

(01:14:41):
theory that they have is that yes, RMB men on
horseback came in, killed off the men, they married the
local ancestors of the Basque the women, but because the
culture was matrilineal, they held on to the maternal culture.
So this is one of the few pre Indo European language,

(01:15:02):
the only pre Indo European language to survive in Europe
of that time. Because the Basque women were like, okay,
you killed our men, were marrying you, but you're gonna
speak our language and you're gonna keep our culture alive.
So it's one of the few examples of surviving pre
Indo European language.

Speaker 3 (01:15:20):
And also like the the Etruscans, there were a few.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
A few languages of that type that survived into antiquity,
but Basque Uskata is the only surviving language from that
time still spoken today. So of these men on horseback,
they are two big waves. One is the bell beakers,
related to a weird style of pottery that they have.
And then around one thousand BC, there's another wave of

(01:15:46):
these men on horseback Greeking habit called the Urnfield culture,
again based off of their pottery and stuff. And because
the Greeks and Romans who remember were pointing at the
Greeks and going, you Celts, it's thought that, you know,
the celt cultures that they were depicting is probably related
to this Urnfield wave of invaders.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
So you know, this is maybe where the.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Quote unquote Celtic culture comes. So yeah, and then by
the end of the third century BC, Rome started to
conquer Iberia. Most native peoples assimilated to a Roman ideay,
much like with Britain. At least, and then yeah, then
Christianity came through. We heard about Saint Bridget and her

(01:16:31):
buddy Saint Patrick, and then yeah, the rest is history.
So any thoughts about this ancient history or just you know,
how how we all are related in a weird way,
all us Western Europeans have this common thread.

Speaker 5 (01:16:47):
I think that's something that's really bringing a lot more
people together as they're doing their DNA and they're discovering
their connections.

Speaker 4 (01:16:53):
I think is them.

Speaker 5 (01:16:55):
I've seen in many cases of people that have actually
discovered like people that are like their neighbors are actually
related to them in some way, or just how they
connect back to certain historical figures in history that were
that were their ancestors. I think that that's a way
of maybe showing, you know, again how we're all part
of the same threat of humanity and how we're really
just you know, part of one family tree.

Speaker 4 (01:17:17):
They're genealogists. A. J.

Speaker 5 (01:17:19):
Jacobs had done like a project a few years back
where basically everybody kind of like had like I think
like they wore like like shirts or had signs that
said I am a cousin.

Speaker 4 (01:17:30):
He basically had what he called like.

Speaker 5 (01:17:32):
The big world reunion in New York City, and it
was just this idea of just being able to connect
with people that are your cousin in some way and
just you know, showing that relatedness.

Speaker 4 (01:17:44):
One of the one of the websites I'd.

Speaker 5 (01:17:46):
Like to use occasionally is wiki tree, and they have
a different concepts on there where you can do you
could find your connections to different figures in history or
even just any any average day people as well. And
I think that that's been and there's been a lot
of like challenges we've been having, so we could say, oh,
you know, how are you related to you know, you know,

(01:18:09):
let's say, uh, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:18:11):
Walt Disney or something or some other figure.

Speaker 5 (01:18:14):
I think it's kind of showing people like how they're
related to others. And you know, we have all kinds
of challenges to kind of show like how you know,
if your cousins people on the site as well. So
I think that that idea is really, like I said,
bringing people together, you know, within this thread. So while
we have all this genetic standpoint, I think the biggest
thing is showing just how closely we all are related

(01:18:36):
and we're not so far apart.

Speaker 7 (01:18:37):
In other I just have to go and a slight
tangent on that.

Speaker 6 (01:18:41):
About seven years ago, there was an app that was
only around for about two years old and I'm sure
you know which one ite is we are related. And
for a while, people would, you know, who had trees
that you know, could go far enough, high enough, they
would find out they're related to former US president or
people around the world.

Speaker 7 (01:18:59):
And then they started into it.

Speaker 6 (01:19:00):
And of course during my maternity leave, they were like
they they said, we're just considering this app, so I
like broad downloaded every single thing to then eventually sift through.
But yes, no that I felt like at that time
there was like a brief wave of people getting into
genealogy because of that commercial sort of aspect.

Speaker 5 (01:19:19):
But just slight thing say yeah, yeah, sorry, oh sorry,
I was gonna say, yeah, that was a really cool app.
I remember like it was trying to give me a connection.
I think it was trying to say that I was
related to Alec Baldwin. They tried to try to suggest
that I was related to Alec Baldwin because I think
we had supposedly a pee eye line that went there.
It didn't tipan out, but it was just kind of

(01:19:39):
cool that it got it was trying to give me
like an instant, like you know connection there. And that's
kind of what's been replicated in Wiki Tree, which I
like because it's now you can actually see that in
real time and it's not going away like the app
since that app was gone. But but I think it's
a way to kind of tease people into genealogy and
looking into their history, you know, like when you're just starting,

(01:20:01):
you know, I think it's kind of cool just to
kind of just see like, look, you know, you could
have ancestors that are you know, these people you study
in history or you know, celebrities you admire or whatever.

Speaker 6 (01:20:10):
So I have a I have a short story on
that on my I have a good friend of mine
who would mock my interest in genealogy. But then he
started getting into this whole political six degrees of separation
like he and he would amuse himself with that, and
he said, you do know that you are starting the
heels of genealogy, like, you know, I don't know if

(01:20:30):
you're ready to admit that yet, but this is where
it starts. Yeah, And then eventually he's like, Okay, there's
actually validity in this research. Okay, all right, anyway, sorry,
absolutely funny.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
I have a have a funny connection story that just
happened this year. So I have a I have a
distant cousin.

Speaker 3 (01:20:48):
He's also a friend Pedro, he's he's.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
On the Royala mail line R one B and I
guess family Tree DNA has done a good job about
talking about each wide happily group and they tell you
which famous people you're related to. So we have one
particular you know, we thought we were Spanish, but it
turns out there's you know, a bunch of other.

Speaker 3 (01:21:08):
Matches in.

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
Italy, Great Britain, France, like just everywhere in Western Europe
are people who happen to share this uh why chromosome
hapla group and who's in this happler group?

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):
But George W.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
Bush And so that was interesting to be like, okay,
cousin w all right, and.

Speaker 4 (01:21:34):
You know way way way back.

Speaker 3 (01:21:36):
Way wait wait right right right way way way back way.

Speaker 4 (01:21:39):
Back, probably be on the paper exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:21:43):
Yeah, but it is funny that we you know, go
length way way back. Then a great example of how
you know, in this region we all connect back to
this these common roots.

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
Any more thoughts before we wrap up for today, this.

Speaker 7 (01:21:59):
Has been fascinating. Thank you so much, Melanie.

Speaker 5 (01:22:03):
Yes, but it's been lovely talking with both of you
on this. I think it's interesting just going to get
these ideas out here and just.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):
Talk them through totally, totally again, Melanie, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
If if people want to reach out to you, how
can they reach you?

Speaker 4 (01:22:16):
Sure? So, I am, I am.

Speaker 5 (01:22:19):
I'm on pretty much all forms of social media. You
can find me on X for place stores, Twitter, blue Sky, threads, Instagram, Facebook,
and of course American Ancestors dot org. And I will
give a quick plug and say I do consultations, including
DNA consultations if you're interested.

Speaker 3 (01:22:39):
Very cool, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
If you want to find out how you relate to
this larger R one B story, yes, hit up Melanie.

Speaker 6 (01:22:46):
Yeah so Melanie, I'll be putting your information in the
show notes.

Speaker 4 (01:22:50):
So okay, great.

Speaker 7 (01:22:51):
Listeners can click on in.

Speaker 4 (01:22:53):
Yeah, if you need my handles, just let me know
and I'll I'll get them to you.

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):
Okay, sounds good, very cool, all right, And with that,
wish our listeners a very happy porum if you celebrate,
and a very happy Saint Patrick's Day if you celebrate,
or if you just want to drink, you know, slaunch.

Speaker 6 (01:23:09):
Because tonight is and in four days it is Saint
Patrick's Day. But bonus, if you get a costume tonight
for your child that's green, then.

Speaker 7 (01:23:18):
You know you could just use it twice some Monday.
But I hope you all enjoy your hum and tash tonight.
And you know, I guess if you're Irish Sham.

Speaker 5 (01:23:29):
Or your Irish bread Irish, my great grandmother has a
really good Irish soda bread scone recipe that's passed down so.

Speaker 4 (01:23:37):
From Ireland.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
Yeah, are you willing to air air a secret?

Speaker 3 (01:23:41):
And what makes it special or is that a family secret?

Speaker 5 (01:23:44):
Well, the way we make it special is we don't
make it as bread. We make it into scones. Oh
so they're palpable, Yes, amazing, Yes they're they're a buttery goodness.

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
So yeah, that sounds so good.

Speaker 6 (01:23:59):
Wow, I guess I've made my own shepherd's pie recipe,
but I admittedly now use a double once zone.

Speaker 7 (01:24:08):
So I'm bringing in my ancestry together for the vegetables anyway,
at least for the men vegetables.

Speaker 3 (01:24:14):
That sounds amazing. Yeah, it's pretty good.

Speaker 6 (01:24:17):
It's pretty good, so yes, so I'll just use some housekeeping,
real quick, Okay, Listeners. If you like our podcast, Rediscovering
Latini DoD, please hit follow our subscribe.

Speaker 7 (01:24:27):
It is different from downloading.

Speaker 6 (01:24:29):
If you love our podcast, Rediscovering Latini DoD, please leave
us a five star rating and review. If you'd like
to reach out to us, please find us at Rediscovering
Latini DoD at gmail dot com or call our text
us at six four six four seven zero nine eight
two four. You may also find us on social media
at rediscovering Latini DoD on Facebook at rediscovering Latini Dad,

(01:24:51):
on Instagram, at redisc Latini DoD on exer, Twitter, and
our dash rediscovering Latinidad on Reddit. If you'd like to
become a Patreon subscriber, please click on the link in
our show notes and I'll join us next week as
we discuss Latinos, voting and the.

Speaker 4 (01:25:09):
Current social climate.

Speaker 7 (01:25:11):
We will see you next week.

Speaker 6 (01:25:12):
Listeners, Thank you again, Melanie, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:25:16):
Bye bye bye

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