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Video: A Tribute to Huell Howser and California's Gold

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Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus1/07/2013 10:29:42 pm PST

Whilst we grind away at the resurgent derp-cano erupting from deep within the cauldron of ignorance, when I read forums related to genealogy and DNA testing I’m confronted with the reality that Americans on the whole have a real problem coming to grips with who we are, and why.

For example, often I read something like this: “Grandma’s mother was 1/2 Native American but CompanyZZZ-genetics test for me doesn’t come up with any Native American ancestry for me - they must be wrong.”

Things way too often overlooked:
1) your ancestors lied to you;
2) they didn’t really know their own background because they were lied to;
3) recombination means that any out-breeding can be covered up after just a few generations by simply the roll of the genetics dice.

Another commonly seen complaint goes like this: “I am pure European but the genetics ancestry says I’m .7% South Asian - they must be wrong”.

Here people are simply in denial - first that there are “pure” anything, and secondly and most importantly that little thing called “sex drive”, and the fact that horny young men and venturous young women have been having “hook-ups” since, well, forever, and in any of our ancestry there will be one-night-stands.

Additionally, many ancestry “paintings” are just plain misunderstood, and this is where creationism comes in. Whether or not one thinks they are a creationist it is likely there are deeply rooted creationist assumptions in your thinking. For example, that a certain group “comes from” a particular location. This harkens back to the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, where all the people of the Earth are divided into neatly defined groups all with associated specific geographies.

In truth we H. sapiens are highly mobile and all of us are just passing through wherever we are currently located. If we don’t physically pick up our households and move them during our generation, our genetics travel simply by having a relative going somewhere else and having children, and it is becoming clear that parts of our genome have traveled east and west across Eurasia, and even in and out of Africa, with ease.

As the saying goes - where-ever you go, there you will be. However, the sequel to that is this - where-ever you are at, you are only passing through.