Ethnic Heritage

I did the Ancestry spit test a couple of years ago.  I was fascinated to learn how the genetic past would differ from the oral history, or the documented past by census and passenger lists.  I figured it might be quite a lot.

And it was.  The data is (are? stop) dynamic because of the ever-growing sample size, so at first I was Lagertha: New Scandinavian.  Yes, it said I was almost 1/3 from those upper parts, which was a complete and total shock - it wasn't in the oral or written history, not even a little.  My dad was thrilled, not having done his test yet, because it confirmed all of his masculine bikerly dreams: I'm a fuckin' viking! I knew it!  He sent me a silver Thor's hammer necklace for my birthday, a rare personal gift post-Trump.

From that, I assumed that our German ancestors were partly northerly people who had settled there at some murky point.  A lot of those Germans and other northern Europeans have Scandinavian stock because, well, vikings.  When they weren't conquering, they were at least vacationing around and mingling with the locals.  We had always assumed from our surname(s), including the secret pre-Americanized one, that we were German AF.  And maybe some are, but not me, because genetics are confusing AF.

The results changed a year later.  Sadly for me, I changed from Lagertha to Colleen.  I was, it turned out, just mostly Irish.  Back when I was a northperson, I was fascinated to have to learn about a new culture that I had zero prior identity with.  But the "knowledge" of my true genetics had bred no newfound familiarity or sense of remembrance of my people, probably because they weren't, or not exactly.

When I was a kid, my best friend was Mary Beth, a super Irish kid from Brooklyn.  Her parents were very invested in being Irish: their doorbell played the first seven bars of "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" year-round, their pets were named things like "Irish Cream" and their home decor reflected their generalized hysteria about the island.  They were American Irish, New York Irish, all the way down to the mounted police dad, who had moved his young family to Arizona upon an early retirement from the NYPD.  They even brought the retired horse, ancient and gray-muzzled when I met him.  It didn't help that these two freckled, pale brunettes had birthed an only daughter with the reddest natural hair I or anyone else has ever seen.  This wasn't strawberry blond or even orange hair, it was red.  Crayola crayon red.  A red you can't get in the salon.  That only emboldened them and, even in middle school, I was repelled by their posturing enthusiasm for ethnic identity as status.

I knew my family was Irishish too and identified that way, but I didn't.  My Grammy (great-grandmother) and the people I was closer to were all Italians, and naturally I felt I was Italian too. CMAN!  I'm Milano eyyy!!

Well, not by the numbers on my card.  It's true that both of my Grammy's parents came from their Italian hometowns on boats like proper immigrants, but my DNA hardly recognizes that.  Today I am 65% "England, Wales and Northwestern Europe," which includes France, Switzerland and parts of Germany but is most strongly centered on the UK.  But I'm also 30% just Irish, and 5% "Germanic Europe".  Additional communities for honorable mention are "Southwestern Quebec French Settlers," which I saw in the data when I uncovered the fact that my paternal grandma's people were in Quebec for almost 300 years before they emigrated to the US, making them among the first Euro settlers to Canada.  That's 1. interesting and 2. so sad that they didn't stay.  I could be Quebecois.  Instead I'm from Phoenix.

But all this feels pretty removed.  I feel very unromantic and pragmatic about ethnic origins today. 
Partly because it's kind of hard to not politicize or re-litigate the past and count up all of the things they didn't know (care about) that we do, but mostly because I question the relevance of it overall.

My issue today is with time and how I can't square that with ethnicity and identity.  I read one researcher say that, once an ancestor was far enough back in history, you weren't really related to them anymore.  It's so far back, and so many other apparently less-interesting people have been involved since, that the connection is hardly there mathematically.  Is this true?  I better double check because I just remembered how they found some relatives of Richard III after they finally discovered his bod under that Tesco parking lot.

But my question has always been, what point in history are we basing this on?  Irish as of when.  Certainly not eternity, surely that DNA has evolved around over time.  What about whatever ancient people were there before?  Is there a simple answer I'm missing? (because I went to ASU)

They say people with heavily English ancestry returns are super rare, because of how many people passed through there from way back and diversed it all up from early days.  Well, my dad has that.  Pretty high numbers for someone not even born there.  Mr. Jack Daniels Jack Palance Dennis Hopper biker viking turns out to be an old limey Brit.  At least for now.