Jason Kuznicki notes that geneticists find that almost everyone of some European descent descends from Charlemagne. But the same math that shows us the Charlemagne link also tells us this:
"If the most wretched peasant of Charlemagne’s empire has any descendants now living, then we are all her children, too. That’s just how this genetic math works."
#racism #classism #nationalism #genetics
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liberalcurrents.com/they-were-…
They Were All Our Ancestors
Nationalism chooses sides in the most awful family drama of all time. It sides with the evildoers, and never with their victims, and teaches you to do the same.Jason Kuznicki (Liberal Currents)
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •"And there were a lot more wretched-but-fertile peasants in Francia than there were paladins at the short-lived court of the emperor. When you make a family tree, you don’t get to pick only the winners. Reach back impartially, and we’re all from an exactly equal set of ancestors. …
Delving into your ancestry will not reveal that you spring from a natural aristocracy. It will show that we have all been brothers, like it or not."
#racism #classism #nationalism #genetics
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William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •"We’re all more closely related than we know, and our family has been murdering its own.
I’d think a realization like that should send every nationalist running for the shelter of cosmopolitan liberalism. Here we will treat you as a man and a brother, no matter who you are, and nowhere else can promise that. Let’s build a polity that’s faithful to the memory of all of our ancestors."
P.S. I don't know why Kuznicki uses male-gendered terms here.
#racism #classism #nationalism #genetics
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Peter Brown
in reply to William Lindsey • • •William Lindsey
in reply to Peter Brown • • •Peter Brown
in reply to William Lindsey • • •yes, after the ice sheet started to melt at the end of the ice age the people round the Mediterranean basin started to move up the Atlantic coast. It probably took more than 1000 years, but eventually they were all the way up France, England, Wales Ireland and Scotland. And the western seaboard of those countries still has much of that that original Mediterranean DNA.
If you leave a white peely-wally unhealthy looking Scot out in the sun too long he turns into a Spaniard.
Peter Brown
in reply to William Lindsey • • •I believe there is an improbably large number of genetic lines that point back to one single progenitor and the suggestion is it was probably Genghis Khan.
In Pakistan, the Hamara tradition is they are descended from Genghis Khan. Seems they share these genes, which would tend to confirm the legend.
William Lindsey
in reply to Peter Brown • • •Peter Brown
in reply to William Lindsey • • •RainbowFrog
in reply to William Lindsey • • •@peterbrown
Even in Europe there were many waves of invasions from the east, bringing successive batches of DNA that have been mixed in the general population through generations
To me, European, the so-called European blood is something like a good sauce, where so many different spices and herbs have been mixed that nobody can tell all of them, only that it tastes nice ...
We even have a steady portion of Neanderthal, and I love this 👍
William Lindsey
in reply to RainbowFrog • • •Peter Brown
in reply to William Lindsey • • •I’ve lost him to the number of American visitors to this country who swear there they have a direct uninterrupted line of descent from William Wallace or Robert the Bruce.
One doesn’t want to be rude, but we have only had state records from the first half of the 19th century and patchy Parish records from about the C18th.
Both Bruce and Wallace date from the 13th century.
William Lindsey
in reply to Peter Brown • • •Peter Brown
in reply to William Lindsey • • •