Like most Americans I'm a 'mutt': a combination of different nationalities, rather than one identifiable national identity. Maybe I'm the only one that admits it, and proud of it. Also fitting, considering my inexplicable interest, both scientifically and personally, in canids. All canids, not just dogs and wolves.
I'm a mutt through and through. So my loyalties extend to all people and almost all real canids (those tiny dogs just aren't real canids; they're genetic mistakes).
I grew up not fitting in anywhere. And not really understanding that until I spent a summer in the Middle East and Europe. Then I realized I'm simply a member of the human race. That's all I needed to know.
We're all human.
There are no sub-species for Homo sapiens. Yet we act like there are. Our species is a very tribal one. We look for anything to belong to and separate our selves from others, pledging loyalty to this and that, and resenting any group that doesn't match our criteria. Our species is in a perpetual identity crisis.
I blame it on taxonomy. Anyone in biological sciences is bottle fed systematics: the classification of every life form. Taxonomy is a scheme of classification, usually in a hierarchical approach in which living things are organized into groups or types. People classify themselves the same way.
People born in Greece are Greeks; in Mexico, Mexicans; in America, Americans. People born in the Britain are Brits. However, if I were born in Scotland, a member of Britain, I'd be both a Brit and a Scot.
I was born in the United States of America and legally, I am an American. But I really don't feel like one. At least, not compared to how many of my fellow American citizens feel 'American'. I don't share the tribal loyalty (often blind) that many do.
So what am I?
I'm what??
My last name comes from Germany and my first name is a corrupted form of the German/Scottish/English 'Elspet/Elspeth/Elizabeth'. (Even my name is a mutt.) American names aren't original; they are fragments from many countries strung together to label a person accompanied by a unique social security number. The latter is what makes us American.
Because my parents rarely talked about their family history, my sister and I researched our family genealogy after they passed on. The patriarchal tree is relatively simple: married immigrants from Bavaria arrive at Ellis Island in 1861 with their five children, settle in Buffalo, NY, and birth six more children. Most of the male offspring married Irish or Scottish women, who also had up to 12 children, and so on. Ironically, many of the female offspring are dead ends: once they marry, their adopted husband's last names render them lost in history.
I'm fourth generation American-German.
The matriarchal tree is even simpler: my maternal grandmother was born in Sweden. Her parents were born in Sweden. That was easy. That makes me second generation American-Swedish.
I did what many people are doing now: ancestry DNA. I discovered that human DNA is much more complicated than the bacterial and viral DNA I was used to be. Like any genetics project, genetic information is dependent on data derived from a population of samples. If that sample pool is small, the data is also limited and may not represent the larger population. Also, as gene sequencing technology changes, so does the size and confidence of the data. Consequently, as more genetic data from people around the world are added to central databases, the more precise the genetic information of ancestors. It also adds to the histories of human migration over thousands of years.
One genealogy autosomal DNA analysis reported that I am 68% Scottish/Irish, 19% Scandinavian, and......13% German*?? Another analysis reported 44% German, 19% British Isles, 14% Slavic**, 11% Italian, and the small balance Scandanavian (2%), French, and 2%.... Peruvian??
Oh, what the hell..... I'm a mutt. And proud of it.
*It's more complicated than that. What DNA companies don't explain (except for CRI Genetics) is that a person's DNA does not give a crap about labels and borders. The reason many people with known German ancestry are pinned to the United Kingdom, or other modern countries, is because Germany was not a unified country with a common border until 1871. Before then, the region was occupied by many ethnic groups: Romans, Germanic tribes, Celts, and, going back to the Bronze Age, the Yamnaya (originally from the steppes of western Russia). For example: Bavaria was a 'hot spot' of migration mixing.
** Preliminary online research into Scandanavian DNA projects, the Finnish DNA Project (Finnish DNA Reference Group) shed some insight into the Slavic connections. Although mtDNA (DNA from female mitochondria) provides more exact information (especially, haplotypes), "Overall, as we know from autosomal studies, Finnish ancestry derives primarily from Europe, especially the Baltic region". Many Finns migrated and settled in Norway and Sweden. That explains the Slavic connection.
We are all mutts.
For those interested in the seven-year 1000 Genomes Project, this link leads to a summary of the project (published 2015 in Nature journal). Data from diverse human populations, such as the Finnish Project mentioned, continue to be added. This and other smaller genome projects (e.g. link to overview of UK genome projects) serve as a basis for genetic genealogy data sources used by commercial DNA/genealogy analyses. The current expansion of this effort can be found at The International Genome Sample Resource.
"1000 Genomes Project publishes its final two papers, which analyze 2,504 genomes from 26 populations and provide the most comprehensive view of global human variation so far."
