My Colombian genes

2008-03-22T04:17:00.000-07:00

To start the story of my family I have to go backwards in time to the Mitochondrial Eve

Mitochondrial Eve (mt-mrca) is the name given by researchers to the woman who is
defined as the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for all currently living
humans. Passed down from mothers to offspring for over a hundred thousand years, her
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is now found in all living humans: every mtDNA in every
living person is derived from hers. Mitochondrial Eve is the female counterpart of
Y-chromosomal Adam, the patrilineal most recent common ancestor, although they lived at
different times.

She is believed to have lived about 140,000 years ago in what is now Ethiopia, Kenya or
Tanzania.[citation needed] The time she lived is calculated based on the molecular
clock technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift.

Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all humans via the
mitochondrial DNA pathway, not the unqualified MRCA of all humanity. All living humans
can trace their ancestry back to the MRCA via at least one of their parents, but
Mitochondrial Eve is defined via the maternal line. Therefore, she necessarily lived
much longer ago than the MRCA of all humanity.

The existence of Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam does not imply the existence
of population bottlenecks or a first couple. They each lived within a large human
population at a different time. Some of their contemporaries have no living descendants
today, and others are ancestors of all people alive today. No contemporary of
Mitochondrial Eve or Y-chromosomal Adam is an ancestor of only a subset of people alive
today, because both of them lived much longer ago than the identical ancestors point.

To find the Mitochondrial Eve of all humans living today, one can start by listing all
individuals alive today. For every individual (males and females), trace a line from
the individual to his/her mother. Then continue those lines from each of those mothers
to their mothers, and so on, effectively tracing a family tree backward in time based
purely on mitochondrial lineages. Going back through time these mitochondrial lineages
will converge when two or more women have the same mother. The further back in time one
goes, the fewer mitochondrial ancestors of living humans there will be. Eventually only
one is left, and this one is the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of all humans
alive today, i.e. Mitochondrial Eve.

It is possible to draw the same matrilineal tree forward in time by starting with all
contemporary human females of Mitochondrial Eve. Some of these women may have died
childless. Others left only male children. For the rest who became mothers with at
least one daughter, one can trace a line forward in time connecting them to their
daughter(s). As the forward lineages progress in time, more and more lineage lines
become extinct, as the last female in a line dies childless or leaves no female
children. Eventually, only one single lineage remains, which includes all mothers, and
in the next generation, all people, and hence all people alive today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
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OUT OF AFRICA

The African ice age was characterized by drought rather than by cold. It was around
50,000 years ago that the ice sheets of northern Europe began to melt, introducing a
period of warmer temperatures and moister climate in Africa. Parts of the inhospitable
Sahara briefly became habitable.

Moving Through the Middle East

The first people to leave Africa likely followed a coastal route that eventually ended in Australia.

Beginning about 40,000 years ago, the climate shifted once again and became colder and more arid. Drought hit Africa and the grasslands reverted to desert, and for the next 20,000 years, the Saharan Gateway was effectively closed. With the desert impassable, my ancestors had two options: remain in the Middle East, or move on. Retreat back to
the home continent was not an option.

While many people remained in the Middle East, others continued to follow the great
herds of buffalo, antelope, woolly mammoths, and other game through
what is now modern-day Iran to the vast steppes of Central Asia.

These semi-arid grass-covered plains formed an ancient "superhighway" stretching from
eastern France to Korea. People migrated out of Africa into the
Middle East, then traveled both east and west along this Central Asian superhighway. A
smaller group continued moving north from the Middle East to Anatolia and the Balkans,
trading familiar grasslands for forests and high country.

The Eurasian Clan Spreads Wide and Far

This large lineage, known as the Eurasian Clan, dispersed gradually over thousands of
years. Seasoned hunters followed the herds ever eastward, along the vast super highway
of Eurasian steppe. Eventually their path was blocked by the massive mountain ranges of south Central Asia?the Hindu Kush, the Tian Shan, and the Himalayas.

The three mountain ranges meet in a region known as the "Pamir Knot," located in
present-day Tajikistan. Here the tribes of hunters split into two groups. Some moved
north into Central Asia, others moved south into what is now Pakistan and the Indian
subcontinent.

These different migration routes through the Pamir Knot region gave rise to separate
lineages.

Most people native to the Northern Hemisphere trace their roots to the Eurasian Clan.
Nearly all North Americans and East Asians are descended from the people described
above,as are most Europeans and many Indians.

The Journey Through Central Asia

The Eurasian Clan that had moved to the north of the mountainous Hindu Kush and onto
the game-rich steppes of present-day Kazakhstan,Uzbekistan, and southern Siberia.

Although big game was plentiful, the environment on the Eurasian steppes became
increasing hostile as the glaciers of the Ice Age began to expand once again. The
reduction in rainfall may have induced desertlike conditions on the southern steppes,
forcing my ancestors to follow the herds of game north.

Leaving Central Asia

After spending considerable time in Central Asia, refining skills to survive in harsh
new conditions and exploit new resources, a group from the Central Asian Clan began to head west towards the European sub-continent.

They ultimately split into two distinct groups, with one continuing onto the
European subcontinent, and the other group turning south and eventually making it as
far as India.

Colonizing Europe. The First Modern Europeans

During this period, the Eurasian steppelands extended from present-day Germany, and
possibly France, to Korea and China. The climate fostered a land rich in resources and opened a window into Europe.

Homosapiens arrival in Europe heralded the end of the era of the Neandertals, a
hominid species that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from about 29,000 to
230,000 years ago.

Better communication skills, weapons, and resourcefulness probably
enabled my ancestors to outcompete Neandertals for scarce resources.
This wave of migration into western Europe marked the appearance and spread of what
archaeologists call the Aurignacian culture.

The large number of archaeological sites found in Europe from around 30,000 years ago
indicates that there was an increase in population size.
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Homosapiens journey through Asia to America

Eearly hunters crossed the Asian continent until the arrived at North Asia or Siberia.

Ten to fifteen thousand years ago, the weather was colder and waves of people crossed
the Bering Straight to colonise a continent.

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What is a haplogroup?

A haplogroup is defined by a series of markers that are shared by other people who
carry the same random mutations. The markers trace the path they took as they moved
out of Africa. It's difficult to know how many people worldwide belong to any
particular haplogroup, or even how many haplogroups there are, because scientists
simply don't have enough data yet.

http://www.voneyben.dk/Genographic.htm
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Where my ancestors come from in the world

The moors

The moors in Spain
The second half of the first millennium AD in Europe is sometimes referred to as the dark ages. In some ways that's a misnomer. Although in some parts of Europe it seemed that the beacon of civilization had indeed been extinguished, in other parts, notably Spain, things were far from dark.

In Spain the candle of knowledge was kept burning by the Muslim conquerers called Moors. Not only did they possess a vast body of knowledge based on their own learning, they had also become the custodians of much of the earlier knowledge from the Greek philosophers including those of Alexandria such as Ptolemy.

The Spanish occupation by the Moors began in 711 AD when a Berber Muslim army, under their leader Tariq ibn-Ziyad, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from northern Africa and invaded the Iberian peninsula. Roderick, the last of the Visigoth kings of Spain, was defeated at the Battle of R�o Barbate and by 719 AD the Moors had conquered the entire area from the coast to the Pyrenees.

The knowledge accumulated by the Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilizations was pretty much unknown to the primitive peoples of medieval Europe. What little knowledge was left was mostly because of the monks of the early church laboring in their scriptoria. Much of their output was limited to Holy Scripture and other Christian works.

This all began to change when in 1085 AD the Spanish city of Toledo was reconquered by Christian crusaders. During the next hundred and fifty years, much of the accumulated Arab knowledge was translated making it available to the rest of western Europe.

Ironically, a lot of this knowledge could have been available much earlier since in Toledo, Christians continued to thrive even under Muslim occupation and were in fact actively studying the Arab works. Elsewhere, another large body of Arab and Greek work became known via Sicily which fell to the Christians in 1091 AD. Much of Aristotle's work in biology as well as the Arab knowledge of alchemy arrived in Europe via this route.

Meanwhile in the rest of Europe, the dark ages which were characterized by the rule of marauding warlords and their minions, gradually gave way to a system of governance called feudalism. What had been a collection of rag tag bands became a more formal structure of Feudal lords, knights and indentured serfs. A similar hierarchical structure developed in the church.

While in some ways this structure helped the spread of knowledge, in other ways it became a hindrance as superstition of one kind gave way to another. The spread of Arab knowledge through the rest of Europe was a golden opportunity which if not lost was certainly delayed as empire building within the church carried on apace.

The ultimate irony is that while Europe languished in barbarism and ignorance the torch of learning was kept brightly burning by the Arab world. The more things change, the more they stay...

Additional commentary...
The story of the Moors in Spain beginning over 1200 years ago paints a picture of an Arab world that was very different from what we see today. In the 8th century, Islam was barely 100 years old and knowledge on a broad range of subjects was welcomed and nurtured. In addition the wisdom and philosophy of foreign cultures�ancient Greece and India�was eagerly embraced and assimilated.

This is a far cry from the Arab world of today where a kind of xenophobia has set in. Most "education" seems to now be limited to the inculcation and preservation of increasingly narrow views of the various forms of Islam. In addition there has developed an us-versus-them mindset that makes any kind of bridge-building an exercise in futility.

Most people in the "western" world who know their history should not be surprised by this. In spite of the best efforts of the liberal Christian spin doctors, xenophobia is a basic aspect of most, especially orthodox religions. When the Puritans sailed across on the Mayflower, the good brethren referred to the crew bringing them to the New World as "the others". Even today in some sects there is still an us-against-the-world mindset.

That's what I meant to convey by the implied comment that history does repeat.

"El Cid"
It might be helpful to take a brief look at this legendary figure. In spite of the heroic portrayal by Charlton Heston of this Spanish Legend, Rodrigo Diaz ("El Cid") most likely didn't rout the Moors in a burst of glory. To get a more accurate picture you might want to check out this website. Some historians even suggest that the Caliph of Toledo simply left.

In any case, even during most of the time when the Muslims ruled the city there was evidently also a large contingent of Jews and Christians who coexisted quite nicely with the Moors. Only when the Christians succeeded the Moors did the life of the Jews in Spain begin to take a turn for the worse and by the 15th Century, the Inquisition actively persecuted them.

http://www.scienceandyou.org/articles/ess_06.shtml
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The conquest of Colombia

Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, Nikolaus Federmann, and Sebastian de Belalcazar figured
prominently in the exploration of the interior. In 1536 Jimenez de Quesada set out in
search of a path to Peru. During the course of his journey, he encountered the Muisca
in the Sabana de Bogota and in 1538 founded the city of Santa Fe de Bogota (present-day
Bogota)--the eventual power center for the colony of New Granada. Federmann explored
the eastern plains, crossed the Cordillera Oriental, and arrived at Bogota in 1539.
Traveling northward from Peru, Belalcazar established the cities of Popayan and
Santiago de Cali (present-day Cali). Other members of his group traveled northward and
founded Cartago and Anserma. In 1539 Belalcazar arrived in Bogota, where the three
conquistadors negotiated the division of the newly explored territory.

The expeditions that these men led provided the basis for the settlement of the
highlands interior that played a significant role in the future life of the colony. To
an even greater extent than in Peru and New Spain (present-day Mexico), many of the
population centers established during the conquest were located in remote intermontane
valleys and plateaus. This contributed to New Granada's becoming one of the most
isolated of all the colonies of the Spanish Empire in the New World.

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VALENCIA

Camacho

Origen : Valenciano. Su origen anterior es discutido, algunos tratadistas sostienen
que
proviene de Francia y otros opinan que su tronco se encontraba en Portugal. Es posible
que lo trajese a Espana alguno de los caballeros que pasaron al servicio del rey de
Aragon en los tiempos de la Reconquista espanola. Una rama se establecio en Jerez de
la
Frontera, extendiendose a Valdepenas, en Ciudad Real, Aragon y el resto de la
peninsula. Este apellido paso tambien al continente americano, sobre todo a Venezuela,
Bolivia, Colombia, asi como otros paises de la America Hispana
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Puglia, Italy

Ciancia name in Italy

Puglia, the remote heel of Italy's boot, dramatically combines fairytale cottages,
Baroque churches and Pagan dances. This captivating region is served by two airports
in
the towns of Bari and Brindisi, but the area is not an obvious destination for foreign visitors. Italian families return every year in July and August to the half-board hotels, campsites and tourist villages that proliferate the coast. But handsome
Baroque towns such as Martina Franca and the engaging Lecce - the 'Florence of the Baroque- see only a handful of visitors each day. And if you decide to explore some of the area's more remote Basilian chapels or prehistoric dolmens, you will be gloriously alone.

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Hampshire, England

Hampshire is a county on the South Coast of England stretching inland to within 30
miles of London.

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Sefardi

Toledo

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Camacho

2008-03-22T04:01:00.001-07:00