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...I was also very interested by the Madagascar stories and how the inhabitants came from Asia/Indonesia. Wayans had no DNA from continental Africa; zero. ....
That was just his paternal haplogroup. They didn't show his total autosomal results.
It's still annoying that there is this one focus and a lot of other interesting bits are not gone into, but at least the lecturing is less. I shut off a few of the last few seasons over that. If the theme is the struggles of people, why not tell the stories of those who aren't racial with the same delight? Labor early on was about using the poor and otherwise unwanted which could be gotten cheap, be they convicts, poor people who sailed under a sometimes forced indenture, or children shipped in from orphanages. It was about land owners needing and finding cheap labor. Some of them were slaves, but many were not and I vote for telling the whole story.
The most obvious answer is the host and writer is Henry Louis Gates Jr.... a famous and respected African American Historian including serving as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
Why would you not expect to see a focus on where his entire career and expertise go. Sure I'd enjoy non racial genealogy but there's only so much that can be fit in a single tv show and like any show or media people create what they know and have the biggest interest in.
I completely understand people's desire to have more genealogy and focus on even more topics, I wish there were 10x more genealogy shows and they could cover a broad range of genealogy... though I honestly don't get why people would expect this specific show to not focus on the racial aspects of genealogy, it's like asking John Stewart or Stephen Colbert to present news in a non-comedy fashion... sure they do that a bit from time to time but their specialty is comedy.
Dear New England, Yes the enclosures act in Britain stole previously shared strip furrow farming for British rural folk, enclosed their shared fields with either hedgerows ( which look so beautiful now in England and are great for birdlife and herbs/berries), or if to the West or North of Britain were stone-walled enclosures, which neatly fenced in the new stolen land to the new owners ( I wonder how many landowners actually were of Norman descent?) and the now poverty stricken workers were forced into the industrialised towns of Manchester, Stoke ect: but also Taunton, Bristol and Midsomer ( seriously) in the West Country. Working class Brits have been dumped on since Roman times ( as the Irish poor). The American programmes are definitely better than the English ones. The connections to colonial times and the Civil War are so good I have to stop making tea
I kind of wondered about that. It seemed far too much of a coincidence, and kind of doubt the science.
I wonder if Rudolph and Wayans would do new DNA testing in 10 years or so, when the DNA of more population groups have been studied, if the results would be the same or different.
I had wondered that as well. In time, the DNA tests will get even more precise than they have been due to the sheer number of more people getting tested. I know very little about DNA side of things. I hope to learn more when I can commit more time to genealogy.
Gates seemed somewhat pedantic for me when I first watched the series, but he has grown on me. There is a big focus of the show regarding slavery or race; even with that being said, I find the research and presentation to be well done. I don't watch much TV overall, but I did look forward to the new season of Finding Your Roots. Programming on PBS is still very appealing to me, vs. the usual current TV shows.
Dear New England, Yes the enclosures act in Britain stole previously shared strip furrow farming for British rural folk, enclosed their shared fields with either hedgerows ( which look so beautiful now in England and are great for birdlife and herbs/berries), or if to the West or North of Britain were stone-walled enclosures, which neatly fenced in the new stolen land to the new owners ( I wonder how many landowners actually were of Norman descent?) and the now poverty stricken workers were forced into the industrialised towns of Manchester, Stoke ect: but also Taunton, Bristol and Midsomer ( seriously) in the West Country. Working class Brits have been dumped on since Roman times ( as the Irish poor). The American programmes are definitely better than the English ones. The connections to colonial times and the Civil War are so good I have to stop making tea
Thank you for explaining how it happened. Acts of robbery like this are passed down through the generations, of course. My ancestors were farmers in Yorkshire before the enclosure act took the land. I know they were literate as I have seen their signatures on wills, and one was good friends with a doctor and was a witness on his will. After that there was no chance.
Their descendants slaved in the "Satanic Mills", their children leaving school at age 13 to work in those mills, they lived in housing across from the mills. You could tell what color the cloth was being dyed that day by the color of the water in the river! I think the reason my gt grandmother died young from bronchitis was from the foul air. People got married on Christmas Day--their day off. I have visited the industrial museum in Bradford and I saw those horrible machines. Mine lived and died in Bradford; my gt grandfather was stone deaf from all the years working in those mills--they also stole a pulley invention from him since he didn't earn enough money to buy a patent for it. So many injustices. Our story is never told so it heartens me to hear from someone else who understands.
Interesting and very moving post...... I am not from the North ( ancestors though ), but have been up there quite a few times and am amazed at how fun loving and extrovert people are. What`s worse is that when Labour and Conservative Governments pulled down those Victorian cottages, Ringo Star`s one in the poor area of the Dingle in Liverpool is a good example, ( if they had decent plumbing ect, they would be considered good housing now!) and replaced them with soulless tower blocks and prefab houses, ( most had asbestos in the buildings and even in the floortiles!) They really wanted to finish off the British working class then. These are now grim housing estates where drugs, obesity is a problem. That is why Coronation Street is big because that was the reality in the 1950`s, hard, but close-knit. I am from London and that has some grim places as well. When I lived in Buckinghamshire, still miss it, it was beautiful, but those thatched cottages or wall of thick hedgerows hid much poverty and misery many years ago. Those thatched houses are worth nearly a million now! That is why Ireland has kept a strong folk identity, because it was ripped away from the British when they went to work in the mills. Ireland has always, mostly, stayed rural.This explains why British folk music and traditions carried on in the South in America, as a lot of immigrants crossed over before industrialisation in the UK snuffed it all out. Folk has re-morphed in Britain and has a resurgence. But there is something beautiful, yet melancholy about the British countryside, especially in Winter.
England Dan, I can't rep you again but again, thank you. The fun loving extroverted people in the north--that's a perfect description of my late aunts and uncles. And when I go back to the north, that's how the people are to this day. It may die out but I hope not.
Sometimes I wonder what makes them that way. Maybe due to the harsh lifestyle that was forced upon them? Or were they always like this in the north. My relatives used to turn any little event into an excuse for a party!!
It could have been something they learned, a way that people used to cope in the old days.
Well, this is turning into Psychology 101, lol. From your post I need to see the countryside in winter.
Thank you for explaining how it happened. Acts of robbery like this are passed down through the generations, of course. My ancestors were farmers in Yorkshire before the enclosure act took the land. I know they were literate as I have seen their signatures on wills, and one was good friends with a doctor and was a witness on his will. After that there was no chance.
Their descendants slaved in the "Satanic Mills", their children leaving school at age 13 to work in those mills, they lived in housing across from the mills. You could tell what color the cloth was being dyed that day by the color of the water in the river! I think the reason my gt grandmother died young from bronchitis was from the foul air. People got married on Christmas Day--their day off. I have visited the industrial museum in Bradford and I saw those horrible machines. Mine lived and died in Bradford; my gt grandfather was stone deaf from all the years working in those mills--they also stole a pulley invention from him since he didn't earn enough money to buy a patent for it. So many injustices. Our story is never told so it heartens me to hear from someone else who understands.
I was able to trace my granddad's family back to the 1300's. They were an anglo/norse family working strips in one of three nearby villages. I found references from the local church for everyone up to the end of the strips. The smallest village dissapeared, and there were only two. Then there was one as they merged. My ancestors became skilled workers and even owned some property. As the one village grows, they became less, just laborers without property.
The reason these records are there is the point where the village ceased to be, it became part of the East End of London. London parishes preserved the records, and the origionals are likely in the carefully preserved library in London which goes back before 1300, covering the area that is London.
My ancestors probably in part worked in mills, but my side of the family took up theivery. That's how My five x great grandfather and his brother (and later his father) got shipped to Maryland and sold to a planter as convicts in the first official shipment in the convict trade, in 1719. This ended in 1776, and the first ship in the harbor as the revolution was declared over was a convict shipment which was sent on the way. Not out of ethics, but because the convict trade was known for the sickness it brought with it.
I feel like I have ties to the whole tapistry of British/English early history, from the Norse to the people there before and the significent events which led to today, even if they were ordinary people.
I wish I could afford to get a blood /dna test run myself because I'm really curious what kind of blood runs through my veins . I mean we have been told we are Italian on one side and scot /irish on the other side with some dutch and norweigan thrown in but I would really like to find out how much and what is what and see just what the mix and ratios are . I just could not afford to have that done , someone told me it is like a thousand dollars or so .
I wish I could afford to get a blood /dna test run myself because I'm really curious what kind of blood runs through my veins . I mean we have been told we are Italian on one side and scot /irish on the other side with some dutch and norweigan thrown in but I would really like to find out how much and what is what and see just what the mix and ratios are . I just could not afford to have that done , someone told me it is like a thousand dollars or so .
It is nowhere near that much to get DNA tested for genealogical purposes. ---> https://www.23andme.com/
Meanwhile you can search the paper trail anywhere in the world online for free: http://familysearch.org/
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