Why do people care about their roots? (generations, soldier, money)
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I can understand wanting to know a bit about your where you came from - But to what extent?
Like most people in the USA my roots are from poor people - And that's why our parents and grandparents came here. To improve their lives.
And, many were forced to come here - Literally driven out of their countries.
I think most of us think more about the here and now - Our own lives, where we are going in life, and what type of world we will leave our children.
In a way I can understand that African-Americans may want to get an idea of more specifically what country their ancestors came from - But, I imagine if you trace the slave trade routes, you can get an idea of that.
Almost all of us here came from some sad background. And, as someone else pointed out on these pages, looking at history, almost everyone has some form of slavery or indentured service in their roots. - right up to the early 1900s.
The Irish came to escape absolute famine (from their land and crops being taken away), the Eastern Europeans escaped literal slavery under communism, the Jews escaped from communism, facism and extermination, and there were others also escaping ethnic cleansing, right down to the Asians (including South-east Asia) that escaped absolute poverty and famine.
And most seem focused on the here and now, their futures and their childrens futures.
Not many see a value of looking back, other than in a general way to remember why we are here, and why we want to keep our freedoms.
I can understand wanting to know a bit about your where you came from - But to what extent?
Like most people in the USA my roots are from poor people - And that's why our parents and grandparents came here. To improve their lives.
And, many were forced to come here - Literally driven out of their countries.
I think most of us think more about the here and now - Our own lives, where we are going in life, and what type of world we will leave our children.
In a way I can understand that African-Americans may want to get an idea of more specifically what country their ancestors came from - But, I imagine if you trace the slave trade routes, you can get an idea of that.
Almost all of us here came from some sad background. And, as someone else pointed out on these pages, looking at history, almost everyone has some form of slavery or indentured service in their roots. - right up to the early 1900s.
The Irish came to escape absolute famine (from their land and crops being taken away), the Eastern Europeans escaped literal slavery under communism, the Jews escaped from communism, facism and extermination, and there were others also escaping ethnic cleansing, right down to the Asians (including South-east Asia) that escaped absolute poverty and famine.
And most seem focused on the here and now, their futures and their childrens futures.
Not many see a value of looking back, other than in a general way to remember why we are here, and why we want to keep our freedoms.
I think people look to the past and in this case their genealogy to judge their potential. I have studied my genealogy and have to wonder if I would measure up to their standards.
Life is a lot easier today than a few hundred years ago.
The comment on the Irish is only half correct. Many fled famine, but many more were sold into slavery by the British to planters in the Caribbean, and the colonies. I have always questioned why this black period in history has and still is being omitted from our history books.
The interests in one's roots can be as simple as recognizing that people, like all living beings, are the porduct of the evolutionary forces that work on them. We are products of our environment as well as our genes. Knowing whether your people came from a war torn Eastern Europe, Polynesian royalty, or a slave auction in North Carolina can give one insight into why your more recent generations, parents, grandparents, made the decisions they did. It gives you insight into why you thrive on chicken but crave Fruit Loops. These idiosyncrasies can all be due to a hard life of hunter /gathering in a foreign land.
And best of all it is the best history lesson you will get. All the details of a personal journey of family members can trump the simplified, many times glossed over telling that you get in textbooks. It took 40 years of my lifetime before mainstream books and portrayals even suggested the great numbers of African-American cowboys despite the stories that family had told me since infancy. Geneology can be the history book of man if regarded with the proper insight.
I think that studying roots can explain some present day attitudes and traditions within families and regions. I think it makes time points in history more personal and then very easy to remember. For me, I was able to come across letters and diaries and get a pretty decent mental image of what life was like in different time periods. I had two lines that wound up in Texas. One of the ways that people could make money was finding the leftover bones of buffalo which would be crushed later on. The grandfather that did it explained everything quite well in a diary entry. I was like, who knew? That wasn't in my history book.
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