I have to confess that this week’s subject is one that does not particularly inspire me as my interest in family history has never been driven simply by how far back I can get.
I have already mentioned that a researcher has been able to take the Ginn family line back as far as 1450 [see Historic Event], but from my own efforts the earliest ancestors I have identified date from the mid-1600s in the villages around Bere Regis in Dorset, where remarkably early Parish registers have survived and have been indexed.
From the 1662 baptism record of my 6x great grandfather, George Thomas, it is likely that his father, Christopher Thomas, is the earliest of these ancestors currently in my tree – sadly, I do not have a verified name for his mother. Christopher baptised two children in the hamlet of Aller, but I have no documentary evidence for the date or place of his birth, marriage or death. There don’t appear to be any other Thomas families living in the immediate area, suggesting that he was originally from elsewhere.
This lack of information is the main reason why I find pushing my tree back into history rather unsatisfying because Christopher Thomas exists solely as a name and I need to go down through several generations of his descendants before I reach those whose lives I can flesh out using sources such as census records and newspaper archives.
Having said that, although it is of no use whatsoever when it comes to adding branches to my tree, I was fascinated to discover that my DNA can be linked back to much more ancient humans as genetic information is increasingly gathered from the analysis of archaeological finds.
For example, the mitochondrial DNA passed down to me solely through the unbroken line of my mother’s female ancestors can be traced back to the woman living in eastern Africa between 150,000 – 200,000 years ago that all humans living today are descended from. The subsequent migration of her descendants can be tracked through a series of genetic variants known as haplogroups, and these reveal that my maternal ancestors gradually moved northwards towards the Middle East until around 18,000 BC when a woman identified as H became the common ancestor of many of the modern Europeans whose forebears pushed northwest following the last ice age.
The GEDMatch site goes further by enabling me to see links to some specific individuals, and my DNA can be linked to archaeological finds from across Europe, including Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Spain. The earliest in the list is the man known as Ust’-Ishim who was a hunter-gatherer living in Siberia 45,000 years ago. His DNA is currently the oldest homo sapiens genome on record and was extracted from a single thigh bone. Clearly the DNA segments that I share with these ancient humans are much too tiny to prove any direct lineage, but they do suggest that at some point my ancestors were probably living in the same communities and added together they support more general migration patterns.
This fusion between genetics and archaeology is known as archaeogenetics and is still in its infancy. Although a very different, less immediately personal approach to finding out who my ancestors were, I find it fascinating that I can fit myself into the story of early humans and will be following developments in the field with interest.
Sleuthing Notes 