Yup. While not having quite such distinguished ancestors as you in some ways we're in the same boat - my family used to own http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/historic-halls/smithills-history for hundreds of years, lost their fortune then built another by becoming slavers. Then lost it all again. All way before I was born and no it doesn't define me either.

I did used to love taking my dog for walks round the ancestral pile though, and the ancient woodlands there.

And according to my (now deceased) grandfather, I am descended from a family of horse thieves. Of course that doesn't make me a thief, in fact, I despise them.

Anyway, I guess the point is that being 1% Sub Saharan African isn't really anything significant. I'd say what is more significant is the fact that humans can have up to (IIRC) 4% Neanderthal DNA.

But hey, it is always nice knowing where you and your ancestors come from. The best I have to go on with my family name is a rumor I heard from my Grandfather, and our history kinda gets lost if we go much past his Grandfather.

Whatever you say you're majesty




Lol same here on my grandmothers side. 3 brothers, I think one was hung.

I'm like... 0.1% Middle Eastern apparently.


Guess you all have to put me on a watchlist, if we're doing the stereotype jokes thing.

Like nobility being inbred?

Guess we can at least salvage this thread into making it about everyone's ancestry.

For me, my family had apparently swapped names when immigrating to the US so I'll never know my true ancestry. On that half of the family anyway.

There's a service that takes your DNA and identifies your cultural history through it, if you don't mind having your DNA on a catalogue. That's how I found out I was Irish/German, with that bit of middle eastern. Both of my parents are adopted, so it was a dead end until then.

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/46211402.jpg

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I'm actually a descendant of Isabella of Castile. Was really shocking to be honest. Though once I got the news, I could only think of http://soul-candy.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/no_one_expects_the_spanish_inquisition_by_simzer-d5bxjqp.png

You're mad because a bunch of people on a gaming forum page don't care that you might have some African bloodline from waaaaaaaay back when? Yeah, if it's your immediate family that doesn't care, than maybe, and I mean MAYBE you have a point, but a gaming website?

Well I mean what we're you seeking? I mean do you think that it's cool and you just wanted to share it?


Saying "support" makes it sound like it's a bad thing.


Other than that it is pretty cool they can tell you that now. I've considered getting it done.... though I am a Heinz 57 so the lab computers may catch fire when attempting to anolyze the train wreck that is my genetic ancestry.

Ancestry and race are not the same thing.


The same culture and race are not the same thing, nationality and race aren't the same thing nor is religion and race the same thing.


You can be black Scottish and eat haggis and drink whiskey and be protestant CoE the same way you can be a white Saharan following Islam.


Who cares? This is 2016. People need to stop identifying by race all the time.


African DNA through paternal DNA y Haplogroup is A through to E but predominantly E. There are European as pure white as white with Y chromosome of the Haplogroup E (possibly from the Roman era). They are no more racialy African than their neighbours. Yhe European paternal (Y) DNA chromosome is predominantly of the haplogroup R. The people of Cameroon are also of R showing that their ancestors were once European. The people of Camaroon are no more racially white than any other African people. Your Aunty's DNA results make absolutely no difference to who you are. Everyone around the world have similar mixes in them. We are only one race. The human race. And we have mixed since the beginning of our species.

I'm amazed this thread has reached two pages, MODS, YOU'RE SLACKING OFF!

oh...I guess it's gotten some legitemacy now ._.

yeah, great OP, meanwhile, in my family lineage:

my family lineage began on my father's began side when a peasant farmer committed advltery with a noble's daughter and fled to the backwaters of Eastern Europe where they lvied out the rest of their days as subsistance laborers until my grandmother came to the US in 1927

my father's side is defined by generation after generation, after generation living in crippling poverty, dying of starvation, and eventually immigrating to the US, where they continued to live in crippling poverty up until my father came out of the womb and decided that living as a subsistence laborer wasn't a very successful strategy for his familial history:P

my family lineage on my mother's side began (at least in the US) when my ancestors immigrated to the US as fabulously wealthy bankers and lived in the North as wartime profiteers during the CIvil War

my mother's side was always part of the aristocracy, was fabulously wealthy, and during their existence as American citizens had been part of the "Bostonian Elites" until my mother came out of the womb and witnessed her centuries long family fortune finally dry up, and decided to marry a mid-west bumpkin with an extended familial history of poverty and debt.

My family used to be plantation owners in the South, so I guess I win.

Good, I say. Forums have a lot more personality when threads aren't constantly being locked if they get a little off track.

This thread had a track?

I recently learned I have Dutch ancestors, some of whom lived in New Amsterdam (why they changed it I can't say, people just liked it better that way).

Father's side: Volgadeutsch farmers until the early 20th century when Russia threatened to strip us of our (it was a sweet deal) rights to not pay taxes or fight in wars. Came to America and continued the German tradition of extreme agricultural competitiveness. Until me. I'm studying to be a doctor.


Mother's side: Mostly low-class Norwegian farmers, German/Austrian farmers (a lot of farmers back in the day,) and some English. Not sure what the Anglos did. Regardless, my mother's side is musical and artsy while my father's side is shrudely intelligent. I got a bit of both thankfully.

Nothing as interesting as aristocracy in my family, although apparently the Bensons owned a large chunk of New Orleans (and possibly still do: they're still there, anyway). When some of them came to England they changed their surname due to some sort of scandal but nobody's ever quite got to the bottom of it.

Most of the rest of my family don't seem especially interesting, mostly haggis farmers and boilermakers from Scotland, apparently. I also noticed that they were big on reusing names way back, too, it seems my entire family comprises Annies, Elizabeths, Johns and Josephs. No wonder I get confused when you get three generations all with the same name.

Known ancestry in my family is Anglo-Scottish on my fathers side and English with a little Romany on my mothers side.

That just covers the last couple of hundred years though.

Like most people in Britain I'm probably a mixture given millenia of immigration and mixing.

I haven't done any extensive research, but from what I've gathered from family stories, it's farmers on the backs of farmers and farmers all the way down. Kashubians tended to be somewhat isolated, but with Gdańsk as a major trading port and the region's long history of mixed Slavic and Germanic influences, I'd expect to find some traces of that in my bloodline.


Nobility was even worse. Denmark was ruled by Christians and Fredericks for 460 years until their current queen Margrethe, whose eldest son is called, surprise surprise, Frederik. I think they're doing it on purpose now and Margrethe's father broke the tradition only because he never had a son.

According family legend on my mother's side, a Christian pastor from Serbia (my not-sure-how-many-greats grandfather) cursed all of his descendants that they would never be able to become pastors.


Turks attacked (or Serbs attacked Turks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Serbian%E2%80%93Turkish_conflicts), and he left the church he was in charge of to fight in the war. When he came back, his people were all manner of sinful and lost, and he regretted ever leaving, and because he felt he had failed God and his church he cursed all of his descendants. Something like that, anyway.

Suits me just fine.