Retracing Their Footsteps

(Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images at Pixabay)

It's that time of year where our normal pattern in retirement had been to take a long distance trip to break up the winter and escape the dark nights. No such luck this year and just like 2020 it is beginning to feel as though we are once again adrift and floating lazily along. Of course if we really need the stimulation of travel, we could take a short trip here in the UK but with daylight hours reducing rapidly and the late autumnal weather as always unpredictable, it does not appeal. Instead, I am easing myself back to exercise classes with swimming and water aerobics, as well as Pilates and Yoga and snatching, so far as possible, a daily session in the garden trying to get everything to bed before the temperatures plummet below zero. 

It's a strange November with nasturtiums, dianthus and pelargoniums still blooming not to mention tomatoes continuing to ripen in the unheated greenhouse. Meanwhile we are starting to see slight morning frosts and when the sun drops it always feels good to be tucked cosily inside with a book. As always I'm beginning to pick up activities left over from last winter and abandoned for the past 6 months in favour of the summer and outdoors. 

It was back in April, of course, that I sent off a sample of DNA to be tested. Who would have thought spitting into a test-tube could be difficult? So it proved, however, when I was subsequently informed that the laboratory had been unable to extract a sufficient sample and I had to start the process again. I have now had the results for sometime, but it is only in recent days that I've found myself at the computer exploring them in detail. Fortunately they don't seem to have thrown up any awful surprises and might even have helped shut a number of doors to what were clearly false leads.

The insight gleaned as to my earlier ancestry, however, has perhaps sparked the most interest. Talk about boring! Not only have I lived in the same village for 35 years and, as it turns out, only a few miles from the Yorkshire Dale where my folks were hanging out back in the 1700's, but my early forefathers don't appear to have moved around much either.

It transpires they were so rooted in the North that I don't have any Saxon blood in me. Instead, I seem to be a healthy mix of  Celt, Angle and Viking, all settling in the Northern part of the British Isles between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago. I don't even have a single Roman molecule, suggesting that my Celtic ancestry was part of the great unwashed, looking on whilst Hadrian's army indulged in its steambaths and oil massages, along its Northumbrian frontier.

In contrast my archaic roots do at least give a hint of the migratory journey undertaken by ancient ancestors. Thank goodness, as their footsteps are the only whisper of travel that I'm probably getting before the end of the year. Now I have no idea how accurate any of this is, but matching my DNA to records of Neanderthal and archaic samples does seem to show a pattern that began in Africa, included movement through the Middle East in the Mesolithic Period, as well as across Europe as hunter gatherers, with a touch of Basal Eurasian thrown in to complete the melting pot. 

Fascinating stuff and an explanation even of why people aren't necessarily wrong when they feel a need to travel is in their DNA. In retirement we seek to do what we are coded for, perhaps.