Ice House Earth, Greenhouse Earth and those in-between times ... our planet and its peoples ... the female ancestral line ... part 2/4

I watched this two part BBC documentary soon after listening to the Icehouse-Greenhouse Earth radio talk per part 1 of this series ... and as my mind does – thought these journeys would add to the mix ...

Eddie Izzard c/o RootSounds.co.uk

... so to set the scene: this may startle some of you – but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole camp effect ... and the genealogy aspects that tie us all in ...

Eddie Izzard is an actor, comedian, transvestite, and marathon runner extraordinaire ... over and above these talents and attributes – he fits the bill of look-a-like ancient man ...

This time instead of going back two to three hundred years through the genealogical records ... Izzard donates some DNA and we leap backwards in time ...

Dark Green hatched - Namibia to the west,
South Africa to the south and east

Locked deep within each of us is a genetic history book of our ancestry and the journey of mankind over the earth ... man’s family tree across the continents.

Using our own DNA it is possible to unlock this genetic history and that route map, which reveals how our ancestors migrated out of Africa to populate the rest of the world.

This is the first time the story has been told (on tv) of where our first mother and father originated ... through DNA and the significant DNA markers found within a number of present day human genetics recorded in a huge database.

Kalahari Desert, Namibia

Eddie’s ancestral lines reach England after the Romans had been and conquered, yet give us all an insight as to how and why our families are where they are now, wherever that might be.

I thought these four posts – earth’s history, woman’s path out of Africa and man’s journey of life also out of Africa, then a summary – seemed to tie in rather well and give me a perspective on this planet and its occupants that I had not really taken account of before.

All of us are descended from one woman and one man ... this is the story of the Izzard strand of the population of the world – yet one our own ancestors travelled too ...

... usually our Y and X chromosomes do not change much over time, but occasionally a significant change, known as a “DNA marker” occurs, which indicates another branch to a family tree as the globe has been populated.

Here we will follow the female line ... all of our lines ... to start with ...

San Bushman

The first woman to whom we are all related was a San Bushman living in the Kalahari Desert, southern Africa – these Bushmen still live as hunter gatherers, much as they did 192,000 years ago when our Homo sapiens lineage began (as distinct from the evolving archaic Homo sapiens).

10,000 generations later the San Bushmen are one of the last remaining peoples to preserve the way of life that predominated our existence in Africa for those first 100,000 years.

Bushmen making fire

By 60,000 years ago humans had colonised the enormous continent of Africa, so fast forwarding 140,000 years from our Homo sapiens origins about 200,000 years ago the necessity to find new land became an imperative. 

The human is a curious creature, and by now had acquired the ability to make fire – which allowed food to be cooked making it easier to eat, while fire kept us protected from other species – the predators.

Africa, at this stage, was ‘over-populated’ with an estimated 20,000 peoples ...

Red Sea narrowing

Scientists have DNA tested traditional communities to help establish how we migrated out across the world ... which has given us a route map of our early journeys ...

It is thought that humans first left Africa across the narrowing of the Red Sea at the Bab-el-Mandeb Straight, via the now salt lake of Assal – which sits 150m below sea level and is saltier than the Dead Sea ... or via ...

Salt Lake, Assal Sea

... Djibouti on the Red Sea ... where “DNA markers” have been found, strongly suggesting that our ancestors passed this way to colonise the rest of the world.

It is where these early peoples were exploiting the marine environment – evidence of this has been found in archaeological sites ...

Yemen is likely to be the next stop – but with today’s politics these links cannot be checked ... however the other route via Bab-el-Mandel Straight is still a highway to Arabia.

Bab-el-Mandel Straight

A glacial age was in progress, so the sea level would have been lower making the crossing easier – this was the time of the exodus of humanity out of Africa ...

... but what is even more remarkable it is thought that only two women gave birth to nearly everyone else in the world (via DNA testing available at present) ... and one of those women went north, the other went off to Australia ...

This is the story of us ‘northerners’ ... as we jump forward another 42,000 years ... to about 18,000 years ago ...

Arabia and the Persian Gulf - south of Turkey

... those early ancestors took advantage of the fertile crescent in the Persian Gulf up into Turkey ... then after ‘settling’ for about 8,000 years, the birth of agriculture as we know it today had commenced.

Farming gave Homo sapiens something else ... that abundance enabled settlers to settle and develop a life-style – so now we also have the birth of civilisation ...

... then the blue eyes DNA marker comes to the fore – the earliest archaeological evidence of domestication of cattle and sheep has been found on the shore of the Black Sea.

Eastern part of Mediterranean Sea:
showing Turkey and Black Sea

With the domesticity of animals came a new food source – milk ... but in those early communities milk’s intolerance showed itself ... but evolutionary genetic modification came to the rescue ... and now many of us can digest milk easily.

Back to blue eyes ... everyone with blue eyes can be traced back to the Black Sea coast of 10,000 years ago ... however, whoever has blue eyes will have been passed the gene by both parents ...

... this anomaly really means the blue gene trait shouldn’t survive ... the supposition is that blue eyes were more desirable: that sexual attraction retained the blue eye gene ...

Depiction showing Dardanelles east of
Aegean Sea, Sea of Marmara and
the Bosphorus (entrance to Black Sea)

The next move north as part of the agricultural revolution occurring in the Middle East was probably routed across the Bosphorous ... much as we travel now – if we don’t fly in.

Now we’re at about 7,500 years ago ... and there were an estimated 8 million people ...

... there are two main routes north – up the river valleys into mid Europe, or along the Mediterranean shores ... one of Eddie’s offshoots journeyed along the southern fringes for the next 5,000 years ...

Map showing River Danube and its catchment
across southern Europe

... and this is where those early great civilisations arose ... the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, etc ...

By 79AD Pompeii was a flourishing city with about 20,000 people living there ... one family of Eddie’s genetic cousins died 2,000 years ago in a sad and tragic story arising from that Pompeii explosion.

Eddie’s direct ancestors took the more northerly route via central Europe on their way to Britain.

In all the scientists found 69 key DNA markers in Eddie’s mother’s DNA line ... and the closer we get to today, the scientists can be more precise as to his ancestral journey.

Roskilde is in the middle, northern part of
Zealand island.  (Roskilde: east of the urban
city of Copenhagen, Denmark)

The 67^th marker is less than 100 generations ago, about 2,000 years ago ... so now living relatives can be searched out and matched up ...

... we have arrived at the Viking age, where the search is focused in Scandinavia ... in fact Roskilde, Denmark ...

... about 793 AD the Vikings began to raid Britain – their long-ships rowing and sailing across the North Sea... 

... the shallow keels meant that the long-ships could just row onto the shore – eliminating the need for harbours and giving the invaders the advantage of surprise.  With a fair wind this would take about three days?!

A Viking ship

It is thought that Eddie’s mother’s ancestors came in the second wave of immigration, when the Vikings brought their families to settle ...

The next 68^th DNA marker brings us forward to 1,000 to 500 years ago – to two blonde sisters in Northamptonshire (+/- middle of England) ... who had always thought they were Anglo-Saxon in origin ... but no they are Vikings ...

This finishes Eddie’s mother’s ancestral journey, which shows how many of our ancestors would have travelled too – and perhaps why and who we are ...

5 years ago this ground breaking journey would not have been possible ... but through matching these genetic markers, which the scientists have mapped via the testing of saliva swabs taken from communities or peoples around the world.

Eddie Izzard

I expect this has only been possible because Eddie is a celebrity in this country and his features are pronounced, typically Neanderthal-like  ... the low forehead, blue eyes, smallish and stolid in stature, and with reddish hair ...

...  all features found along the Homo-sapiens world route map, which using these unique genetic markers has been possible to unravel.

I know this is long ... but it does set out the route and time frame of us ... and I thought it worth posting about ... next the male line ... 

BBC One - brief overview 

Ice House Earth, Green House earth ... part 1/4

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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