Genes and Genealogy from Naked Genetics

In this edition of Naked Genetics from University of Cambridge listen to Professor Mark Jobling discuss how academic DNA sequencing intersects with genealogy research. While he understands that people want to know where their ancestors come from, the reality is that our ancestors didn't come from one specific location - they came from everywhere. The only ancestors we can trace with any confidence are those that passed down their Y chromosome and their mtDNA which represent only two individuals. This segment opens the program.

Then unless you are super keen on genetics, skip ahead to 18:07 to hear Dr. Turi King discuss her research on the Y-chromosome. She uses this chromosome in connection with surnames to trace Norse Viking migrations.

image credit: Zephyris

In Our Time Moment: History and Understanding the Past

The jumping off point for this March 2000 episode of In Our Time was The New Century by historian Eric J. Hobsbwam. The US edition of this book was published as On the Edge of the New Century in May 2001. Melvyn Bragg was joined by Dr. Hobsbwam and Richard J. Evans.

The panel discussed whether history is useful for understanding the present and future and whether or not the lessons learnt are applied appropriately. I particularly liked Dr. Evans' point that studying societies of the past can give a greater understanding of what it means to be human. Dr. Hobsbwam uses the national and global aspecs of football (soccer) to explain globalization.

The conclusion, I think of the discussion, is that history cannot predict the future, in part because conditions have changed so dramatically. For almost all of human history the vast majority of people have worked the land, now only about 2-3% do, and as Dr. Hobsbwam points out this fact, along with the increases in literacy and education, make the world a fundamentally different place. But what history can do is help explain why things are the way they are and suggest possibilities for the future.

Find this episode at the IOT History archive here or search iTunes.

In Our Time Moment: History of History

I was quite excited to listen to History of History, first aired in January 2009. Many people who haven’t studied history are quite unaware of how much the discipline has changed since the first Historian, Herodotus, wrote about the Persian Wars in the 5^th century BCE.  Since this podcast was billed as examining “how the writing of history has changed over the years” I thought it would be a quick and painless way for you, the reader, to learn about the subject. The panelists were John Burrow, Paul Cartledge and Miri Rubin.

I must admit that I was so frustrated with the podcast I really couldn’t enjoy it. It starts off well, but almost the entire time is spent in the Ancient World, then in the last 10 minutes skips several hundred years to the Renaissance Humanists and then another huge leap to the Enlightenment. Paul Cartledge takes on the inhuman task of summing up the past 50 years of historiography in about two sentences in the last minute of the show.

I suppose that to discuss 2500 years of historiography in 45 minutes was an ambitious task for Melvyn Bragg to set. On the other hand, the panelists didn’t help Bragg out much with all their ‘oh let me add to that comment’ and ‘before we move on, I need to footnote that.’ However, many of these comments and footnotes, to my mind, weren’t really relevant to the task at hand.

While, the podcast might not be what I hoped for, it is an interesting discussion of historiography in the Classical and Post-Classical World. The best bits, I think, are at the very beginning and at the very end.

Find this episode at the IOT History archive here or search iTunes.

In Our Time Moment: History as Science

One of my all-time favorite podcasts is In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg from BBC Radio 4. This series is an exploration of the History of Ideas and has been running since 1998. Last summer the BBC made every episode available to download. 

History as Science, aired in 1999,  features a discussion between Bragg, Jared Diamond and Richard Evans about Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize Winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

I purchased this book in 1998, but did not read until several years ago when I read it for a department workshop. I really enjoyed the book, as did most of the rest of faculty, and found the overall thesis interesting. The scope of the book is vast, about 8,000 years, and tries to explain why Europeans conquered the Americas and not the other way round.  Diamond’s answer is rooted in geography, people who are more connected to each other can exchange ideas better. Ultimately connections were easier in Eurasia than the Americas. It would have been a great discussion but for three of the instructors in the department (all non-Western, post-1500) absolutely hated it, said they’d never assign it to their students, and generally didn’t have one good thing to say about it. Seriously. I almost walked out.

What these three historians did, in a similar way that Richard Evans does, is to pick on the one thing they knew about and then criticize that particular aspect of the work. Of course this is qualified by words along the lines of “well, he might be right about those parts of history or places that I don’t know about.”  I think Evans was more sympathetic to Diamond’s work than my former colleagues, but his comments and tone made me think of the long ago workshop and it set my teeth on edge.

Diamond is a professor of Geography and Evans a professor of Modern History, so they approach the study of the past differently.  Some academics are much more willing to work in and with other disciplines. Diamond seems to be one of these academics, while Evans (based solely on this interview) does not.  With degrees in history and art history I definitely fall into the interdisciplinary camp.

One aspect of the interview I did find interesting is that comparison of history to science, particularly like geology. I mentioned in an earlier post that John Lewis Gaddis had made this same observation: History is like a Science where experiments can not be repeated. 

Find this episode at the IOT History archive here or search iTunes.

We're Gonna Need Some More Genealogists...

Today, 31 October 2011, the 7th billion person is scheduled to be born, at least according to the United Nations Population Fund. Current estimates have the earth's population reaching 9.3 billion by 2050.

While I, and probably every other genealogist alive, complains about so many dead people with the same name (Alexander McIntosh, John Smith, etc), at least we know that there really weren't so many people alive in the past. Armed with this knowledge, we know that some of these individuals must be the same. I'm not so sure that will be true in the future as there will be too many options.

Take my name, Amanda Epperson, for example. Epperson, is not a very common surname. In fact, many people upon hearing it for the first time think it is Apperson or Emerson. Amanda was one of the ten most popular names for girls for about 15 years or so. There are lots of Amandas around today, but when I was little there was only one other one in my elementary school. However, you wouldn't think there would be THAT many Amanda Eppersons. But there are; I searched for "Amanda Epperson" on Facebook and stopped counting when I got to 30. I can't even imagine the multitudes of John Smiths that must be out there today. I suppose the only hope genealogists of the future have is that we are much better documented today, then people of the past.

I'm sure there will be much coverage of this population milestone in the coming weeks. For now you can read this story from Time on overpopulation and the environment here, two stories from NPR here and here; listen to Melvin Bragg and his panelists discuss Malthusianism (In Our Time, 22 June 2011) here, or if you were born after 1951 you can see how many people were alive the day you here born, here, courtesy of the Guardian. On my birthday, there were 3,456,018,429 people, or about half the number that there is now.

How many were alive on your birthday?

Thoughts on Monarchy

Crown of King Christian IV of Denmark

The secret goal of many genealogists is to connect themselves to Royalty. I suppose I would have to include myself in this category. Based upon what I already know about my family, however, any "royalty" I'm connected to is likely a chieftain of a Neolithic agricultural village and therefore totally untraceable.

Part of the reason for this wish for royal roots is that we want to be connected to somebody important enough to make it into the history books. Or maybe we secretly want our own royal wedding. Pomp and Matrimony is a BBC World Service Documentary about British Royal Weddings of the 20th century. Read about the program and download it here.

For most Americans (and I mean United Statesians), no matter how much we admire prince and princesses and are dazzled by their pictures in magazines (think Princess Diana, the recent marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton), I don't think we'd really want an actual perpetual landed class and hereditary monarchy. Like me, many of Americans, are probably quite content to watch other countries' royals but are also kind of glad they are somebody else's problem. The pros and cons of monarchy are addressed by another BBC World Archive Documentary, For King or Country. Episode 1 presents the republican case based on the experience of Sweden (information & download here). Episode 2 presents the monarchical case, oddly enough mostly with evidence from the United States (information & download here).

Both of the presenters make good cases; but I can't help but thinking that the argument for monarchy might have been more compelling if more of the evidence had come from people who actually lived under a monarchical government.

image credit: Ikiwaner via Wikipedia.com

1968 & The BBC

Earlier this summer, I wrote about songs that were popular in 1968. Then last week, I listened to four really great podcasts from the BBC Documentary Archive on this pivotal year. The four episodes of "1968: The Year that Changed the World?" were originally broadcast in 2008 by BBC World Service Radio. The neat thing about this series is that it examines events around the world - Vietnam, Paris, China, Britain, the United States and more.

The links will take you to the BBC World Service page for each episode where you can stream the programs or download them as an mp3. Each page also has a description of the episode and a list of related links. Alternatively you can download the programs on iTunes, which is where I found them (or more accurately, they found me after I subscribed to the podcast).

Episode One - American Election and Vietnam.

Episode Two - The Revolt of the Young.

Episode Three - Race and Nationalism.

Episode Four - The Communist World.

Happy Listening!

The Scottish Emigration Blog: A Narrow Sea - A History Program from BBC Radio Ul...

In today's earlier post, I mentioned that part of my dad's family was likely Scots-Irish, which reminded me of this post: 

The Scottish Emigration Blog: A Narrow Sea - A History Program from BBC Radio Ul...: "I've just discovered this radio program on the history of the relationship between Ireland and Scotland. The seven minute episodes sta..."

 There are several episodes about the Scots-Irish experience in the United States.