Several years ago I became interested in tracing my Family Tree.
My uncle had done a considerable amount of research on my Mom’s Family Tree and learned that our Maternal Ancestors here in Canada were Ojibwe, (Native American)... going back to a French Trapper that married a Chippewa (Ojibwe) woman from Mackinaw Island in Michigan.
My dad’s family tree was much more difficult since he was told that his Grandfather was adopted as a baby by the Caputo Family in Calabria Italy back in early 1800’s.
So I decided to get a $69 Y-DNA (Paternal) test with FamilyTree DNA and see if I could learn more about our arrival in Italy in the 1800’s.
I also ordered the Maternal MT-DNA Test to see if it would come back with Ojibwe origins.
When you get your results they give you a number of DNA markers which also tell you which DNA Haplogroup you belong to.
My Maternal Haplogroup (MtDNA) came back as X2a ... which is in fact the very unique Haplogroup of the Ojibwe, Native Americans living in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_X_(mtDNA)
My Paternal Haplogroup (Y-DNA) came back as E-M35
Which originates in Africa ....
So I am African ... but we are all from Africa. As this Y-DNA Haplogroup Map indicates:
Source: https://FamilyTreeDNA.com
This Map is very ancient going all the way back to the earliest Human .... I wanted to know how my ancient E-M35 ancestors travelled from Africa to end up in Southern Italy...
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_E-M215_(Y-DNA)
My DNA results Origin map showed me the following :
Source: https://FamilyTreeDNA.com
My Y-DNA (paternal) E-M35 travelled up through the Levant and into Europe ... my Y-DNA is 98 % European. The map shows quite a mix of Central Europe, France/Germany, Italian and even a very small % of European Jewish.
This was a surprise to me.
In fact my FamilyTreeDNA Origins Map shows that I am less than 1% Native American when my maternal DNA is Ojibwe ?
So I think the %’s are off a bit.
Source: https://FamilyTreeDNA.com
The most fascinating part of getting your Family Tree DNA is that they build a Data base and show you family names that match your DNA. As more people do the tests you get messages every time there is a match to your DNA markers.... so eventually I will be able to find out how my great grandfather arrived in Calabria Italy.
At the moment My closest Y-DNA matches to 25 markers are the Douek, Lurie, and Luria families that are Aramaic and Sephardic from Aleppo Syria and Safed in northern Israel.
So I am now doing research into the Aramaic language and learning a lot ...
I might be ancient Phonecian, or Cannanite ...
Aramaic (Arāmāyā; Old Aramaic: 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; is a language that originated among ancient Arameans, at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, and later became one of the most prominent languages of the ancient Near East.
During its three thousand years long history,Aramaic went through several stages of development. It has served as a language of public life and administration of ancient kingdoms and empires, and also as a language of divine worship and religious study. It subsequently branched into several Neo-Aramaic languages, that are still spoken in modern times.
Aramaic language belongs to the Northwest Semitic group of the Afroasiatic language family, which also includes the Canaanite languages, such as Hebrew, Edomite, Moabite, and Phoenician, as well as Amorite and Ugaritic. The Aramaic alphabet was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to the Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic alphabets.
Historically and originally Aramaic was the language of the Arameans, a Semitic-speaking people of the region between the northern Levant and the northern Tigris valley. By around 1000 BC, the Arameans had a string of kingdoms in what is now part of Syria, Jordan, and the fringes of southern Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Aramaic rose to prominence under the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), under whose influence Aramaic became a prestige language after being adopted as a lingua franca of the empire, and its use spread throughout Mesopotamia, the Levant and parts of Asia Minor. At its height, Aramaic, having gradually replaced earlier Semitic languages, was spoken in several variants all over what is today Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Eastern Arabia, Bahrain, Sinai, parts of southeast and south central Turkey, and parts of northwest Iran.
Aramaic was the language of Jesus, who spoke the Galilean dialect during his public ministry, as well as the language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, and also one of the languages of the Talmud.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic
I have learned that the most mystical parts of the Bible were originally written in Aramaic, so I am very interested in learning this language.
I have also started to read the Ancient “Book of Radiance” Sefer ha Zohar (Written in Aramaic) https://amzn.to/3g6qqNg
A collection of mysterious and mystical texts written in Safed, at the Sea of Galilee in the 1st Century and gathered together in a Library of books in Spain and Provence in the 1200s.
Maybe I will get to visit this part of the World some day, and learn more about my ancient origins....
Stay tuned for more.