KENNETH E. HALL MARCH 4, 2013 HOUSTON
GENEALOGY IS FUN! –
For me, it combines my interest, knowledge, and love of history, geography, and languages, and requires these very skills at the same time. In addition to being fascinating, *"looking up the family tree and seeing the twists and turns of its many branches" can be highly educational as well.
It is, like most hobbies, very time-consuming, but I keep getting more and more information, the harder I look. Some things I have found in my search, though, are, well, shall I say – a bit FAR-FETCHED. For instance, I traced one line back to ADAM & EVE! Really? I know there are extensive genealogies in the Bible, the apocrypha and elsewhere, but is that even possible?? Then there's just plain whimsy: The same sources that say our family traces back to Adam & Eve also have one branch going back to URANUS and ELECTRA!!
Come on!!! SERIOUSLY???
Yet another branch goes back through the murky mists of Scandinavian history to WODEN and FREYA. Now it's one thing to have a SAINT in the family. WE do! Kings and Queens, Dukes and counts, knights and Crusaders, they are all are a dime a dozen in the royal record. But when it comes to being descended from a Norse god, goddess, or water-nymph – well, I kinda tend to question the sources. That's just ME, I guess.
However, if I were descended from one of the CÆSARS, (I believe I'm descended from Julius Caesar) weren't THEY gods?? At least they SAID they were gods until somebody killed them and likewise deified themselves and were also worshiped as such, until they, too, became victims of palace intrigue or died in wars or of natural causes.
Biblical characters are quite a different thing: we BELIEVE they existed – and that they are Divine - but when it comes to actually hooking up with them in an ancestry chart, this changes the game, and puts these people into a different category – that of a family member. However distant, it is likely that we do spring from such people, at least on one line or two. (Joseph of Arimathea)
What about the divinity, does that come with the bloodline?
As for Adam and Eve, many believe that we sprang from one and only one pair of humans, whom we refer to by those names. Many other cultures - ancient and modern – who have no Judeo-Christian-Islamic beliefs, likewise share the Adam/Eve tradition, and some even call them by similar names! What makes it interesting is that those modern genetic scientists who study and map the human genome now claim that is is quite likely that a real Adam and a real Eve character as the common ancestors of all humanity actually existed. It makes sense logically as well.
But it dosen't seem plausible to me that the common ancestors – the two progenetors of Homo Sapiens Sapiens – could have existed only a mere 5,000 years ago. Considering the plethora of archaeological findings throughout the world that predate the Biblical Adam and Eve, it is possible that the Adam and Eve that we know and believe in, actually existed, but that the "world" that they referred to was actually the HEBREW world, and there were indeed many others alive at the time that they existed in the "Garden of Eden."
All that, of course, is subject to debate. It provokes thought and contemplation on our origins. When all is said and done, isn't the object of this exercise to answer the age-old question: "Where do I come from?"
Many cultures, spread throughout the world, and throughout time claim that they came from another world – at least in part – that gods came to earth from a place far, far away, and mated with us. What if? It is highly unlikely that an alien race, if one existed, could actually physically mate and have offspring with humans, unless in a very remote past, we ourselves came originally from that same distant place in outer space.
OR, maybe the faraway place was just Indonesia!
Another thought: As I trace back the family through time, I am using the information left behind by those who came before us. This is all I have to go on. I am told that this one begat that one and so-on, and so-on. But the whole thing can unravel and fall apart like a house of cards if just ONE PERSON LIED!! Momma SAID I was her child... Momma SAID that that man was my Daddy. Maybe she doesn't KNOW herself who the real father is. Maybe, with all the various liaisons and philandering that is part of being human, maybe I am really the offspring of a cannibal king with a big nose ring...and a dusty maid instead descending from a European King and Queen.
(BOTH are probably the case!)
What of it?
Just as the fossil record is incomplete and inexact, genealogical records are also incomplete and contain errors. Does this uncertainty mean that the genealogy is flawed and imperfect? YES! Of course it is. With DNA in most cases, we can prove or disprove a relationship - but even this is not 100% and can't tell exactly who you are related to beyond seven generations.
Because we have no proof positive which specific people are our forebears and which ones are not, does that mean that we are not here? NO! Of course not. We obviously are here, and we came from SOMEWHERE, and the records are more likely to be accurate as inaccurate. Right or wrong, we EXIST, and this information is all we have to go by to trace our ancestry back as far as possible.
The cliché saying: "If you go back far enough, we are ALL related!"
In the final analysis, another phrase applies here "It's not the destination, it's the JOURNEY".
It's the making up the family tree that is so interesting.
It is just as true with genealogy as with anything else.
In closing perhaps I can quote from a song in the movie "Yentl"
"Like a link in a chain From the past to the future
That joins me with the children yet to be,
I can now be a part
Of the ongoing stream,
That has always been a part of me!"
KEEP SEARCHING!
♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀
*"looking up the family tree and seeing the twists and turns of its many branches" was said by Owl in the Winnie the Pooh' "Tigger Movie."The character Tigger, once boasting that he was "the ONLY one" suddenly starts wondering who his family might be, and goes on a long quest - only to find out that his best and closest friends, the ones he loves most, are his family.
"This Is One of Those Moments" - Songwriters: Alan Bergman / Marilyn Bergman / Michel Legrand
This Is One of Those Moments lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, BMG Rights Management
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