So Jefferson was black then?

[malaise]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6293333.stm

This is too good. Fascinating study.
<snip>
A Leicester University study found that seven men with a rare Yorkshire surname carry a genetic signature previously found only in people of African origin.

The men seem to have shared a common ancestor in the 18th Century, but the African DNA lineage they carry may have reached Britain centuries earlier.

Details of the study appear in the European Journal of Human Genetics.

When scientists analysed the DNA of the third US president, Thomas Jefferson, they found that his Y chromosome belonged to a haplogroup known as K2.

Jefferson's father claimed Welsh ancestry. But his Y-haplogroup is vanishingly rare in Europe and has not yet been reported in Britain.

In fact, genetic studies show that Thomas Jefferson's K2 haplogroup ultimately came from north-east Africa or the Middle East, the areas where it is most commonly found today.

Sp.

[On the Road]

1. North-East Africa?

That would be Egypt. Maybe that accounts for the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill.

:smoke:

[malaise]

15. He'd be a terrorist today

North Africa is full of those Muslim terrorist Arabs :rofl: :rofl:

[Virginia Dare]

21. OMG freeper heads collectively explode everywhere...

one of our founding fathers was a MUSLIM A-RAB! Pass it on! :rofl: :rofl:

[KittyWampus]

25. Or Sepharidic Jew?

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Things that make you say 'hmmmmmmmmm.."

By the same token, wasn't Jesus black, too? :eyes:

[YOY]

3. I'm almost sure that George Jefferson was...

I don't think any genetics tests are needed.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. LOL

[Virginia Dare]

4. Fascinating stuff...

I would imagine many "white" Americans would be very surprised to learn how much African ancestry they have as well.

[unpossibles]

5. 100% of us have African ancestry

Africa is where we all come from. Of course, don't tell this to the freepers, or their heads will explode.





on second thought, we should tell them all.

[JDPriestly]

6. Hear! Hear!

Many, many Americans are mixed -- African, American Indian as well as various European ancestries. I firmly believe that there were far more interracial relationships in early America than are recognized. It is just a natural thing. Love does not know race.

[Virginia Dare]

9. I agree with you...

in my genealogy studies I have found that to be true in Virginia, interracial marriage was not uncommon in certain communities, especially in the lower socio-economic classes.

[JDPriestly]

40. I like your avatar!

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

8. Brings new meaning to Chappelle's Black White Supremacist skit

WHITE POWER!!

[RB TexLa]

10. Actually made me think of the "Racial Draft"

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

20. Good call!

Either way, it's pretty damn funny. :rofl:

[DemSinceBirth]

28. That was one of the funniest skits I have aver seen.

"Why did you divorce your wife?"
"She was a _______ lover!"

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. They found several Yorkshiremen with African roots

a genetic marker common with Africans. All have an unusual surname (not mentioned in the article)and had a common ancestor from the 1700s. According to the article, there were Africans in the Roman Legions building Hadrian's Wall 1800 years ago. I think it will be interesting as they do more genetic tests, as I feel we'll find that folks came from places they didn't think they came from.

It would be interesting to do a DNA test on Lincoln, since his mother's lineage is rather cloudy (some say she was illegitimate; rumors of Lincoln's time had his maternal grandfather being a Virginia blueblood).

[Virginia Dare]

13. There was a book written that alleged...

that Lincoln, Jackson, Harding, Coolidge and Eisenhower all had African ancestry.

[AspenRose]

16. If you have the title of that book I'd love to read that.

No wonder the GOP hates science. It proves everyone's equal and everyone's related. Sort of puts a wrench in that divide and conquer strategy (which is why they have to use religion to do that for them as well).

On Edit: Also makes me wonder about Jefferson having a copy of the Koran. Did he know about his ancestry or was it coincidence?

[Virginia Dare]

19. Here's a link...

I haven't read it, but I'd like to sometime as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Five-Negro-Presidents-J-Rogers/dp/0960229485

[AspenRose]

23. Thank you!

Bookmarking :hi:

[AngryAmish]

36. The Koran was from the Barbary pirates

The Barbary pirates kept seizing American ships and enslaving the crew. It was a huge problem in Europe for centuries - the slave raids. At the time the only thing that kept them away was the british paper. And at the time we were on bad paper with the British over the whole independence thingy.

So Jefferson created the Navy and Marines and sent them over there to show the Barbary pirates we went business. We staged a coup and did a bunch of other stuff (this history is not 1000% spot on, I'm working from memory). You know the Marine Corp Hymn ("From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli..." Tripoli was one of the Barbary states.

We fought a war over there and had a peace treaty. They sent it over as a peace offering/trying to convert us.

Bottom line - I doubt Jefferson thought he was African.

[malaise]

37. Great question re Jefferson's Koran

and no wonder they hate science. I wonder how many of them are willing to have DNA tests. The results could be very amusing.

Edit - spacing

[pitohui]

24. the premise that harding was a black man

i recently read a pulp paperback and part of the backstory was that harding was either a black man passing or his opponents claimed that he was in order to smear him, you were left with the impression, at least for the duration of the novel, that both were true -- actually i'm thinking this was in gore vidal's hollywood but i've read another about that era recently on airplanes and jetlag may have jumbled them in my mind

i just found a book on amazon -- warren g. harding president 29 of the united states: death by blackness by marsha stewart -- where the author states:

Warren G. Harding (Death by Blackness) depicts Harding's life as my family knew it. While growing up, we were never allowed to talk about the relationship to a US President outside of family gatherings because we were "Colored" and Warren was "passing." In 1884 he was a teacher at the local "Colored school" in Marion, Ohio, until he crossed the color line and became the 29th President of the US. Biographies written about Harding are quick to note his parents were descendants of Ohio pioneer families with English and dutch ancestry when, in reality, both of his parents were negroes whose ancestors escaped through the Underground Railroad. this book will set the record straight. Few have come forth to tell the truth. The Internet Encyclopedias reference Warren G. Harding's Blackness openly, to surprise, in view of the fact his Negro ancestry has been squelched by the government and his immediate family members. Moreover, he may have lost his life because of it.

things that make you wonder

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

34. Harding actually commented on this

to a friend, saying something like, "Maybe one of my grandfathers 'jumped the fence', but how can I know for sure?"

Didn't know about the others. Thanks for the information.

[GreenPartyVoter]

11. Moorish, maybe?

[Virginia Dare]

14. There was a theory that the "black Irish" descended from..

the Moors, but I think that has since been debunked, they were actually descended from the indigenous peoples of the Island, who were "small and swarthy".

I'm extremely interested in the link with the African guards(mercenaries?) of Hadrian's Wall, this seems more plausible. I have Welsh ancestry as well, so this really intrigues me.

Some day I'll fork over the $300 bucks to get my DNA profiled.

[GreenPartyVoter]

18. I've got Welsh too, among many many other EU nationalities

[hashibabba]

27. I wish I had the $300 to have it done. Lots of EU blood, but

several of my families came to America in the seventeenth century and there have always been stories of two lines of American Indian in our family. When I worked on our Genealogy, I found two probable connections.

I love to tell people we all originated in Africa. Nobody's head has actually exploded yet, but I'm still hoping I can run into a skinhead to tell!

[sarge43]

29. Not only African legionaries, but African sailors and tradesmen BCE.

One of the biggest attractions were the tin mines of Cornwall which were already being mined in antiquity. Copper was a relatively common metal in Southern Europe and the Med, tin, not so much. So, a source (think bronze) like those mines meant a lot of coming and going between the Med and Britain and where sailors and traders are coming and going, so is the DNA.

[On the Road]

31. Oh, Right, the Romans Undoubtedly Brought Africans

and not just as laborers. The later empire was ethnically diverse, including one emperor from Africa (Septimus Severus). There might have been Greeks, barbarians, arabs, and other groups as well -- that would ceretainly complicate English genetics.


Septimus Severus

[sarge43]

39. And there's the other Moorish gene pool in Europe - the Iberian peninsula.

However the DNA was combined, it happened and some of the results wound up in Britain, for certain with royalty. Some of the early Spanish kings took Moorish brides many of whose fathers claimed descent from Mohammad's daughter Fatima. Their descendants married into several of the royal families of Europe. What was true for the royals was no doubt true for the rest of the society.

If you ever want to blow up some heads, mention that Queen Elizabeth is quite possibly a direct descendant of Mohammad's.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. You mean the moors that migrated into Europe?

Maybe, but you'd think they would find the marker in more brits then. That they haven't would suggest Jefferson's ancestors got the marker after immigrating to the new world. I don't know how many generations that was, couldn't have been many.

[originalpckelly]

17. Now that's interesting.

I wonder if that's why he wrote this:
" he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

In the original drat of the declaration. I wonder if he knew he was the descendant of a slave. Remember, back then it was a "one drop of blood" not skin color rule, so he would have been considered black by his fellow southerners.

DAMN! Now that's fucking interesting!

[pitohui]

22. how cool, i wonder if TJ knew

it may have been much cause for pondering in the dark of night

[xultar]

26. Jefferson did like the slave women.

[haele]

30. Not unusual - Crusaders often brought back children from their travels -

And Black Pages, "Tigers" (carriage runners), parlor maids - and Boxers - were the rage in upper class British and French households in the 16th up through the (very) early 19th century. Free African sailors were written about as crew on various European merchant and war ships since the early 13th century. Shakespeare's - Othello "The Moor" was based off several real mercenary personalities in Renaissance history as well as a popular mystery plays medieval archetype - the "black boy" and "black girl" - usually a trusted servant of a benevolent, helpful ruler who would appear to first confound, then lead the hero through the mystery to a successful resolution.

Those people of African descent lived life pretty much as equals amongst the regular servant and entertainer/sportsman populations in those society, so it would not be at all unusual for "mixed race" children to be born. Many of these people were "extra" children - 10th or 11th sons and daughters who were sold or given by their artisan, farming, or import business families to British, Dutch, French, and Italian sailors and merchants for a "better life" in as a servant in Europe rather than being sent out into the streets as beggars or ending up in the local slave markets because they couldn't be cared for.

Even reading the literature of the time shows that at least amongst the British, mixed races in the better "societies" were no real biggie - Austin ("Miss Lamb" - a mixed race Jamaican heiress that was of great interest in the genteel society of "The Westons"), Cooper ("Cora Munroe" - the favored elder daughter of the Colonel in "The Last of the Mohicans")are prime examples of popular period authors using children who would otherwise "pass" as heroes/heroines.

It would not surprise me in the least that Jefferson might have had a grandmother or great-grandmother (or even a grandfather) that started out life in northern or central Africa - he or she may not have been a slave, but a "free" servant that ended up having relations with a well off employer who was willing to acknowledge and care for a child by that relationship.
So many early Americans Colonists were either later born sons or the children of wealthy men and servants who were sent to America with a decent remittance to "make their way" in the world and not be stuck in England or France mucking about causing trouble because they had "the name" and "birthright" but did not have the inheritance to back it up in the style they were expected to.

Haele

[Rosemary2205]

32. Is this the "one drop" rule?

I genuinely hope the purpose of this post is to tweek the racist freeps hiding amongst us and not to actually purpetuate the one drop rule.

[tabasco]

35. I always thought I had a little soul!

I hope it's the real thing!

[malaise]

38. LOL

:D