Who are you?

I've always loved family trees and stories about my relatives.

One of my father's uncles traced parts of our family back to about 30 years after the Mayflower. Facinating stuff. When my grandmother passed she left all his files and pictures to my father and myself because we had always expressed such interest in them. It's amazing too look at pictures of my great-great grandmother and see that same pudgy nose that is so prevelent in my face and the faces of my cousins.

So how important is heritage to you? Have you done any research into your past? Does it mean anything to you? Does it matter? Does knowing our heritage keep us separate from each other - or draw us closer together?

I guess I got to thinking about all this because I was watching the series African American Lives on PBS. The part that fascinated me the most was the fact that they can now do DNA testing to discover paternal and maternal lineage. You can also do a test that can map the percentage of your ethnic background. For example the narrator Henry Gates found 50% European Ancestry and 50% ancestry from Sub-Saharan Africa. It's amazing. By running DNA testing against DNA databases the mystery of "what happened before landing in America" can potentially and partially be answered.

I guess I have always taken for granted what that must be like. To know you can only go so far back...and even then records are scant at best. To be able to say "I know this is where I came from" seems to be a powerful thing to be able to say. I'd never given thought before to how it must feel to those who want to know - to not be able to.

I'm semi-interested in this testing even for myself. Oh I know mine would come back 98% European, but it makes me wonder what other percentages might be in there...

Did anyone else catch this show?

I'd love to post more stuff from the show but apparently PBS isn't updating their website until tomorrow...so the "facts" I'm afraid to say are just from what my crappy memory can recall.

I'm curious too - is genealogy predominately a North American obsession?