... would still be meaningless

We always thought that the term coloured was pretty meaningless. Let me now tell how meaningless, judging from the DNA based information just released by the Living History Project. A joint initiative of the Africa Genome Education Institute and Ancestry24.com, we took 500 DNA samples from individuals in Cape Town, Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg during 2007 and are releasing the results now.

The first result I want to tell you about is that of Keith Forbes. From his mother’s side he is West African. Technically, he inherited the energy producing mitochondrial DNA from his female ancestors linked a group referred, in the jargon, to as L2a1b. ‘The distribution of group L2a’ Himla Soodyall (2008) wrote, ‘is possibly a signature of the Bantu expansion, the great movement of black people of Niger-Congo origin who migrated in waves throughout Africa to eventually dominate the continent demographically speaking.

From his father’s side, Forbes is European, possibly of Viking descent from northwestern Europe! His sex-determining Y chromosome belongs to the I group. This group arrived in Europe from the Middle East some 20,000 years ago. One offshoot of this group is found only in North-Western Europe and another offshoot is found in central and eastern Europe.

The second result I want to tell you about is Carol Thomas. From her mother’s side she is a descendent of the clan of Ursula, one of the seven founding women of Europe’s people that David Sykes wrote about in his beautiful Seven Daughters’ of Eve. The clan was first established a hell of long time ago, some 45,000 to 50,000, as the very first modern human beings. But there is more. She comes from the sub-group U2 found today among the people of India and the Persia-Iranian population.

From her dad’s side, Thomas is LOd, thought to be the very oldest of Khoisan clans and, as the Khoisan is the oldest surviving (barely) people representative of modern humanity today, the most ancient of ancient peoples, pre-biblical by at least 150,000 years. The presence of this group of Khoisan people dates back to before the time the Bantu-speaking black people arrived in Southern Africa.

Then there is Jacqui le Roux’s story. From her mother’s side she is a W. W is a daughter of one of Brian Sykes daughters of Eve, found largely, says Soodyall, in the western Ural Mountains and the eastern Baltic, with some members of the larger clan found in India too. Just examine a map. The Ural Mountains are in the heartland of Russia, the start of the Western Siberian Plain.

Le Roux’s dad is an Apollis. His genetic heritage is with group R*, the asterisk indicating a root to the branch in the tree of evolutionary life. With M and N, R is of the founder groups of Eurasia, which historically should be seen as a single continental expanse. R, says Soodyall, is found in varying frequencies on all continents except Australia and is most common in South Asia and parts of the Middle East.

The final result is of Pieter Scholtz. From his dad’s side Scholtz is, like me, a R-M207, a lineage dominant in Western Europe and associated with a population that moved from present-day Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) into present-day United Kingdom when it was not island some 13,000 ago after an ice age. R-M207 is found among 65 per cent of South African whites and 17.4 per cent among Indians.

Scholtz’ mother is from the clan of Jasmine, of Near Eastern Persian (Jasmine is Persian for flower) origin about 50,000 years ago. Her root group J* is considered, says Soodyall, one of the prominent lineages that played a role in the Neolithic spread of agriculture into Europe from the Near East, beginning around 10,000 years ago.

A final observation: a friend Cape Malay of origin, descended genetically from an Indian population that moved across a land bridge connecting far eastern Russia to present day Alaska, to start the Native American population that pejoratively used to be referred to as Red Indians. That is why they were called Indians in the first place, and Red from their skin’s pheomelanin ochre.

I had goose bumps when I wrote up these stories. You can appreciate why. Individuals shared with me information that was stunningly revelatory about their ancient geographical origins. I thank them for giving me the honour.