Anyone who knows my love of spreadsheets and data will not be surprised that my goal is to create, for August and the world, an accurate pie chart that outlines August's ethnic background. You know the kind of thing, 1/16th Irish, 3/8 English, etc. Fun stuff!
Obviously, both Mary and I are subject to the complexities inherent in being an American in search of ethnic background information: we have a general idea where we're "from" (Europe, in our case), but it can be challenging to be precise, beyond vague labels. In my case, research is complicated by the fact that I was adopted, and had no contact with any biological relative until I was 27. Luckily, however, August's pie chart won't start out with one giant, gray half labeled with a question-mark because I'll be able to research at least half of my genetic background, and possibly, depending on how accurate I need this thing to be, maybe something from rest, as well.
Mary and I have similar genetic backgrounds: British Isles, Germany, a bit of Eastern Europe. As I find pieces of Augusts' heritage, I thought it would be good to organize information not just according to nationality, but also to group this information according to region. That is, England and Ireland would be grouped together into a British Isles category, and those pie slices would share a color scheme—something like that.
But when I started trying to map the places our genetic ancestors started-out it isn't always clear where the regional boundaries should be. For example, some of my forebears started out in the Black Forest, in southern Germany, next to Switzerland. Some of both mine and Mary's started out in Prussia, which is now covered by Northern Germany, Poland, and other northern European nations. So how do we classify these? Is all of Germany considered Western Europe? Are the Prussians Northern Europe and the Black Foresters Western Europe? Or is that Central Europe? And what about August's Polish ancestors? Northern Europe or Eastern? Are his Hungarian ancestors Eastern or Central European? Balkan?
It turns out that the boundaries change depending on who you ask.
I was just about to change the rules and see if it would be easier to classify August's background according to historical group/tribe (e.g. Teutonic, Slavic, etc.) when it struck me that I should take another look at the map of Europe. [Besides, it turns out there are Northern, Central, and Southern Slavic people anyway, and August's geographical heritage spans at least two of these, maybe more, depending on where the boundaries are and/or exactly where in, say, Hungary, his ancestors lived].
Looking at the map, trying to understand how it is that one kid could have so many ancestors who came from ambiguously-bordered regions, it struck me just how centralized his "genetic geography" actually is. Yes, it's the Brittish Isles, yes it's Hungary and Poland and Slovenia, yes it's Germany - both North and South. And Switzerland. But take a look at this map of Europe. All the known geographic heritage in August's past fits within the two regions highlighted below.
[click for larger image]
No France, no Spain, no Italy... nothing in Southern Europe or the (real) Balkans. No Scandanavia. No (real) Eastern European countries. Not very diverse is he?! Who knows what else we may turn-up over time, and with more research, but however you want to divide-up Europe, these are two relatively small areas.
Maybe the pie chart isn't as complex as I expected. Could be as simple as:
Update: Another example of my quandary here... seems like there's a branch of my genetic tree that hails from Alsace-Lorraine. That's currently in France, but the ancestors in question have German sounding names, but they probably left the region while it was under French control, but then it fell back into German control shortly thereafter. What the hell do I call these people? French? German? Prussian?
Update 2: Less than two days after this original post, I've already discovered forebears who definitely come from outside the highlighted region (Scotland), and some who might (Alsace Lorraine is only partially included in the highlighted area, I believe).
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