Having fun with family origins.

@markinkansas We can trace my wife's ancestry back to the Norman invasion of England 1066. Others are not as easy to find. My great great grandfather is a complete mystery. A soldier who fought in the Crimean war and then disappeared.

@hippyjoe1955 you have done good .. try that site tho.. different info my fill in the blanks

@markinkansas I am way back further than the 1500s. Once you find Royals, and all of us have Royal ancestors, it is relatively easy to go much further back. I think my oldest is a Roman Senator that came by way of Charlemagne being my ancestor. Nearly all with European ancestry have Charlemagne as an ancestor. There are millions of his ancestors living today. I am further back in ancestors in Scotland too. Kenneth MacAlpin is my ancestor, 810 AD.

@Burke17 Ever heard of Cheddar Man? A skeleton found in England and thought to be around 10,000 years old. They did a DNA test and compared it to some locals and determined that the locals are descendants of Cheddar Man.

@hippyjoe1955 Yes, I have watched a video on Cheddar Man. Typical of the fact that most in the distant past married in a radius of 25 miles or less. This is how 23 and Me, and Ancestry DNA tests work, They form an association between geography and genes consistently found in that geography. As more saliva samples are acquired, accuracy improves linking human DNA to specific regions. This is why our DNA region results change (updated by 23 and me, and Ancestry) by percentages over time. Humans did roam back then, but not significantly enough to break the association of regions and commonly found genes. So, with Cheddar Man, it is completely expected that there would still be relatives of his found in that region. It would be a huge revelation if this wasn't found to be true.

@Burke17 I was struck by what my cousin from Wales told me. 5 miles was a huge trip for him in Wales. I grew up on a farm about 5 miles out of town. I couldn't imagine the daily trip to school was a long trip. Some of the kids on my bus had travelled 15 miles before they got to our farm!

@hippyjoe1955 Distances in the UK, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland are very small. The same is basically true in Western Europe. Distances in the US, Russia, Brazil, and others are much greater. Heck, I walk 2 miles at lunch time in 21 minutes just for fun. 5 miles is nothing. You could walk that in just over an hour. I have pedaled 250 miles in 17 hours.

@Burke17 When I was a young officer in the CAF I would walk 20 miles every day for months on end teaching bush survival to aircrew. I still walked 2 miles a day. Keeps me fit.

@hippyjoe1955 Canadian Armed Forces? Good job walking. Smart. Very smart. I love Yoho National Park, Lake Louise, Banff, Vancouver, Georgian Bay in Ontario. Not so sure about the current political environment in Canada. Not good.

@Burke17 Yes the Canadian Armed Forces Air Element as we called it back then, Now it would be called the Royal Canadian Air Force. I grew up in Alberta and having lived in other provinces I can say that I live in Alberta by choice. Yes Canadian politics is a strange bit of doing. When I was walking those 20 mile a day walks I was in the officers mess one night an was chatting with the base commander. His career stretched back to WWII when he flew Spitfires. As we were sipping our rye and cokes he casually asked me what benefit Alberta got out of being part of Canada. I was kind of stumped. I still am stumped. I honestly couldn't answer him. As the evening wore on the conversation turned to the recent FLQ crisis in Quebec. Some one asked the base commander what he do if the Prime Minister ordered the troops into Alberta. The commander snorted and said "Send the troops back to their barracks".

@hippyjoe1955 We agree! Alberta needs to leave, and Quebec does too. Teach Justin a lesson. Merlin engines were excellent, but the water injected, fuel injected, inverted, DB605 can be argued as the better of the two engines.

@hippyjoe1955 You were probably around when Avro made the Arrow.

@Burke17 Yes I was a child at the time but I remember the fuss it caused and still causes. The Arrow was a turkey. It was under powered and its avionics were pretty much obsolete before the thing got in the air. Then there was the huge cost involved. It was bankrupting the country and no one wanted to buy it. The Americans had their Dart in the air which was almost the same airframe.

@hippyjoe1955 Good summary, but many glamorize the Arrow even today.

@Burke17 Yeah lots of uninformed people out there. lol