ebAmerican
Regular Member
- Messages
- 226
- Reaction score
- 45
- Points
- 0
- Ethnic group
- German and Swedish
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- R1b- P312
- mtDNA haplogroup
- T2E2
Ethnicity is an interesting question. My great grandfather on my dad's side (12 generations ago) was from Heidelberg Germany 1645. My Grandmother on my dad's side came from Holland when she was 3 years old. My Grandfather on my mother's side came from Gotland Island when he was 17 and my Grandmother on my mother's side was Belgian. This is why I identify as Northern European genealogically. I have a lot of admixture on my fathers side because our ancestors came to America in 1720. You could probably guess why they came to America in 1720 from Heidelberg Germany (Catholic and Protestant conflict).
"But just how much ancestry do you feel you need to be able to claim to belong to an ethnic group." Maciamo
This depends on your scope. Are you ethnically European, or ethnically Belgian, or ethnically Brussels? How do you define ethnicity? If states didn't exists what would your ethnicity be. Did the Celts think of themselves as an ethnic group, or did they consider their ethnicity based on tribe? Nobody cared what you looked like, as long as you assimilated. To be Roman was to live and act like a Roman, not be "ethnically Roman". I understand that Europeans feel passionate about ethnicity, but it is an illusion. Ethnicity is not genetic, it is loyalty to your neighbor or to your state. I care less how admixed I am or what ethnicity I relate to. I follow the genetic trail not to separate people, but to learn about the human story.
"But just how much ancestry do you feel you need to be able to claim to belong to an ethnic group." Maciamo
This depends on your scope. Are you ethnically European, or ethnically Belgian, or ethnically Brussels? How do you define ethnicity? If states didn't exists what would your ethnicity be. Did the Celts think of themselves as an ethnic group, or did they consider their ethnicity based on tribe? Nobody cared what you looked like, as long as you assimilated. To be Roman was to live and act like a Roman, not be "ethnically Roman". I understand that Europeans feel passionate about ethnicity, but it is an illusion. Ethnicity is not genetic, it is loyalty to your neighbor or to your state. I care less how admixed I am or what ethnicity I relate to. I follow the genetic trail not to separate people, but to learn about the human story.