Our history

So where to start? It's arbitary, but I figure the last ice age, given this was a major pinch point in our, yours and mine, journey to this point in time. Given that modern Europeans made several attempts at migrating out of africa this could have been our jump off point, but lets just acknowledge that we must be decendents of a cohort that traveled up through Africa and made its way into Europe, surviving into the major pinch point of the Last Glacial Maximum.

Now lets take into account my Neanderthal DNA, which at ~2% is greater than 86% of 23andMe users. This is my narrative so I am going to believe that this was cooperative. Why believe in cooperation? Well Neanderthal groups were certainly socially cohesive. Tribes encountered at these most difficult of times cooperated in order to survive, forming bonds and relationships Think on this, during the worst of this arround 26000 years ago, the population of EUROPE fell to arround 130,000. The population of Brighton is currently 156,000 and Leeds City 780,000. Our ancestors survived this, they had to have or we wouldn't be here! I like to think this was due to cooperation within and between groups.

Looking at my DNA also suggests that as a member of Haplogroup I-M438, splitting off from the Gravettian culture the cohort of my far distant ancestors slowly migrated through Doggerland in effect walking through mainland Europe across Doggerland and into Britain.

• The Black Death is certainly one...
• The First World War another.
• The Spanish Flu, one of several pandemics to survive.
• Then more recently the Second World War.

Our ancestors must survived all this and more at least long enough to pass on their genes!