Paying due homage to my ancestors is an important part of my spirituality.  A big part of that is remembering one’s ancestors — knowing as much about them as one can, and passing on their stories to future generations.

Of particular interest to those of us following a Gaelic path including some degree of “ancestor worship,” is this website of fine folks who will help you with your Irish genealogy, and history of your family.  I have yet to try them myself beyond the free information they provide on their website, but it does seem impressive.  Researching my Irish heritage is a project I intend to pursue at some time in the near-ish future.

It was thought that humankind developed the abstract thought necessary to organize group rituals until about 40,000 years ago. A recent find, artifacts dating about 70,000 years old is making scientists rethink that assumption.

“Stone age people took these colorful spearheads, brought them to the cave, and finished carving them there,” Coulson said today. “Only the red spearheads were burned. It was a ritual destruction of artifacts. There was no sign of normal habitation. No ordinary tools were found at the site.”

The discovery was made in a remote region of Botswana called Tsodilo Hills, the only uplifted area for miles around. It is known to modern Sanpeople as the “Mountains of the Gods” and the “Rock that Whispers.” Their legend has it that mankind descended from the python, and the ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been created by the python as it circled the hills in its ceaseless search for water.

That legend made the discovery of the stone python all the more amazing.

“Our find means that humans were more organized and had the capacity for abstract thinking at a much earlier point in history than we have previously assumed,” Coulson said. “All of the indications suggest that Tsodilo has been known to mankind for almost 100,000 years as a very special place in the pre-historic landscape.”

Maybe the “Old Ways” are even older than we had ever thought.

The lineage of a family is often relegated to a neat table of relatively obscure names organized to show who begat whom and when. It can be easy to forget that each of those names identifies a man or woman who cherished the same hierarchy of needs and desires that guide our lives today albeit colored by the times in which they lived.

My own search for a genetic past has taken me on a journey backwards through the American experience to a relatively short street called Hosier Lane in London somewhere around the year 1560. It begins with a man named Isaac of whom we know very little other than he did live, and that he, and his forefathers, live on embedded in a genetic code carried by me and thousands of others.

The family continued to live in the Hosier Lane neighborhood through most of the 17th Century. In 1665 bubonic plague decimated the population of London yet the family survived. The cemetery in which Issac, his son, grandson, and great grandson rest also holds mass graves filled with plague victims. Yet the family survived the plague only to face the Great London Fire of 1666 which decimated most of north London…including Hosier Lane.

In 1682, an ancestor named John loaded up his oldest son John Jr., a teenager, and set out for the new world on a ship named Welcome along with a leader named William Penn and about 100 other Quaker colonists bound for Pennsylvania. Smallpox broke out on the ship killing about a third of the people on board. Yet to my relief, the men bearing my genetic makeup survived to settle in Bucks Township Pennsylvania. John Sr. then returned to England to retrieve his wife and other children. Unfortunately his wife refused to go on a long sea voyage and John Sr never returned to the new world. John Jr. however did remain in Pennsylvania and began a tree one which of branch is the one on which I am perched.

Nearly four hundred years separate me from the men who witnessed the plague of 1665, the fire of 1666, and the smallpox on board the Welcome and from the women who bore their children and stood with them. Four hundred years of history that includes adventures in the new world, a lineage that spread out from Bucks County Pennsylvania to Virginia and on to the Mississippi Territory with branches reaching into Ohio and Tennessee and Texas.

There are no kings or princes, great statesmen or noted generals perched on those branches. A few were heroes, a few were scoundrels, but most were ordinary men living ordinary lives for the time in which they lived. They left little mark on the world other than a unique genetic marker that says they were here. Their loves and hates, joys and worries, triumphs and defeats are for the most part lost in the mists of time. Yet I can sense a kinship with the men, and women, who so long ago survived disease, disaster, disappointment. For I am they…and they are me.

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While Hosier Lane is still there, nothing from the 17th Century other than one Quaker meeting house remains. Rebuilt after the fire in 1666, the neighborhood was totally destroyed by German bombers.

Bunhill Fields Burying Ground, an unconsecrated dissenter’s cemetery, was closed in 1854 and is the last remaining small London burying ground (as opposed to churchyards where Anglican and Catholics were buried.) Issac, his immediate descendents and their wives rest there in good company with the likes of George Fox, William Blake, John Bunyon, Daniel De Foe, John Gill; et al. (Somehow it’s comforting to think of the spirits of my ancestors hobnobbing with the ghosts of an array of religious activists, poets, writers and others who reached beyond the mundane.)

Montserrat sits in the Caribbean Sea southeast of Puerto Rico. Most folks remember it because of the devastating eruption of Soufriere Hills volcano in 1995 and subsequent burps by the volcano. Few know that the majority language of Montserrat up until 1900 was Irish Gaelic. Ann “Goody” Glover was hanged for witchcraft in Boston in 1688. Ann had two strikes against her going in…she was an Irish Catholic… and a slave. The connection between the Montserratans speaking Irish Gaelic and Ann Glover’s untimely demise is one of the cloistered secrets of the English speaking world. During the 17th Century, hundreds of thousands of Irish were sold into slavery in the new world. While Elizabeth I is credited with the idea of an Irish genocide, Oliver Cromwell pursued it with a zeal that would place him squarely in the middle of the basket with Hitler or Saddam. We will never know how many Irish were sold into slavery during the 17th and early 18th Centuries. Records are scant and it’s not something of which the British are particularly proud. We can say that it runs into the hundreds of thousands in places like Barbados, Montserrat, Virginia and Massachusetts. Irish folk were a profitable commodity since unlike African slaves that had to be purchased for resale, the supply of Irish was unlimited and free. They were a bargain to the planters since the initial cost was less than that of an African slave. For ~900lbs of cotton, any good Protestant planter could own a fully able Irishman or woman. Children of course were a tad less expensive. Irish slavery lasted until 1839 when a bill was passed in Parliament banning the slave trade. When he learned that the ban was immanent, the Bishop of Exeter reluctantly agreed to sell his 655 slaves…as long as he was compensated. You’ll find little mention in history books about the Irish slave trade or about the scattered Welsh, Scots and other native Britons sold into slavery. These were not indentured servants but true, owned body and soul, slaves. Most died in bondage in far off places like Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, Montserrat, Barbados and other crown colonies. Some simply interbred with African slaves until no trace remained and some few went on to find freedom in the New World. Ann “Goody” Glover was initially sold as a slave in Barbados.

Few people remember Claudette Colvin. On March 2, 1955 Claudette, a 15 year old black student, boarded a public bus in Montgomery Alabama. When she refused to give up her seat to a white man, she was handcuffed, arrested and removed from the bus.

Claudette was a member of the NAACP youth council in Montgomery. One of the council’s advisors was a lady later to gain fame for a similar arrest, Rosa Parks.
Initially the NAACP considered a full defense for Claudette Colvin. However when it was discovered that she was pregnant, it was decided that she was not an appropriate symbol for the cause.

On December 1 of that same year, Rosa Parks followed the example set by Claudette Colvin and was arrested for violating segregation ordinances by not giving up her seat to a white man. Unlike Claudette, Rosa Parks was a well respected member of the community and already deeply involved in the infant civil rights movement.
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In reality, Ms.Parks did comply with the ordinance in that she did enter the front of the bus, pay her fare, then exit the bus, reenter at a rear door and then take a seat in the first row of the section of the bus designated for “coloreds.” However the ordinance did provide that the bus driver could, at his discretion, move the sign designating the colored section in order to afford more seats to white folks. When the driver did this, Ms.Parks refused to get up and move and was subsequently arrested. She was found guilty and paid a fine of $10 plus $4 court costs.

Fifty years have passed since Colvin and Parks tested the segregated waters of the deep south. Fifty years of social reform that has, for the most part, resulted in an essentially level playing field for all races. Yet there is another tidbit to the story.

In November of 2004, the citizens of Alabama went to the polls with the option to eliminate segregationist provisions in the Alabama constitution. Long un-enforced, the laws that provided for separate educational facilities and restrictive voting requirements for non-whites slept quietly in the State Constitution. Yet by a slim margin, the voters elected to keep the provisions in that governing body of law.

In the birthplace of the civil rights movement, the good Christian citizens of Alabama voted to keep the language and symbolism of segregation intact. Perhaps as a nation we are not as far removed from 1955 as we thought.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. We may debate the validity of a holiday to celebrate Dr. King and we may debate the nuances of his legacy. However we must never forget that discrimination based on race, religion, political affiliation or alternative ethnic background lurks not far beneath the surface and there are those who would gladly return to the days of segregation whether those being discriminated against are of a different color or simply a different belief.

“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.” — Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837