| Kristine and I watched part of a very
interesting program last night on PBS' Nova
program. It was titled "The Vikings".
The part we saw showed the Vikings spreading
their genes from Iceland and Greenland to Russia
and Constantinople more than a thousand years
ago. Some of the people named in "The
Vikings" are already included in the
American & European Family Forest (start from
some of the leaders of early Kiev a millennium
ago, and try 12 generation ancestor views).
Following some of their lines of descent for
several centuries and seeing the geographic
diversity of their descendants by the 1300's
leads me to believe that the named Vikings in the
Nova programs are ancestors of more than a
billion people living today.
I would bet that almost all of the people who
watched "The Vikings" last night were
watching a reasonable facsimile of "home
movies" of people they would have called
grandmother or grandfather, preceded by a large
number of "greats".
But I wonder how many of those viewers had
even an inkling that they were watching their own
ancestors? Most people seem to believe that
unless one is Nordic, one cannot be descended
from Vikings.
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