(Note: This article was originally published to JamieMcSloy.co.uk on April 18th, 2019. I’m going through an old backup of the site, which has hundreds of posts that aren’t currently uploaded. As I’m working hard on updating the site – and releasing The Vault, letting these old posts be the daily posts for a while.)
Genealogy As Life Tool
Genealogy As Life Tool
Genealogy is one of those things that many people get into slightly too late. Mostly, genealogy is the province of the elderly, who inevitably find the trail has gone cold, what with their forebears having already died.
Naturally, you don’t want to make this mistake, and you should endeavour to get into genealogy as young as possible.
Moreover, you should get into genealogy because it’s a gateway drug into other hobbies.
Hobbies like:
#1: History and Geography Studies
Most people know very little about the world. You don’t want to be one of these people.
Like I’m sure a lot of you did, I watched some of the coverage of the recent burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, and whilst it was a tragic event, there was something else I noticed that was tragic.
The journalists, historians and reporters didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.
I heard things like:
- “The roof, which was important for keeping the rain out”
- “Notre Dame is famous for that Quasimodo film”
And many other pretty awful commentary blunders that showed that even amongst people who are supposed to know what they’re talking about, information as simple as what you’d find on a Wikipedia page is above the actual competition.
When you take part in ancestral research, you quickly learn about different layers of history that you’ll simply never get to experience in traditional learning.
Recently, I found some of my ancestors were likely involved in a war between Scotland and Norway over control of the Hebrides. This was a war that, until I researched, I had no idea even happened.
#2: Ancestor Veneration
This point presented without much comment. Ancestor veneration has become a subject that sneaks into the blog posts every so often.
In the widest sense, we’re genetically and culturally closer to our family line going backwards than we are anyone else on the planet.
We’re also here as a result of the decisions made and situations encountered by our ancestors.
Regardless of how you’d define “ancestor veneration” it’s worth thinking about a lot of these things.
#3: Language Learning
Language learning has always been a hobby of mine and it’s a great activity (perhaps unparalleled,) for keeping your brain sharp.
Learning languages makes you interact with the world in a fundamentally different way.
If your ancestral roots are international someway back (and most people have some element of this,) or the language of your area has changed over time, (and many people have this as well,) it’ll benefit your research to learn a language, and for a lot of the folks on the other side of the Atlantic, (namely the colonies,) your extended family are probably multi-lingual right now.
Your own family tree is a great way to pick a language, and you can go to weird places with this if you’re inclined.
Take an average person from the UK. They’re probably a genetic mix of:
- Celt/Briton
- Saxon
- Norse
As well as the vague shades of whatever admixtures they have particularly. That gives you a few languages:
- Gaelic (Scot/Irish)
- Welsh
- Old English/Old Norse
- Norwegian/Danish/Swedish
And then all the other Northwestern/Germanic and Latin languages on top of that. Plus any admixture.
#4: Adventuring
A lot of the travel advice online is actually pretty bland if you’re utilitarian.
- “Go to Thailand and don’t have sex with totally-not-ladyboys”
- “Go to the Philippines to live off your $5 passive income”
- “Ball out in LA because you might bump into a Kardashian or something”
There’s very little of interest there unless you’re a travel-for-the-sake-of-travel kind-of person.
Business hint: Most travel material online is travel for the sake of travel material. The niches below that (travel for a reason) are relatively untapped.
Genealogy can give you a reason to hop on a plane. Even something as simple as a World War II pilgrimage (and most people had some involvement in WWII) gets you touring Europe.
#5: Health
The Ancestral Diet is a great diet in principle; you eat what your body evolved to eat because that’s likely what’s best for your body.
Fine.
Except that most people, with no genealogical knowledge, don’t know what their ancestral diet is. You can read Deep Nutrition and use the basic four pillars, but let’s not fall into the universal blank-slate theory trap; a person of Vietnamese ancestry will have evolved a different diet to a person of Icelandic ancestry.
Before we step into internet-heresy with that train of thought, let’s move on to the high tech: Ancestry DNA is here. DNA markers and stem cells and all kinds of futuristic health stuff are either in slightly-dubious legality laboratories or otherwise on the horizon.
And an obvious future contender for how we keep healthy is in specific protocols based on a person’s DNA.
Probably a topic for another article, but genealogy is a first step to this. If you find out your great-grandfather, great-uncle and great-great-aunt all died of heart problems, you should be mindful of the junk food and sofa lifestyle.
If on the other hand, you’re from a family where everyone lived to 90+, then you’ve got shoes to fill.
The data arms you in any case and might help you with the future tech.
#6: Beating Home Invaders Over The Head With A Traditional Cultural Weapon
This point might be a joke but encoded in everyone’s DNA is the ability to survive through all manner of things.
Depression and hopelessness are, sadly, something a lot of people feel. There’re only so many motivational posters on the internet and I believe there are some fundamental issues with how our society is structured that makes people feel not so great.
But you can look in the mirror and understand that within your genetic code is a hunter, a gatherer, a warmonger, a disease-resilient super-creature, and the culmination of millions of years of evolution that has made you into one of the Earth’s most successful apex predators ever.
Your family line has survived war, famine, ice ages, plagues, and countless other disasters and pressures.
You can survive and you can thrive.
#7 Relationships
The key benefit from genealogy though is that as you get a better understanding of how you fit in the picture, you get a deeper appreciation for the people that have gone before you – and perhaps more importantly – the people you’re going to leave behind.
This is true whether you’re one of five children with a family line that you can date back to the Stone Age or whether you’re adopted and never met any of your biological family. Everyone has a unique story and there’s a fine line in all of this where you work out where you fit, what you want to focus your thoughts on and ultimately, what any of this actually means.
Through this hobby though, you will understand relationships at a deeper level; both familial and otherwise.
Final Thoughts
Give building a family tree a try. It’s worth it on its own merits for something you should do and it allows you to splinter off into any number of other studies; the above are just a taster.
P.S. Regular readers will have noticed a drop off in posting frequency during April. Still getting tunnel vision and dizziness. Blood work back; completely normal. ECG scan done; nothing. At the moment, conclusion is that I’m a medical anomaly, which, whilst intriguing, doesn’t make for a productive workspace. I’m bored stiff though, so expect more regular postings to resume soon.)