As long as our journeys are, they cannot last more than a few decades. But I have now realized that a part of me has been traveling for millennia, and that my body carries these impressions of travel as baggage.
The discovery began at the end of last year with a meeting that took place after “only” a few decades with my schoolmate Fernando Kok, now a doctor and owner of a genomic analysis company (or something like that… . I didn’t study as much as he did, I’m still the same as my adolescence), Mendelics.
He told me that through a website maintained by them, meudna.com, it is possible to carry out (with collection material sent at home) various tests based on the analysis of our DNA.
For example, identifying, through the baby’s saliva, treatable diseases of early childhood (this was not my case); testing genetic predisposition for various diseases such as cancer (too late for me); and another that, this one, captured my curiosity: to map their origins, their genetic ancestry, comparing the genetic composition of 88 peoples around the world through the saliva sample.
My interest soon turned to action, in the face of Dr. Kok: “enjoy that tomorrow is Black Friday, you will have 70% off”.
And then I set out to understand the journeys of my ancestors around the world, until I arrived at this more than imperfect body that I inhabit.
It was like this: 83.7% of me came from the Iberian Peninsula. It makes sense.
My ancestors, of whom I only have references until two or three generations ago, were very Brazilian, with Portuguese names, so of course I came mainly from Portugal, maybe with a little bit of Spain (the genetic profile of Portuguese and Spanish is confused, at the same time when it is quite different from other Europeans).
Only there I already have a multitudinous heritage —according to the website itself, “the genetic composition of the Iberian population is quite diverse and was influenced by different Mediterranean and Eastern civilizations”. Celtic, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Germanic and Moorish peoples settled there, leaving genetic traces in the Iberian DNA.
Second, I have 11.1% of Africans in me. Of these, 6.9% were from North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), where Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman occupiers passed, and whose original peoples, the Berbers, along with other habitués, the Arabs, occupied the 8th century the Iberian peninsula (called Moors) — it was from this pit-stop of more than five centuries that these African genes of mine must have come.
My other portion of Africa –4.3%— comes from the west of the continent, especially from Angola. My genetic map doesn’t provide any pungent details, but we can assume that at some point, in Brazilian lands, my Portuguese and Angolan ancestors (or, I hope, their descendants, after slavery) have exchanged fluids and added genes.
Glad I still carry this legacy.
The most disappointing thing was that only 3% of me come from here, with traces of the “natives of South America”. My mother was born in the Amazon, and I always try to feel at home in the region. I was hoping to be more “native” than just this meager portion.
The most surprising thing was to learn that my remaining 2.2% comes from…Ireland.
My paternal grandmother, from Pernambuco, had blue eyes, which I always attributed to some Dutch mischief in Mauricio de Nassau’s gang. You’ll know if that’s where this British pinch entered me.
But good to know: from now on, for 2% of the year, I will indulge in stouts and whiskeys to the mad libations of St. Patrick’s Day, as if Joyce’s Bloomsday lasted seven days.
