Mummy Juanita’s DNA has connected me to a new relative! Akiya Thomas has reached out to me. What a delightful surprise!

 

For those of you who follow this blog, you may remember that more than a year ago I took a DNA test with CRI Genetics, which tracked my DNA back 32 generations.

 

One of the tracks led to Peru, where it was determined that I share genetic material with the Mummy Juanita, who was apparently sacrificed by her people to appease the volcano god in her region of Peru. She has a fascinating back story, and that led me to wonder about the many thousands of uncovered backstories of other ancestors.

 

Mummy Juanitas’s living relatives are reaching out to each other  

 

I learned from Akiya that Mummy Juanita’s living relatives are connecting on Ancestry.com.  It’s costly to remain connected there, so I never subscribed. But she has, and she is looking to discover how recently ago our DNA paths crossed– just that once in Peru, or in other places as well. I’ve sent her my results so she can compare them to hers to see if our ancestors might have been in other countries at the same time.  We both originated in Esan in East Africa many generations before Juanita was born in Peru, so we connect in two places so far. She just has far more African in her than I can boast.

 

This new connection has re-kindled my interest in finding out more

 

Akiya’s DNA presence in the U.S. goes back farther than mine does. My relatives didn’t arrive in the U.S until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. My grandparents came willingly; tragically, Akiya’s did not, and she has no other way to know her geneology other than via DNA test results and some oral history that she is beginning to consider sketchy, based on her DNA test results.

 

My grandmother came through Ellis Island in the first decade of the 20th century, about 1908, although there is an oral history that I’m a wee bit Cherokee, which would predate her arrival, I presume. (Akiya has an oral history of being part Cherokee, too. That may be a third connection.)  I actually have an old photo of the Cherokee women I’m supposedly related to. I’m hoping to run across it again at some point. Now I wonder where the Cherokees were (ancestrally) before they appeared in North America. South America? Peru, perhaps? Most believe they came from the Great Lakes area because of their language, so that would put them closer to the land bridge that existed between Asia and the Canadian north eons back.  Anyway, both Akiya and I have DNA in Southern Han China, too. I have DNA in both Northern and Southern Han China.

 

What I love about the CRI Genetics test is that it states (but see the RED ALERT below!!!) that the test not only tracks my DNA back many, many generations, it also details what was happening in the countries during the time my DNA was in existence there, so it’s possible to at least GUESS what may have driven one generation to move to another location in a subsequent generation.  (For example, the Irish potato famine drove a lot of Irish folks to leave their native land to sail to America in the mid-1800’s. There were similar upheavals in people’s lives elsewhere throught the eons: pestilence, invasions, wars, you name it.)

 

If it’s true that our DNA “remembers” past generations’ traumas, trials and tribulations, some of our current emotional crises (anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, etc.) might be traceable to experiences that our ancestors endured. But it would also be true that we inhertited their resilience, gumption, and ability to adapt and keep on keepin’ on, no matter what they faced in life.

 

 

RED ALERT! Just found this disturbing press release online about CRI Genetics: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/11/ftc-california-obtain-order-against-dna-testing-firm-over-charges-it-made-myriad-misrepresentations

 

The company is in hot water and has been made to pay a $700,000 fine for (among several other things, read the press release!) claiming that their DNA tests are more accurate than other DNA testing company options (23 and me, Ancestry, etc.), which is documentably untrue, apparently. So, now I will take their information with a grain of salt — e.g., 96% likelihood of accuracy that my results link me to Italy/Spain/Peru, etc.).

 

Those who feel they were scammed by false claims can ask to have their money back and their DNA information deleted.