Am I rich?

I used to collect coins from time to time in my childhood. Even though I gradually lost interest in the hobby, the collection has survived, safely stowed away in a shelf in my parents’ house. For quite sometime, I had wanted to transfer those coins to an album because keeping them all together in a box was causing some kind of a metal-to-metal reaction, corroding them. I managed to find time for that in this India trip and here is what I found while reorganizing the collection:

· I have 180 coins filling 2 full albums
· There are about a dozen coins form the British Indian Empire, all having King George on them.
· One coin that even precedes the crown era, issued by the East India Company in 1835.
· There are coins issued by the princely states of Travancore and Bahawalpur (now in Pakistan) and a coin from Portuguese Goa.
· There are about 3 dozen coins from European countries that don’t exist anymore like the Soviet Union, East Germany and Yugoslavia.
· A couple of dozen coins from countries that now use the Euro like France and Greece.
Sadly, the 20 or so American coins that are a part of the collection now seem boring and valueless. Anyway, kudos to the childhood me for this admirable collection and now an adult thought; how much is all this worth? Am I rich?

My Deep Ancestry

The Genographic Project is a combined effort by the National Geographic Society, IBM, geneticist Dr. Spencer Wells and the Waitt Family Foundation to understand the human journey. Now, you can send them your DNA from a cheek swab and they'll tell you where you come from; how did you get to where you live and which places did your ancestors travel through before they reached where you live.

I sent them my DNA and the results are mind blowing. They have traced out my paternal lineage all the way to the first ancestors of all humans . These guys lived in Africa 60 -70,000 years ago.

What is interesting?

1.My Ancestors, among the very first Indians: My ancestry is characterized by the M69 genetic marker. This lineage represents one of the very earliest pre-historic migrations into India. My ancestor who gave rise to this lineage was born 30,000 years ago in India or in the closest part of Central Asia.

2. Uniquely Indian Lineage: This line of descent is uniquely Indian, i.e. it is rarely found outside India. This M69 marker is found in particularly high frequencies among the South Indians, 20-25%.

3. First settlers of India proper: The M69 people along with the M20 people were the first to settle India in a big way. The ancestors of the Australian Aborigines(M130) preceded both groups, but since their's was a coastal migration, they left behind small coastal communities only.

How do they know?

They know because they can read my Y chromosome.

The genetic code of a person greatly differs from either of his parents because he or she gets 50% of his DNA from one parent and the rest from another. This genetic code cannot be used to determine deep ancestry.

What is required is a code that remains pretty much the same from generation to generation but shows small variations over hundreds of generations. The Y chromosome and the Mitochondrial DNA are of this type. The former gets transferred from father to son without change and the latter from mother to progeny of either sex. They change occassionally due to random mutations.

These mutations will act as genetic markers or id cards. If I develop such a marker, all my descendants along male lines will have those markers and can be traced back to me even after hundreds of generations.

The people at the Genographic project identify these markers and try to identify the geographical locations where these markers first appear. That way, they can trace the migration routes.

To know more, goto

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic

My Markers

The markers in my Y-Chromosome are M168, M89 and M69.

The M69 appears in the background of the M89. The marker found in 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans. The man who gave rise to this marker was born around 45,000 years ago in northern Africa or the Middle East.

M168 is the marker of my earliest ancestor. This man, who gave rise to the first genetic marker in my lineage probably lived in northeast Africa in the region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania, most likely around 50,000 years ago. His descendants became the only lineage to survive outside of Africa, making him the common ancestor of every non-African man living today.

My Thoughts

It is overwhelming. My ancestors were among the first people to call India their home. My line has a 30,000 year old relationship with that country. If a new generation comes up every 30 years, then this is a bond spanning across a thousand generations. Is it going to end with me?

That is really overwhelming.

Temple Trees

There is a temple and an attached garden in my residential colony in Chennai. In this garden there are 3 magnificent trees. One is a Banyan tree and the other two are Peepal trees (Sacred Fig, Ficus religiosa). Not only do they possess a majestic beauty by themselves but they create a mystical ambience of a temple hidden in a jungle. I have seen them as saplings and seen them survive torrential rains and the vandalism of brats like me. I visit and admire these trees each time I go home and even though I have done nothing to care for them, their towering growth fills me with pride.

In that very same garden I get to see an example of the futility of trying to convince a person who has an illusion of knowledge. While planting the Peepals the gardener "married" them off to Neem (Margosa, Azadirachta Indica) trees by planting a Peepal and a Neem side by side. I had tried telling him then that it would hamper the growth of both trees, but he would hear none of that. He knew what he was doing, following his folk tradition and how could that be wrong. Though the Neem isn't as big or tall a tree like the Banyan or the Peepal, it can grow to admirably large size if left to itself. But over here, the Neems have been outcompeted and crushed by the giant trees. In the fifteen or so years since they have been planted, the Neems should be looking like full grown trees. Instead, they look like they are some kind of disease afflicted branches of the Peepals. It is a little saddenning to see that the incorrigible side of people has turned what should have been a mighty independent entity in its own right into a stunted attachment to another.