GENE		GENIE?	



And waited. 

Admittedly, Oxford Ancestors does warn of a six-week turnaround time, but I had 
gotten to the "it's a scam to fleece cash" stage when a large white A4 envelope came 
through my letterbox to hit the floor with impressive weight. Opening it, I found a 
nice presentation pack. I have to admit that the covering letter didn't enthral me. The 
penultimate paragraph pointed out that their website had a FAQ page and to check 
this before contacting Oxford Ancestors in any way. While obviously this is 
reasonable as far as it goes it did rather give me an impression of, "We've had your 
money so don't bother us any more…unless you want to give us more money."

However I was pleasantly surprised to be descended from Xenia, the "most 
mysterious" of the Seven Daughters of Eve. As previously mentioned, in The Seven 
Of Daughters Of Eve, 95% of all Europeans are descended from just seven women, 
the most prolific of whom was Helena – nearly 50% of Europeans are her descendents 
and I fully expected to be just one more of this common herd. There were two A4 
cream coloured certificates in the pack. The first (as shown, left) displays the "World 
Clans" from mEve through Lara to her daughters (there are 36 Clan Mothers in total 
in the world) and showed their geographical distribution. Xenia covered Western 
Eurasia and North America and my DNA sequence is at the bottom. (ATAT if you're 
interested). 


The second (as shown, right) displayed the seven Clan Mothers of Europe. The size of 
the circles indicates the number of descendents of each woman, so you can see that 
Helena is by far the largest. The oldest of the seven was Ursula, and Xenia herself was 
the next oldest. Incidentally, the grey circles on each indicate DNA sequences that 
have as yet not been found in any living people today, but which research shows must 
have at one time existed. 

Next there was a glossy A4 how we did it explanation and finally an A4 six page 
booklet, Interpreting Your Matriline Certificates, which was quite interesting and 
very useful in making sense of it all.

Basically, Xenia had descendents encircle the globe – from opposite directions. She 
lived in what is now Georgia, the Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian 
Sea. Yep, my ancestors were Russkies! One lot of Xenia's descendents moved West, 
across the Russian steppes, over the Carpathians and the Alps, arcing through what is 
now Belarus, Poland and North Western Germany before a few leapfrogged the 
Channel to our Sceptred Isle and settled in, eventually producing in 1804 my 
ancestress, Abigail Eldred, in Sturmer, Essex. The other descendents went in the 
directly opposite direction over Kazakhstan and through Siberia, crossing the land 
bridge into Alaska and Canada/North America. Approximately 1% of Native 
Americans and the Canadian Inuit are descended from Xenia, just like I am! Having 
expected to be a bog-standard Viking, Roman or Norman, I was impressed. 

On balance, I'd have to say it was worth the wait, and the money. However it was also 
unsatisfying because of course it only revealed one line. Though I am descended from 
Xenia through my mother, what about the other women who have contributed to the 
epitome of wit and charm that is moi? 

My paternal grandmother, E. Megan Stewart (75 and still a size ten, blast it!) traces 
her paternal ancestry back to one Beringar de Cotel, a Breton nobleman who came 
over with William in 1066 and who settled in Warwickshire, while her mother's 
family, the Bladons, swore vehemently that there was Germanic blood in the line. I 
have (with the help of Ms Karen Proudler) traced the Bladon line back to Thomas 
Bladon of Eggington, Derbyshire in 1555. There is still a Bladon House School in 
Southern Derbyshire, and at one time there appears to have been a Bladon Round 
Castle (a wooden construct) in the area; references to the family go back to the Duria 
Rolls of Oxfordshire in the 13th Century. I strongly suspect from this that my Bladon 
ancestors were, like the Cuttells, invading Norman stock. Were I to speculate, I 
believe that I am probably descended from Helena (who resided in the Pyrenees) 
through the Bladons and the Cuttells, but unfortunately it will cost me £400 to find 
out. 

Then there is good old Eliza Johnson, mother of illegitimate William (by the 
Ashkenazi?) She is separated from me by four generations, two of which are male. In 
short, having learned I'm Xenia's daughter, I now crave to know about my descent 
from Lara's other daughters, who are separated by having male ancestors between me 
and them.

Since I haven't got anywhere near that amount of cash, I won't, but following my 
success with Xenia, my brother has agreed to take a Y-Chromosome test for Oxford 
Ancestors, in order to shed light on our paternal ancestry further back than Robert 
Campbell Stewart (b.c.1850-1855 – d.1920), our great-great-grandfather who lied like 
a rug about his biography. Perhaps I will again be pleasantly surprised by the 
results…

                     
Author's Notes:

1a – The etymology of "Moses" is uncertain as to whether it is fully Egyptian or 
Hebraic. Though the word gives the general sense of an object drawn out of a body of 
water, Moses may well be a hybrid fusion of Moses' Hebrew birth name and his 
adoptive mother's Egyptian name. Since Moses was raised as the princess's son in the 
Pharoah's household, his Egyptian name would have been the he was commonly 
known by.        
1b-c Author's Note: The identity of Joseph's Pharoah and that of Moses is uncertain. 
Some archaeologists believe that the chronology of the Egyptian Dynasties has been 
artificially extended by between three – five hundred years because early 
Egyptologists failed to realise that certain dynasties ruled simultaneously from rival 
capitals rather than subsequently as successors. 
Also, many early Egyptologists made "links" between the Old Testament and Egypt 
that existed only in their imaginations. For example, Pharoah Shoshenk I was said to 
be the biblical Shishak because the two words sound similar, but Shishak is a 
description, meaning "destroyer of cities", not a personal name; the "familiar name" 
of Ramesses II was Sisa, (Shisha in Hebrew) and by adding the Hebrew equivalent of 
"k", the bible writer made it a play on words – Shisha = Shishak, Ramesses the 
destroyer of [Israelite] cities. The bible writer Jeremiah did exactly the same with the 
Canaanite Queen of Israel, Jezebel. In Phoenician her name meant "Princess of Baal", 
by adding the Hebrew equivalent of "A" to the front of her name, it was changed in 
Hebrew to "piece of dung". 
To illustrate: in the Conventional Chronology, the famous Pharoah Tutankhamun 
reigned from 1334 – 1325 B.C., being a son of the great heretic Akhenaten; however 
if the New or Revised Chronology proposed by several archaeologists is correct, 
Tutankhamun actually reigned from 1002 – 993 B.C, a difference of just over 330 
years. With Conventional Chronology Akhenaten/Tutankhamun lived centuries after 
Joseph and Moses, and were in fact contemporaries of the Israelite ruler "Judge" Ehud 
(c.1381-1301 B.C.). If the New Chronology is correct then they were contemporaries 
of King David (reigned 1078-1037 B.C.), King Solomon (reigned 1037-998 B.C.) and 
King Rehoboam (succeeded 997- 981 B.C.).

© 2004 C. D. Stewart