Range

Over the course of the next several months, one area I'll investigage will focus on a range of historical themes and topics with the goal of providing a backdrop for my parallel family history research and provide context in that way. I'll begin by covering World History and provide a summary of the historical events and civilizations that shaped our understanding of the modern world. The World History series will begin with the Ancient World, and will trace how humans evolved from hunter gatherer groups and farming communities to the most advanced industrial societies of the modern world. The World History series will cover the Ancient World, the Classical World, the Early Middle Ages, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Colonial Age, the Age of Revolution and Independence, the Industrial Revolution, the First and Second World Wars and the Modern Era.

Before exploring my family origins, I think it makes sense to first review the DNA science which will influence the course of my research. In January of 2018 I took the AncestryDNA test and received my results a few weeks later. The AncestryDNA test focuses on autosomal DNA matching and provides a DNA footprint of ancestral origins by including genetic ethnicity estimates matched to any given region and the identification of DNA matching (autosomal) to other people in their database. The test provides insights into making new genealogy tree discoveries by genetically identifying cousins and distant cousins through DNA matching to confirm information in your family tree, while providing insights into cultural roots. Autosomal DNA testing provides a broader and more comprehensive survey of a person's entire genome, while Y-DNA and MtDNA testing provides more focused DNA results.