Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (September 1, 2018)
The stock market and the overall economy remain robust. There have been repeated calls for a massive crash of both since at least 1995, but nothing major has transpired outside of the partial crashes which took place in 2000-2002 and again in 2007-2009. The Dow Jones 30 Industrial Average is at 98 percent of its record high from January 26, 2018 and the other major US indices (NASDAQ Composite Index, S&P 500 Index and the Wilshire 5000 “Total Market” Index) all reached record nominal high values within the past few trading days.
I suppose I can say that this month’s topic has to do with demographics, but in a way that interests most of us in a much more personal way – this being with respect to our genealogy or to our ancestry. After a good deal of prodding, I finally had my own DNA test done. The results which came back both confirmed much of what I already expected, as well as surprised me a very good deal. An Italian (Sicilian) American friend of mine had this done, and his results surprised him immensely. All of his ancestors came from Sicily to New York, much like so many Italian-Americans in the USA. His DNA test came back 75% Greek, 20% Jewish and just 5% Sicilian. If anything, this reminds us just how much people have moved around over the centuries and beyond.
Another Borromeo from the Philippines shared his DNA test results with me as well. His father’s family (Borromeo) came from Camiguin Island, which is directly north of the much larger island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. His mother’s family came from Cavite on the island of Luzon (the northern Philippines). Cavite is the same place where we believe that the surname Borromeo originated in the Philippines in the year 1744 – this from pre-World War 2 genealogical research done by Marcial Borromeo y Guerrero, who was a first degree cousin of my own maternal grandfather Judge Andrés Borromeo y Reynes (1880-1923). Mico Borromeo’s DNA test came back 81% Chinese, 8% from the Philippines, 4% from South Asia, 3% from Central Asia, 1% from Somalia and 3% from Sardinia (an island which belongs to modern Italy). The predominance of Chinese DNA in his results are not too surprising in that so many Chinese have settled in the Philippines over hundreds of years or more. South Asia refers to the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia refers to what we refer to today as “formerly Soviet” Central Asia. The link to Sardinia may confirm the link to the Borromeo surname from northern Italy.
Now to my own DNA test results. My father’s half came back 41% from the German region of Saxony, 5% from Scandinavia, 3% from Finland and 1% from the British Isles. The German DNA also confirmed my link with the branch of the Nonnenkamp family which emigrated from Germany to St. Louis, Missouri via the port of New Orleans in 1850. The ancestry from Scandinavia, Finland and the British Isles was a complete surprise to me. The surname Nonnenkamp goes back to the year 1500 in the German city of Hildesheim, and possibly to the Flemish (southern Dutch) city of Antwerp in the year 1200. The German region of Saxony is quite large – it covers modern day Lower Saxony (including the port city of Bremen), Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony proper which borders both the Czech Republic and Poland. The cultural link between northern Germany and the Low Countries (the Netherlands and Flemish Belgium) is very strong – the High Dutch Language has many similarities to the Low German or “Plattdeutsch” dialect. These languages are also closely related to the “Cape Dutch” Afrikaans Language of Southern Africa.
My mother’s half came back 38% from the Philippines and Guam, 9% Polynesian, and 1% each from Central Asia, the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and from the Czech Republic. The Philippines was expected, but the absence of Chinese was totally unexpected. The mention of Guam (which is part of Micronesia) and Polynesia were also a big surprise. My late first degree cousin Edmond “Ed” Morrow Paterno Borromeo (1942-1995) has some of his roots in Guam, but this was due to his mother’s family (Morrow) – we had no idea that the Borromeo line had roots there as well. The link to Spain was not a surprise in that we knew this about the family of my maternal grandmother Anunciacion Rallos de Borromeo (1885-1938).
Polynesia was a big surprise to me. It happens to be my favorite part of the world (!), but as far as the DNA roots are concerned I don’t know what to say. Once again, this demonstrates to us just how much human beings have moved around over the centuries and the millennia. The link to the Czech Republic was not a complete surprise. One of the more interesting visitors to the Borromeo site (www.theborromeofamily.com which I have managed since 2006) was someone from Bohemia whose grand uncle (a Roman Catholic bishop) was named “Carolus Borromeo Schwartz.”
My own genealogical research which began in earnest in 1981 led me to believe that most people on earth are at least cousins of the 27th degree. The DNA lab results point to an even closer relation between most of us, that we are likely all cousins of the 14th degree. The names listed among my cousins of the 1st to the 8th degree included 696,875 individuals including ancestors (and I stopped counting after 22 pages). This includes people of all races, which proves beyond any doubt that we are one big family descended from Adam and Eve.
One can upload results from ancestry.com to another website at wegene.com. The 2nd site will analyze in greater detail the results from the first site, taking the DNA as far back as 34,000 years for one’s paternal and/or maternal haplogroup, complete with world maps showing the source of prehistoric human migration patterns from human origins in Africa to the old world (i.e., the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Asia, Europe and beyond. Native American DNA of course comes from Asia via the former land bridge in between Siberia and Alaska.
