Oetzi - Face Look and Facebook

ANOTHER FAMILY PHOTO – AND NOW A FACEBOOK PAGE OF HIS OWN

If you are involved in Family History research it is always particularly exciting to find photos and paintings related to your ancestors. I have to admit rather sadly that photos of my two maternal line great grandfathers are the oldest in my collection. Doing without an ancestral mansion is no problem but I still miss the stairway portraits.

It is gratifying then that my mitichondrial dna has provided a venerable and well-illustrated distant cousin. Not only does this relationship predate history, the relative himself is becoming more famous by the year. So much so that he has recently had a new life-size statue created in his honour – and a Facebook page has been opened on his behalf.

I’ll let the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology Press Office take over here:

'To mark the 20th anniversary of his discovery, the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bozen is mounting a Special Exhibition to Ötzi, the Iceman, from 1 March 2011 to 15 January 2012. The Museum will also be presenting the new reconstruction of Ötzi at the opening of the exhibition.

On 19 September 2011 the Iceman celebrates 20 years of his second life. People all over the world watched on in amazement two decades ago as the intact body of a man from the Copper Age, along with his clothing and equipment, was recovered from a glacier in the Ötztal Alps where it had been preserved for 5,300 years.

Long after his death, Ötzi, Iceman, now holds humans in his spell with ever more insights into his life and death. Over three million people have so far visited Ötzi in the museum, while numerous scientists have examined him. The South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bozen is thus this year dedicating the special exhibition “Ötzi20 - Life. Science. Fiction. Reality” to Ötzi.

The special exhibition occupies 1,200 m², the entire exhibition area of the museum building: four floors, each devoted to one of the topics life, science, fiction and reality, will illuminate the full range of his discovery, the circumstances of his life, the results of the research and the media reality and fictions that have grown up around him. Interactive stations as well as films, interviews and hands-on displays guarantee an educational experience that is both exciting and entertaining.

The exhibition for the first time intends to analyse Ötzi above and beyond this scientific aspect. What image of him has developed? What role do the media play in this? What phenomena have arisen around Ötzi and what unusual results has all this produced? The answers to these questions allow visitors gradually to get closer to him.

New scientific discoveries and discussions will also be contributed to the Ötzi20 exhibition throughout the year. What secrets will the latest research methods reveal? Ötzi20 is not just a retrospective, it is also a snapshot that asks questions about the future.

As a window into our archaeological past and as a social sensation, the Iceman will provide us with food for thought for a long time to come.

One of the most frequently asked questions today remains: what did Ötzi look like? For the opening of the exhibition the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology will be presenting to the public a new reconstruction of Ötzi, based on anatomical 3D images of his skull.

The Museum commissioned the Dutch brothers Adrie and Alfons Kennis to create a new, naturalistic reconstruction based on scientific principles. His watchful gaze today meets visitors to the Museum, shaping our conceptions of the Stone Age inhabitants of the Alpine regions.

Ötzi gives our history a “face” in the truest sense of the word, moving and fascinating people from all over the world (see photo above).

The German photographer Heike Engel (21Lux) documented the work of the Kennis brothers over half a year and recorded the entire reconstruction process for the South Tyrolean Museum of Archaeology. Her close co-operation with the twins, revealed in a series of photos, makes their masterful handiwork seem almost close enough to touch. Her photos give viewers the feeling of actually being present in the artists’ studio.

Since his discovery, numerous artists have addressed the subject of Ötzi in the most different disciplines and techniques. One representative is the British artist, Marilène Oliver, whose installation in the special exhibition plays with the multifaceted nature of the mummy.

In her work “Iceman Frozen, Scanned and Plotted”, Oliver translated a CT scan of the body into plot points, then drilled them layer for layer into acrylic sheets and fused them together into a block.

The South Tyrolean photographic artist Brigitte Niedermair has searched all over Europe for the “Image of Ötzi” that exhibitions have created of him. Her “Tableau Vivant” of large-scale photos records numerous reconstructions of Ötzi in very different contexts and interpretations. There will be an Artist Talk with both artists in the Museion at 7.30 p.m. on 1 March, the first day that the special exhibition is open to visitors.

The Museion, Bozen’s museum for modern and contemporary art, will for the duration of the entire special exhibition be showing the work by Hans Winkler entitled “Ötzis Flucht” (Ötzi’s flight), an archaeological crime thriller featuring Ötzi’s (fictitious) tracks.

The anniversary year will also feature numerous visitor events. Ötzi20 is not simply an exhibition: alongside the “17.31 Blick.Punkte” events with the main players (curators, planners, scientists, technicians) and workshops on various topics, there are also various initiatives aimed at the 60-plus generation.

The Museum will also be offering guided tours for residents who are interested in other languages or have moved to the city from elsewhere, in languages such as Bosnian-Serbo-Croatian, Urdu, Hindi, Russian, Ukrainian and Spanish. And on 18 September and into the early morning hours of 19 September – the day that the man from the ice was discovered – there will be a major birthday celebration for Ötzi.

For current information on the events surrounding Ötzi20, the special exhibition at the South Tyrolean Museum of Archaeology, go to http://oetzi20.it.'

Restless Genes

DNA NEVER SLEEPS

Further to my earlier post on Blue Eyes, I was intrigued to pick up the story by Ollie Bootle below about our changing anatomy and physiognomy. Maybe the one in a million child pictured above will the founder of a whole new line or even our collective future?

‘Ever since Charles Darwin formulated his theory of evolution by natural selection 150 years ago, scientists have wondered whether the process still applies to humans. Evolution may have made us, but at some point, did we stop evolving?

There's no question that we're unique in the animal world. While a bear which found itself stranded in the arctic would, over millennia, evolve thick blubber to keep itself warm, humans could make clothes and light fires. Or we could just build a boat and leave.

And so scientists suspected that by adapting to environmental change – the driver of natural selection – using our ingenuity, we might have stopped ourselves evolving.

The late Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most respected of evolutionary biologists, once said: "There has been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilisation we've built with the same body and brain."

It turns out that he, and many others, were wrong.

Our ability to map the human genome has revolutionised our understanding of human evolution. By comparing the DNA of thousands of people from around the world, scientists are able to see how different we all are genetically. And that means they can see if different people have evolved apart from each other – whether our species has continued to evolve.

As Dr Pardis Sabeti, a geneticist at Harvard University, puts it: "We are living records of our past, and so we can look at the DNA of individuals from today and get a sense of how they all came to be this way. It's very exciting. We are starting to piece together bits of information to get this sort of coherent picture of human evolution."

In a recent study, Dr Sabeti and her team found 250 areas of the genome that have continued to change via natural selection in the last 10,000 years or so.

Some of them, like skin colour, are obvious. But our metabolism has also changed to allow us to digest some things that we couldn't in the past; there may have been changes to our thermoregulatory capacities; high-altitude populations have evolved to allow them to cope with a lack of oxygen; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, disease has been one of the greatest drivers of our recent evolution – anyone who's lucky enough to have some sort of genetic immunity to a disease is at an immediate advantage, and their genes will prosper in future generations.

So clearly our technology and inventiveness didn't stop us evolving in the past. But the world today is very different to the world a few thousand years ago, or even last century. Nowadays, in the developed world, almost everyone has a roof over their heads and enough food to survive. It is very rare for cancer to kill anyone before they've lived long enough to have children and pass on their genes. So what is there for natural selection to act on?

As Professor Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London, explains: "In Shakespeare's time, only about one English baby in three made it to be 21. All those deaths were raw material for national selection, many of those kids died because of the genes they carried. But now, about 99 per cent of all the babies born make it to that age."

This leaves Professor Jones in little doubt about the reality today: "Natural selection, if it hasn't stopped, has at least slowed down."

But it's important to remember, natural selection is only driven by death inasmuch as death stops people from breeding, and passing on their genes. And although in the developed world today, almost everyone lives long enough to pass on their genes, many of us choose not to. Surely that will drive natural selection in the same way as if some people died before being able to pass on their genes?

The realisation that differing fertility levels might be driving change in our species has led evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns, from Yale University, to look at evolution in a radical way. By analysing data gathered in an otherwise unremarkable town, Framingham in Massachusetts, he can tell how the people of the town will evolve in the coming generations.

His calculations have convinced him that people are still evolving, and in a surprising direction. "What we have found with height and weight basically is that natural selection appears to be operating to reduce the height and to slightly increase their weight."

Stearns points out that this isn't just a case of people eating more: "There's no doubt that there are big cultural effects on things like weight. But we can estimate what the genetic component is of the variation in height or the variation in weight."

But Stearns believes it's unlikely that we'll head in the same direction forever. "I think what's very probably going on is that selection is moving a population up and down all the time, it goes off in a certain direction for a while and then it goes back in the other direction. It's only if you get a significant change in the environment that it will then continuously go in a new direction."

So it appears that we'll never stop evolving. As for where it will take us in the long term, it's impossible to say. All we can do is look at the likely changes to the world we live in, and speculate as to how they might affect us.

When it comes to changes in our future, it's hard to think of any that will have as much of an impact on our evolution as our ability to tamper directly with our genes.

Dr Jeff Steinberg runs The Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, a fertility clinic that helps couples to conceive using IVF. Using a technique called Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), embryos are screened to try to ensure they're free of genetic diseases.

During the screening process, it's obvious whether an embryo is male or female, and couples can choose the sex of the embryo to be implanted in the womb. This is illegal in the UK, but in the US, "anyone can choose. They can choose a boy, or a girl, and we've done this close to 9,000 times now," Dr Steinberg says.

But genetic diseases and the sex of the embryo aren't the only traits that Dr Steinberg's technicians can see. The clinic attracted controversy recently when it announced that it would allow parents to choose the eye and hair colour of their offspring. "We heard from a lot of people, including the Catholic Church, that had some big problems with it," says Dr Steinberg. "So we retracted it, even though we can do it, we're not doing it."

Dr Steinberg is in little doubt that PGD, and genetic engineering more broadly, will play a major role in humanity's future. "I think it will play a huge part in our evolution and I think rightfully so. We need to be cautious about it because it can go right and it can go wrong, but I think trying to remove it as part of our future evolution is just a task that's not going to be accomplished."

It turns out that our culture and technology, like genetic engineering, can change our world so much that rather than sheltering us from natural selection, it can actually drive our evolution.

As Stearns says: "We see rapid evolution when there's rapid environmental change, and the biggest part of our environment is culture, and culture is exploding. We are continuing to evolve, our biology is going to change with culture and it's just a matter of not being able to see it because we're stuck in the middle of the process right now."

It seems that the direction of our future evolution may be driven not by nature, but by us’.

Olly Bootle's Horizon film Are We Still Evolving? has been shown on BBC2 [see also: Olly Bootle, UK Independent, Monday, 28 February 2011]

Ann Bodkin - Home and Holidays

ANN BODKIN – WHAT A YEAR CAN DO

The survival of my sister-in-law Ann Bodkin crouched under her desk, entombed in the rubble of the PGC Building in Christchurch has become international news.

We are of course absolutely delighted that she was pulled safe and whole from the disaster. We have been in touch several times and are a little regretful to have to miss the joyous ongoing reunions in the South Island. Kick on guys!

The family celebrations have since uncovered a couple of gems from Ann that should be documented for posterity:

1. From one of the NSW Search and Rescue team that brought Ann out of the building -

“ You’re lucky you weren’t on the bottom floor - you’d just be a stain on the carpet!”

2. From one of Ann’s colleagues -

“ You were last out - did you turn off the lights?”

A couple of additional reflections though. First, her experience throws a whole new light on the now ubiquitous IT term ‘Desktop’. Losing your hard drive is one thing – having a hard desktop in the right circumstances is quite another!

Second, it does bring home once more how fleeting and unpredictable life can be. I checked on where Ann was last year on the 23rd of February and I am sure that she would have been absolutely staggered to have been told then that she would spend the first half of the same day in 2011 in the collapsed remnants of her office – only to be delivered into the arms of husband Graham by several burly USAR Aussies.

So where in fact was she on the 23rd February 2010? Thanks to social media I can tell you that she was on a school inspection assignment for the Education Review Office. That evening, she wrote up her Blog diary entry as follows:

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

“Sunset in Timaru. What a lovely evening here sitting outside watching the sunset! We had the most yummy feed of scallops at our favourite Timaru restaurant.

Sometimes my job is not bad!”

Shortly thereafter Ann and Graham left on their Trip of a Lifetime OE which must have involved some 60,000 km of travel, involving almost every conceivable transport medium – and including sentimental road trips across the Great Plains, jazzing it up in New Orleans, a pilgrimage to Graceland, luxury cruising in the Mediterranean, and more sedate ‘messing about on the river’ in the Norfolk Broads.

They arrived back in New Zealand in mid-August – and there are some ironies in their final entry on the Trip Blog:

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

“Well it's been a few days now, but we thought we should conclude the blog about our trip by letting people know we arrived home safely. It's good to be home, even though the weather is cold and wet.

Back to work and reality - might have to start planning our next holiday! “

Little doubt now that, despite the immediacy of their Trip of a Lifetime, they should indeed be starting to think of the next. It stands to reason surely that if you are blessed with two Lives, you should be able to enjoy two Trips?

As for what Ann was thinking during her ordeal, we can now catch up from a recent interview:

ANN BODKIN - MY 26 HOURS TRAPPED IN THE RUBBLE

[by Derek Cheng, NZ Herald, Saturday Feb 26, 2011]

I thought to myself, over and over, 'I'm alive. I'm okay'."

That was how earthquake survivor Ann Bodkin, 54, kept up hope during her 26 hours entombed in the mangled mess of the collapsed Pyne Gould Corporation building in central Christchurch.

She was at her desk in a corner of the third floor when Tuesday's earthquake shook the building ferociously.

"I realised straight away that it was going to be a big one," Ms Bodkin told the Weekend Herald. "I thought, 'This is it'."

She went to dive under her desk, but as she did, the ceiling collapsed and she was struck in the back of the head and on the shoulder.

"I was hit again in the back as I got under my desk and it knocked me to the floor."
The desk was crunched under the weight of the collapsing ceiling, but held up just enough to save Ms Bodkin from serious injury.

If I had been crouching under the desk I might not have survived.

"It seemed to happen very fast, a huge noise, briefly, and then total silence.

"I started calling out to see if anyone else was around, but there was only silence."

Ms Bodkin tried to reach her cellphone, but it had been on her desk and was under the rubble.

Trapped in a space about 2m long under her L-shaped desk, she forced herself to stay determined to survive.

"I could move my arms and legs, and I had a little room, and fresh air. That's when I thought, 'I'm going to get out of here alive', and I remained that way the whole time I was trapped. I had to.

"I thought to myself, over and over, 'I'm alive. I'm okay'."

Ms Bodkin started calling out, but realised she might need her voice later, so she started banging a large piece of Perspex against a nearby radiator. There was no answer. Hours passed.

"The worst thing was that the sprinklers came on three times when the rescuers were drilling.

"I was worried I would fall asleep and get too cold, so I tried to stay warm by doing exercises, rubbing my arms, moving my legs.

"I was shivering and cold. I was wet the whole time."

She thought of her husband, Graham Richardson, and clung to the memories of their four-month holiday last year to America and Europe.

"And I was thinking about all the holidays we would have in the future."

Night fell. About 10 people were pulled to safety in the first night, but Ms Bodkin was not found.

It was a change of rescue team the following day that gave her a chance to communicate with the outside world.

Just before midday, after almost 24 hours since the building collapsed, there was a lull in the noise outside. She cried out for help.

"They had turned the machines off. I called and I heard someone say, 'Is that someone calling from in there?' I called again.

"I was hugely relieved. That was the first time I cried."

Rescuers contacted Mr Richardson and he arrived soon afterwards.

It took some time to find her exact position, because the tangled debris made it difficult to establish where her voice was coming from.

Rescuers thought she was 10m from the edge of the building, but it turned out she was 20m in.

They used a stick to pass a water bottle to her, then cut a hole in the wall to free her.

She then had to inch - on her back, feet first - through the debris to the light.
Just as she was about to reach her freedom, a nasty aftershock gripped the building once more.

"We thought, 'Oh no, not now," Mr Richardson said.

"It had been a two and three-quarter hour rescue. To lose her at that stage would have been horrific.

"But the rescuers didn't budge. They looked at her and said, 'We're going to get you out'."

The aftershock subsided and she emerged just as the sun came out.

She was wrapped in a blanket, attached to the end of the fire truck ladder and lowered to the ground to medics, rescuers, and a beaming Mr Richardson.

"I remember lots of faces staring, and then getting a glimpse of my husband. That was fantastic. He said something to me, but I had a neck brace on and all I could do was giggle. I was just so happy."

Said Mr Richardson: "I told her I'd thought I'd lost her forever. And I told her I loved her. It was very emotional. Just unreal."

They thanked "everyone who was involved in the rescue".

Ms Bodkin is recovering from cracked ribs and bruises.

Mr Richardson said he was coming to terms with people being in awe of his wife for surviving her ordeal. "She doesn't think so, though. She just thinks she did everything she could do to stay alive."

For Christchurch

A CITY FROM THE HILLS

There lies our city folded in the mist
Like a great meadow in an early morn
Flinging her spears of grass up through white films,
Each with its thousand, thousand tinted globes

Above us such an air as poets dream
The clean and vast wing-winnowed clime of Heaven.

Each of her streets is closed with shining Alps,
Like Heaven at the end of long plain lives.

WHAT NOW UNFOLDS

The city lies stripped to tightening skin
Still-born in the meadow’s dark recess
Ridging her bones among the shifting leaves
Stark-misted eyes glaze with the birth undone.

Above us such despair as nightmares bring
The empty plains sing siren-chimes of hell.

Her carers’ life-long husbandry for nought
A weeping outline left to stain the Fall.


[First stanza from Arnold Wall, 1900]

Aotearoa New Zealand sees red - and blue and gold

NO USE FEELING BLUE ABOUT DARK-EYED, LIGHT-EYED MINGLINGS

Having written up my previous post about red-hair it seems appropriate to add a footnote on blue eyes and blondness. This is easily done by drawing on Steve Connor’s article of 31st January 2008 (UK Independent).

And the issue has a unique resonance in New Zealand where the blond and blue-eyed offspring of families that identify as Maori are known to sometimes face prejudice from within. In response, there is an online ‘Facebook’ site ‘Pale Maori Unite’ that offers peer support at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall& 650174871.

A couple of illustrative entries are given below:

1. "Aww my mate's beautiful kiritea girl got told she didn't look Maori at her kura (school) the other day by some mean kids..that sucks..."

2. "My daughter is half Maori - her dad is darker than his brother and sister and he has brother who had a son who is half Pakeha and he turned out brown - so I thought my baby was going to be brown but she turned out as white as me, with hazel eyes and blondey hair but she has her dad's features (Maori nose,shape of her eyes). It is annoying though..."

So what’s the history?

Everyone with blue eyes alive today – from Angelina Jolie to Wayne Rooney – can trace their ancestry back to one person who probably lived about 10,000 years ago in the Black Sea region, a study has found. This makes it roughly contemporary with – and possibly directly linked to - the development of blond / blonde hair.

Scientists studying the genetics of eye colour have discovered that more than 99.5 per cent of blue-eyed people who volunteered to have their DNA analysed have the same tiny mutation in the gene that determines the colour of the iris.

This indicates that the mutation originated in just one person who became the ancestor of all subsequent people in the world with blue eyes, according to a study by Professor Hans Eiberg and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen.

The scientists are not sure when the mutation occurred but other evidence suggested it probably arose about 10,000 years ago when there was a rapid expansion of the human population in Europe as a result of the spread of agriculture from the Middle East.

"The mutations responsible for blue eye colour most likely originate from the north-west part of the Black Sea region, where the great agricultural migration of the northern part of Europe took place in the Neolithic periods about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago," the researchers report in the journal Human Genetics.

Professor Eiberg said that brown is the "default" colour for human eyes which results from a build-up of the dark skin pigment, melanin. However, in northern Europe a mutation arose in a gene known as OCA2 that disrupted melanin production in the iris and caused the eye colour to become blue.

"Originally, we all had brown eyes," said Professor Eiberg. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch' which literally turned off the ability to produce brown eyes."

Variations in the colour of people's eyes can be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes, he said.

"From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor. They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA," said Professor Eiberg.

Men and women with blue eyes have almost exactly the same genetic sequence in the part of the DNA responsible for eye colour. However, brown-eyed people, by contrast, have a considerable amount of individual variation in that area of DNA.

Professor Eiberg said he has analysed the DNA of about 800 people with blue eyes, ranging from fair-skinned, blond-haired Scandinavians to dark-skinned, blue-eyed people living in Turkey and Jordan.

"All of them, apart from possibly one exception, had exactly the same DNA sequence in the region of the OCA2 gene. This to me indicates very strongly that there must have been a single, common ancestor of all these people," he said.

It is not known why blue eyes spread among the population of northern Europe and southern Russia. Explanations include the suggestions that the blue eye colour either offered some advantage in the long hours of daylight in the summer, or short hours of daylight in winter, or that the trait was deemed attractive and therefore advantageous in terms of sexual selection.

As many Northern European children also have blond hair which darkens as they mature, blonde hair in girls may have become identified with youth and fertility. Its scarcity may have also bid up its social value, as may its early associations with light and gold.

In New Zealand, the admixture of Maori and Pakeha (predominantly western European) genes has created some unusual and exciting mixtures, which include people with European features and strongly tanned freckles and blue-eyed blond(e)s with Maori features.

You can check the wide variations out at: http://www.votemenot.co.nz/thread/581681/my-lil-maori-girl/

As the inclusive Maori poetess Patricia Grace has it, it is no bad thing:-

“The wail, the lament shall not have my ear. I will pay the lonely body ache no mind. Thus I go.

I stand before my dark-eyed mother, blue-eyed father, brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles and their children and these old ones - all the dark-eyed, light-eyed minglings of this place.

We gather. We sing and dance together for my going. We laugh and cry. We touch. We mingle tears as blood”.

Red Heads from the Celtic Fringe find common cause in the Antipodes

AUSTRALIAN PM JULIA GILLARD BONDS WITH GREEN GINGER-GROUP IN NZ

According to Dominion Post reporter Kirsty Johnston: ‘Flame-haired Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown has found a kindred Celtic spirit in Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

‘Ms Gillard was so delighted to find a fellow redhead meeting her off her flight into Wellington on the 16th February that she reached out to stroke the mayor's auburn hair during their brief chat on the airport tarmac.

"She told me it was a good hair colour," Ms Wade-Brown said after Ms Gillard had left the military terminal. "And we agreed that Celtic heritage is an important part of Australia and New Zealand." Ms Gillard, who was born in Wales, flew into Wellington just after 5.30pm in her Australian Air Force plane, on the second leg of her trip to New Zealand.

‘She was welcomed with a brisk Wellington wind along with the mayor, reporters and an official entourage, including the Australian deputy high commissioner. "We also talked about the wind, actually," Ms Wade-Brown added, saying she had told Ms Gillard how it was a good source of renewable energy.

And, later in Parliament, as reported by Martin Kay:

‘How many Aussie Gingas does it take to make history? Two it seems – one to give the first speech by a foreign leader to Parliament and the other to dictate when it happens.

All eyes were on russet-haired Greens leader Russel Norman as Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard came into the House to deliver her historic speech. Norman, born and raised in Australia, vetoed plans for Gillard to give the speech while Parliament was formally in session, insisting it would mean any world leader could then get the same privilege.

But as Aussie's most powerful redhead entered the chamber, Norman rose with other MPs and applauded politely. He beamed as she was brought along the front benches after her speech, and greeted her with a warm "Gidday". He said later the issue of him blocking Gillard from speaking to a formal session of Parliament hadn't come up.
"They're not really bothered about it. It's just not a big deal for them."

Another redhead missed his chance to get in on the act. Labour whip Darren Hughes, who sits in the second row behind leader Phil Goff, would have normally moved into Goff's seat as he paraded Gillard down the front benches. But he was out of town on another engagement, and instead clearly delighted first-term list MP Stuart Nash, who had moved into Hughes' seat, took the opportunity to meet Gillard with gusto.

Jokes about Aussies nicking our stuff were running thick and fast throughout the day, and even Prime Minister John Key joined in, saying we considered it a mark of respect when our cousins across the ditch claimed Kiwi icons such as pavlova (a meringue dessert), Phar Lap (a famous racehorse) and Crowded House (a trans-Tasman pop group).

Yesterday, another name was added to the list when former trade minister Hugh Templeton, widely regarded as a chief architect of the Closer Economic Relations free trade deal, was formally invested with the honorary Order of Australia. In her speech to Parliament, Gillard said CER was a major step in cementing the close ties between two nations bound by shared beliefs, values and ambitions.

"Australia has many alliances and friendships around the world, economic and defence partnerships of every kind, but New Zealand alone is family.

"Here, under the Southern Cross – emblazoned on both our flags – we have created two of the most successful societies in the contemporary world. Two advanced multi-cultural democracies tied by tradition and affection to the Old World, but anchored firmly in the new. This is our time – a time for optimism, because our best days lie ahead."

Well, self-congratulation and mutual admiration aside, I find myself spurred on to add a little on the origins of Australasia’s Anglo-Celtic red-headed heritage.

I start though by paying a little personal homage to the Anzac Spirit – and WWI where the Southern Hemisphere red heads more than played their parts. And what better way here than to quote from C.J. Dennis and ‘The Moods of Ginger Mick’?:

‘A flamin' 'ero at the War, that's Mick.
An' Rose - 'is Rose, is waitin' in the Lane,
Nursin' 'er achin' 'eart, an' lookin' sick
As she crawls out to work an' 'ome again,
Givin' the bird to blokes 'oo'd be 'er "friend,"
An' prayin', wiv the rest, fer wars to end’.

SURVIVAL OF THE REDDEST

Looking beyond Australia and New Zealand, Celia, Julia and Russel are in mixed company as far as their top flags are concerned. Just to recapitulate:

The Biblical figures King David, Mary Magdalene and Esau were reputedly red-headed – the latter having his entire body covered in russet fur. Judas Iscariot is also often represented with red hair. Among mythological heroes, both Achilles and Menelaus were powerful and temperamental red heads and the Norse gods of lightening and fire Thor and Loki were credited with fiery locks.

The Greek historian Dio Cassius apparently described Boudica, the famous Celtic female politician / Queen of the Iceni of eastern England who revolted against the Romans, as "tall and terrifying in appearance... with a great mass of red hair... over her shoulders." The Roman author Tacitus also commented on the "red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of Caledonia (Scotland)".

As for female rulers, both Mary Queen of Scots and her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England were redhead monarchs, and during the Elizabethan era in England, red hair was, not altogether surprisingly, fashionable for women. In modern times, there are plenty of famous red-heads – including actresses Lindsay Lohan, Marcia Cross and Nicole Kidman and celebrity males like Prince Harry and Ewan McGregor.

So where does the red hair originate?

Professor Walter Bodmer and his team at Oxford University are currently involved in a 3,500 sample, US $4.5 million study of the genetic make-up of the people of the British Isles, principally as an aid to identifying disease prevalence and risk markers. This ‘People of the British Isles project’ is also throwing up interesting information on the frequency of physical attributes and the probable migration pathways of ancestral lines.

Preliminary results are available for the distribution of red hair in the British Isles. Testing their white cell samples for two of the half-dozen red-hair versions of the MC1R gene, the team was able to show their frequency in each area of the British Isles. The results were intriguing.

The absolute minimum value was nil in Cumbria (with Lancashire also recording low values). Low values were also dominant in southern and eastern England with values of 0.07 for Oxfordshire and Lincolnshire, 0.11 for northeast England, 0.13 for Sussex and Kent and frequencies of 0.16 and 0.23 for Cornwall and Devon.

In Wales the figure was 0.21, and in Orkney a high 0.26. Scotland as a whole also has a high rate. But the highest was in Ireland. Using data from other research studies, the team got a figure for Ireland of 0.31, confirmation of the stereotypical image of the red-haired Irishman.



Sir Walter, the Oxford geneticist leading the project, acknowledges: “I was amazed - I didn’t expect to see something like this. The research gives us, for the first time, an insight into the startling numbers of native people who have been described as having red hair in ancient times”.

But why red hair is so common in Scotland and Ireland? The answer, says Bodmer, is that red-hair genes were common among the first Britons and that populations in the archipelago’s fringes still carry their bloodline.

The Genes for red hair first appeared in human beings about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and these genes were then carried into the islands by the original settlers – by men and women who “would have been relatively tall, with little body fat, athletic, fair-skinned and who would have had red hair”.

Redheads therefore represent the land’s most ancient lineages. So if you want an image of how those first people appeared, don’t think of a hairy savage with a mane of thick black hair. Contemplate instead a picture of a slim, ginger-haired individual: Prince Harry, perhaps, or the actress Nicole Kidman who has Scottish and Irish descent.

Why did those early Britons have so many redheads in their midst in the first place?

Is there an evolutionary advantage to having red hair in this part of the world? The answer according to the medical scientists may be yes.

The MC1R variants that cause red hair also have an effect on the skin. As a result, redheads do not make enough of the dark pigment melanin to protect them against the sun’s powerful ultraviolet rays. Their skin rarely tans. It just burns or freckles.

In Africa, where modern humans first evolved 150,000 years ago, this would have been fatal. In northern Europe, however, melanin-free skin could have provided an advantage because we make vitamin D in our skin when sunlight shines on it.

Dark-skinned people were protected against the African sun, but their ability to make vitamin D would have been badly affected in relatively gloomy northern Europe. This could have caused rickets, resulting in weak bones and curved legs — bad news for a hunter-gatherer.

Rickets is particularly damaging for women, as it increases pelvic deformations, raising the risk of death in childbirth. So, the theory goes, we evolved white, melanin-free skin that has no dark pigment to block sunlight and cause rickets. Red hair was a side effect.

So there it is: being a redhead could mean you possess an evolutionary advantage over non-red-haired people – as long as you stay in the gloomy boreal latitudes (better news for Celia Wade-Brown than Julia Gillard here!).

The maps show the distributions of the three gene variants that are associated with red hair in the British Isles. The MC1R gene is the common version that is found across Ireland and the UK, but that are particularly associated with the ‘Celtic’ countries. There are also two rarer versions (called 150C and 161W) that are associated with the red hair found more frequently in eastern and southern England.

One particular version (M17, shown in red in the lower diagram) tells an interesting saga. This variant is found in about 20% of Norwegians and is also found in North Eastern Europe and Asia from Russia to Central Asia. It is, however, very rare in north western Europe. The exception to this is in the Orkney Islands, where about 30% of men have this version of the Y chromosome, which supports the folk history of Norse Viking men settlement.

M17, however, is not found in the area where the Danish Vikings settled (e.g. Northumberland) and is also rare in Denmark. This suggests that the Danish Vikings were different ancestries than the Norse Vikings. It is likely then that the Danish Vikings came from the same area as the Anglo-Saxons (Jutland and north western Germany), only 200 years later.

[For further information see Sir Walter Bodmer at: www.peopleofthebritishisles.org]

Links to Australia's First Fleet & its light-fingered passengers

A TIMELINE TO SOME FIRST FLEETERS AND COLOURFUL FAMILY HISTORY

On 13 May 1839 Jane McManus who was 20 years old (and who had been born in Paramatta, New South Wales) married James Johnson in St John’s Church, Paramatta. James who was 26 years old had been born in England. It is probable that he arrived in Australia as a free settler in 1824 aged 12, accompanying his mother Sarah who was a servant to Thomas Clarkson. In the 1828 NSW census, he was listed as a carpenter’s apprentice.

In 1845 James and Jane moved to Auckland where he was employed as a cabinet maker by David Nathan.

The Johnsons went on to have 6 children, one of whom Lucy Catherine Johnson (1851 – 1921) married Robert Cossey Pidgeon (born 1836, Kenton, Devon – died Mangapai, NZ 1910). In the succeeding generation, Charlotte (1878 – 1914) one of the daughters of Lucy and Robert married Frank Clifford Smith (1873 – 1952) – and their daughter Mabel Eliza Smith (1906 – 1960) went on to marry Harold Thompson Joll in Northland, New Zealand in 1930. Harold and Mabel Joll are among the maternal great grandparents of my older sons Matthew and Peter Johnson.

But setting aside the regular cascade of worthy NZ ancestors from the 1850s, there is some much more interesting Australian family history associated with Jane McManus.

It starts though with Jane’s law abiding father James McManus Jr. (born Paramatta 1794) who married Lucy Bradley on 7th April 1814. James was a Police Magistrate in Bathurst where he apparently caught a highwayman / bushranger showing considerable bravery. He ultimately spent the last 10 years of his relatively short life in Paramatta Asylum but Lucy died at the age of 81 in November 1871 at Meadow Flat, NSW.

Going back a further generation things become more altogether aristocratic from an Australasian stance.

We find that James’ father James McManus Sr. narrowly avoided conviction for theft in 1790 even though he had arrived in Australia with the First Fleet on the ‘Sirius’ as a Private in the Marines. During his guard duties on board, he appears to have formed a relationship with the mother of his children Jane Poole. Jane had been convicted of stealing a silver watch and other goods valued at 15 shillings in Wells, Somerset in 1786 – and had been transported after her death sentence had been commuted.

Nor can we count Lucy Bradley’s family as aspiring angels. Both Lucy’s father James Bradley (1764 – 1838) and her mother Sarah Barnes (1775 – 1853) were also convicts. James Bradley had been convicted at the Old Bailey of stealing a handkerchief valued at 1-2 shillings around 1785.

And Sarah Barnes had been convicted in the same court in 1790, as a 14-year old, of stealing 8 quart pewter pots valued at 8 shillings and 5 pint pewter pots valued at 2 shillings from ‘The Plough’ Pub in Bloomsbury.


Drawing on the information that has been handed on to me by the Joll family, I’ll summarize what is known about the roles that the family members played in the early history of New South Wales.

JAMES BRADLEY AND SARAH BARNES

James Bradley arrived as a convict on the First Fleet on the ‘Scarborough’ which carried 208 male convicts. The ship left England on 13th May 1787 and arrived at Sydney Cove eight months later on 26th January 1788. Her master was John Marshall, and the surgeon was Dennis Considen.


By the beginning of 1789 food stocks were extremely low, the first crops having failed and relief ships having foundered. Governor Phillip put the entire colony on strict rations but thefts were endemic. On 23rd April 1789 James Bradley was given 25 lashes for insolence to a sentry but, overall, he was said to have behaved in a ‘tolerably decent and orderly manner’.

James Bradley’s sentence expired in 1794 and he was granted an Absolute Pardon on 5th September 1821 by Governor Macquarie – some 33 years after his arrival in Australia. It appears that by this time he was highly regarded in the Wesleyan Church as a preacher and Sunday-School teacher – and that he fell foul of the Anglican cleric Samuel Marsden as a consequence of attracting children away from the church.

James received a land grant of 30 acres at Eastern Farms, Hunter’s Hill near Kissing Point on the Paramatta River (the area is now known as Putney) – and in 1798 he gave evidence to a Government Inquiry on the problems faced by small farmers. According to the 1800 Census, he had two and a half acres in wheat and 5 acres in maize. By the next year, he had cleared a total of 15 acres, possessed 3 hogs and had 20 bushels of maize in store – and he was recorded as still living on his farm in 1828.

James wife Sarah Barnes who had been caught red-handed at the melting down of the stolen pewter ale pots arrived in Sydney on the 9th of July 1791 after 5 months at sea on the ‘Mary Ann’, which had sailed alone just ahead of the Third Fleet. Nine of the 155 convicts on the voyage died at sea.

James and Sarah were married in 1792 and they had 10 children (James 1792-1793; James Joseph b 1795, married Amy Greenwood; Lucy b 1796 married James McManus; Sarah Elizabeth b 1799 married John Berringer; George 1801 – 1829; Thomas b 1803; John b 1806 married Charlotte Dallison; Job Joseph b 1809 married Elizabeth Downs; Rachel Rebecca b 1811 married William Lynn and Samuel Small); and Isabella b 1813 married James Wright).

JAMES MCMANUS (Senior) and JANE POOLE

Private James McManus (Marines) departed with the First Fleet on the ‘Charlotte’ but arrived on the ‘Sirius’. Two years later he was jailed for stealing a chest of personal articles from a fellow marine. He tried to kill himself on arrest but only succeeded in scarring himself.

He was subsequently formally acquitted of the charge but discharged from the Marines – and in the wake of the disgrace he took up a grant of 60 acres of land on Norfolk Island in 1790. However, he returned to Sydney and was accepted as a Private in the NSW Corps. He was granted 65 acres of land in Mulgrave Place by Governor Hunter.

Jane Poole (who married James McManus) arrived in Sydney on the ‘Charlotte’ on 26th January 1788. As already noted, it seems that she started he relationship with James on the ‘Charlotte’ – and he may even have been transferred to the ‘Sirius’ to break it up. On the 2nd January 1790, she travelled to Norfolk Island on the ‘Supply’ to work as a servant – and presumably keep company with James.

The ‘Charlotte’ was a First Fleet transport ship of 335 tons, built on the River Thames in 1784. She was a light sailer, and had to be towed down the English Channel for the first few days of the voyage. Her master was Thomas Gilbert, and her surgeon was John White, principal surgeon to the colony. She left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, carrying 88 male and 20 female convicts.

As one of the small number of female convicts, Jane would have got to know the Cornish convict Mary Bryant (nee Broad) very well. Having been transported for highway robbery, Mary took up with another of the ‘Charlotte’s convict passengers William Bryant when they arrived in Sydney – William was also from Cornwall where he had worked as a fisherman.

On 28 March 1791, William, Mary, her children and a seven-man crew stole one of the governor's boats and after a voyage of 66 days, they successfully reached Kupang in Timor. This was a truly epic trip that involved navigating the then uncharted Great Barrier Reef and the Torres Straits.

The Bryants and their crew claimed to be shipwreck survivors but were discovered after William became drunk and confessed in the process of bragging. They were sent back to Britain by the Dutch to stand trial. Expecting to be hanged, Mary Bryant was instead imprisoned for an additional year in Newgate Prison, during which time a public outcry ensued, coupled with an onslaught of publicity by the famous Scottish writer and lawyer James Boswell.

As a result, she was pardoned in May 1793, as were the four surviving men of her crew later. Boswell (accused by wags as having designs on her) gave her an annual pension of 10 pounds - but nothing more is known of her life after her release.

BOTANY BAY

Farewell to old England forever,
Farewell to my rum culls as well,
Farewell to the well–known Old Bailey
Where I used for to cut such a swell.

Chorus:
Singing too-ral, li-ooral, li-addity,
Singing too-ral, li-ooral, li-ay,
Singing too-ral, li-ooral, li-addity,
And we're bound for Botany Bay.

There's the captain as is our commander,
There's the bo'sun and all the ship's crew,
There's the first– and the second–class passengers,
Knows what we poor convicts go through.

'Taint leaving old England we cares about,
'Taint cos we mis-spells what we knows,
But because all we light–fingered gentry
Hops around with a log on our toes.

These seven long years I've been serving now
And seven long more have to stay,
All for bashing a bloke down our alley
And taking his ticker away.

Oh had I the wings of a turtle–dove,
I'd soar on my pinions so high,
Slap bang to the arms of my Polly love,
And in her sweet presence I'd die.

Now all my young Dookies and Dutchesses,
Take warning from what I've to say:
Mind all is your own as you toucheses
Or you'll find us in Botany Bay.

SITE OF JAMES BRADLEY'S FARM TODAY
[House for sale at Delange Road, Putney/Kissing Point, Sydney for $A 1.5m ++]