TECHTIMES : ANCIENT DNA REVEALS CRUSADERS... by Allan Adamson
EXCERPT: Chris Tyler-Smith, a genetics researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and colleagues extracted DNA from the 13th century remains of nine medieval crusaders. The remains were found in a mass burial pit near a crusader castle in Sidon, Lebanon... "We show that all of the Crusaders' pit individuals were males; some were Western Europeans from diverse origins, some were locals (genetically indistinguishable from present day Lebanese), and two individuals were a mixture of European and Near Eastern ancestries, providing direct evidence that the Crusaders admixed with the local population,: the researchers wrote in their study.
And this DAILY MAIL - CRUSADERS MARRIED LOCAL WOMEN - SONS FELL IN BATTLE
EXCERPT: These mixed families were short-lived however, with brutal battles wiping out the offspring and modern-day inhabitants showing no relationship to the Crusaders.... Analysis of DNA extracted from nine skeletons dating back to the 13th century shows the family members often died together in battle from horrific wounds.
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I'm lucky - and not - to "know" that one of my ancestors was alive in the 1400's.
Trying to prove this, however, is a nightmare. I'm at about 1820 and only back to a GG Grandparent on this old, almost extinct surname. When I imagine my long ago ancestors, I research the history of their time and place - their niche. As this was a wealthy noble, I recently looked at a web site that gave some examples of the kind of clothing he would have worn and tried to imagine if he or any of his family were Crusaders. He was probably an Italian who moved to Central Europe. I'm not a snob about nobility. One of the reasons it's exciting for a researcher to attach to nobility is that there is a greater chance of records and documents having been made and so being able to go back further.
