Altamira Cave, Spain
Paternal Haplogroup: R1b1b2a1a2
In 2010 my oldest son had his genome DNA tested showing the
Paternal Haplogroup reaches back to Gascony in Southern France and the Basque Region of Spain, as far back as 20,000 BCE, the time of the paintings in the Lascaux and Altamira caves. According to 23andMe.com, “R1b1b2a1a2 is found in the Y chromosome, a sex chromosome found only in males. It is passed from father to son.”
The surprising thing about our genome to me was that I have all my life been fascinated by the ancient cave paintings in Lascaux, have read everything I’ve ever happened upon about them. I can remember in the early ’70s, in a humanities class, viewing and discussing a movie about the caves. For most of my life, to my mind, the human time scale they represent especially served as a reminder of the longevity of humanity on this planet. They naturally became a part of an epic poem I’m writing, The Parliament of Poets, with my writing about Lauscaux nearly two years ago. All the more astonishing to me to discover there’s a marker in my genes going back to the Basque region.
I’ve usually identified most with my English heritage, though I’ve always known of several other strands of genealogy, some back into the early 1700s, German, French, Irish, and Croatian.
Over 20,000 years is so incredible of a time scale that any mention of genealogy becomes absurd. The only rational conclusion is that I’m a human being.
