Bloodline Lore, Nominative DNA Studies, and the Ethnopoetics of Descent.
—Eugene Bodeswell, Council Ethnographer.
Illustration Source: “Evening on the Steps of the Genome,” Art Deco Console of the Genomic Self (1924)
It began, as these little modern crises do, with a report from 23andMe.
A color-coded chart. A bar graph.
A number slightly higher than expected.
“My report says I have 2.8% Neanderthal ancestry,” she confesses, wilted in her floral garb like Persephone post-results.
“Don’t listen to that b.s.,” replies her polished companion. “Think of the Tuscans. Their art. Their architecture. Their minds.”
“Tuscans,” adds an unseen narrator (or perhaps a well-informed ghost), “have one of the highest percentages of Neanderthal ancestry in Europe—and the highest non-European admixture in Italy.”
So what now? Grief? Shame? A refund request?
Not from us. Not from the Council.
BLOOD AS MEMORY, DNA AS DESTINY
Let us state clearly what others only imply: we do believe in genetic determinism.
But not the crude kind—the kind printed in PowerPoint or marketed in Silicon Valley’s dating apps.
We believe in the long determinism—the slow encoding of temperament, gesture, rhythm, syntax, and sorrow. Genes don’t just carry traits. They carry tendencies.
Tendencies toward sculpture, toward melancholic overreaction, toward loyalty, tragic genius, seasonal foods.
Toward ancestral dignity that refuses to be digitized.
We are not blank slates. We are scrolls—some charred, some sung, some retranslated in every generation.
THE CASE OF THE SOUTHERN ITALIAN
In the case of Sicily and the South, the lies have endured long past their expiration date.
We speak here not only of miscegenation myths, but of the Northern fantasy of cultural dilution—that the South was “tainted” by too many tides.
Yet the data (when handled responsibly) tells another story.
“Genetic tests have shown that approximately 37% of Sicilians are direct descendants of the original Greek settlers of Magna Graecia, and roughly 60% of haplotypes found on the island are also present across Southern Italy and Greece. This leads to a safe assumption that Sicilians and Greeks share a common genetic heritage.”
— Ethniki Epanastasi, “21st Century Italy and the Remanence of Its Past”
This is not just a rebuttal—it is a resurrection.
The genome does not flinch before conquest. It carries forward what matters.
The blood remembers.
The past ain’t over yet.
NEANDERTHALS, TUSCANS, AND THE TWILIGHT GENE
The Neanderthal gene is not a blemish—it is a buried signal.
It is twilight cognition. The part of you that wants to build a fire and hum to stone.
The part that mistrusts the cloud, the touchscreen, the algorithm that calls your ancestors “noise.”
Tuscans carry high Neanderthal percentages.
They also carried the Renaissance on their shoulders.
This is not coincidence.
This is convergence.
THE COUNCIL’S OFFICIAL POSITION
The Council affirms: you are not your social media bio.
You are your ancestors’ best guess at future survival.
You are the echo of their loves, wars, and carefully foraged greens.
Your tears at a DNA report are not irrational. They are ancestrally appropriate.
When the screen tells you you’re 2.8% something, don’t ask “What does this mean?”
Ask: “What part of me already knew?”
🧬
Council Ethnographer
Practitioner of Deep Ethnos & Confirmed Bloodline Romantic
COUNCIL-OF CONCERNED-CONSERVATIONISTS…..Between Jest And Earnest….. 
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