Interesting article

 "The Vikings colonized Greenland for over 400 years, but their disappearance from the island is still a riddle" by Quinn Mercer (online). Why not assimilation into the Inuit peoples who had arrived in Greenland before the Vikings appeared to disappear? I do wonder about that. The survivors probably carry the DNA evidence if it interests them. Like the 3% Denisovan that we carry (some of my six siblings as not all of them have been tested for that) but our mt DNA signature is in the Blood of the Isles Database so probably there for thousands of years. Interesting really what DNA has brought to our knowledge bank. We also carry, my siblings and I, on average 2% Neanderthal so we are 95% Homo sapiens. I believe the Denisovan came down from our ancient mitochondrial mother but I can only trace back from my grandmother (Ellen Rosina Buller born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England in 1886) to her mother Ellen Taylor born in Birmingham in 1859 (my grandmother always said that her mother died when she was 37 years of age; it was something that shocked her even as a person in her 60s and 70s that her mother died so young (my grandmother was eleven years of age and had to stay home from then on to look after her younger siblings (four of them) although three were in school). Her father had been reasonably educated so he did teach her at night as he had promised she said. But he worked hard at two jobs and he too succumbed by the time she was fourteen years of age. He had been a medic in the First Boer War (injured and sent home to Birmingham in 1881). He recovered although always walked with a limp and went to work, married and had a family of seven children. However I digress from my maternal line. The mother of Ellen Taylor was likely (and DNA is starting to show this may well be correct) the daughter of Ellen (Roberts) Taylor born  1841 in Birmingham and she had married Thomas Taylor very young (just sixteen years of age and they had seven children). Ellen appears to have had an illegitimate child in 1879 which my grandmother discovered when her youngest sibling was sent to live with her half-sister in London, Ontario. I have a match with a descendant of this half-sister which is large enough at 18 cM to catch my interest when we share a great grandmother of mine and we have written back and forth. We would be at least half 2nd cousins 2x removed as she is much younger than I am and has several more generations from Ellen Taylor. The average shared by this relationship is 48 cM according to Blain Bettinger (Ancestry uses TIMBER to extract common lengths of DNA) and this match is in Ancestry and she is still thinking about moving her results into another database. But at that level I think that perhaps we are just half second cousins 2xr (we will not share mtDNA because she descends from a son of Ellen Taylor's eldest daughter). My great grandfather was cared for in the Workhouse at Aston because the hospital was there and living at this workhouse was Ellen Taylor and her illegitimate daughter (at least it appears to be by the information). I wondered if Ellen had been a nurse as her skill with caring for the two infant boys who later succumbed to the sooty Birmingham air was noted by my grandmother whom she taught to  help her take of the infants. Also Ellen Taylor lived just a couple of blocks away from Edwin Denner Buller (my great grandfather) when they were children which was also very very interesting. They likely married sometime in 1885 (marriage not located but there were interesting stories of runaway marriages and what not; my great grandfather was apparently disowned for marrying a woman with an illegitimate child) as the names on the registrations of their children were Edwin Buller and/or Ellen Buller. But I continue back in time as the mother of Ellen Roberts appears to be Ellen Lawley who was born in Wellington, Shropshire, England in 1819 and married to Thomas Roberts. Joseph Lawley was the father of Ellen Lawley. There was family lore that this line had come from Ireland to Birmingham (and there was other family lore which I have disproved, incredible tales). Amazingly we have close matches in mtDNA with some of the individuals who went with the Rev William Martin from Antrim, Northern Ireland to the Royal Colony of Carolina in 1772. Individuals that match are able to trace back their ancestry to Planters sent from Scotland to Northern Ireland by Cromwell in the 1640s. There are also mt DNA matches with people who came directly to England from Argyllshire/Ayrshire in the early 1800s. The location on the Blood of the Isles DNA database for my markers is Argyllshire/Ayrshire. So very interesting and amazing really what you can learn from testing your mtDNA. I highly recommend it although not everyone is going to obtain such interesting results. As I checked on matches (I manage the H11 project at FT DNA) to me through the years (and we are over 500 now although that is roughly only about 10% of the total database for H11) I discovered matches in the Scandinavian Peninsula suggesting a possible migration route for my particular mutations coming out of the Ukraina Ice Refuge during the last Great Ice Age and there are others in Poland and Germany but no perfect matches in southern England (on the Blood of the Isles Database) which I found to be intriguing. Having a Western Hunter Gatherer in the British Isles from my paternal line and this rather fascinating mtDNA on the maternal line has made my research extremely interesting. I did correspond with a DNA scientist in South Ossetia about fifteen years ago and I see new research is emerging (and I did have some matches on her database) that these mutations were located in this area although out of the Ukraina Ice Refuge likely but the timing of H11 as a mutation from H has changed from 48,000 years ago to the time of the last Great Ice Age meaning that the H11 emerged at the Ukraina Ice Refuge likely and primarily moved west into Europe and north into the Scandinavian Penninsula and then further west into Scotland perhaps and in Europe itself into Poland, Germany, England. So quite fascinating. 

Sunday and another beautiful day in God's world. I will go to Church a little later online. God waits and He listens for we Homo sapiens to do the right thing to do what He commanded - Love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. Peace could come to our world if greed and envy and hate disappeared. 

I noted the comment that the so-called separatists in Alberta could well wreck the chances for a pipeline to the west coast just because they create instability. What a shame for Alberta as the MOU was a good idea and already has paid off with the Bridger Pipeline (part of the Keystone XL project already built in Canada to the American border) being approved by the President (more than five hundred thousand  barrels of oil going south every day and there will be money for Alberta but also for Canada - that is who we are (most of us that is); that was also the idea of the Founders in purchasing Rupert's Land). The separatist greed will go down in history mostly as a one liner. They want all the money from the resources which Canada bought with the purchase of Rupert's Land. We, Canada, created Alberta and Saskatchewan as administration units and expanded Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. The land belongs to Canada along with the treaty rights which were included in the purchase. Individual purchases of land are of course yours technically as part of an administration unit namely provinces and territories (with the treaty rights keeping it in Canada) but if anything ever happens to your line disappearing everything reverts to the government (you can not take it with you) and we thank the First Nations for their care of this land through the ages and their right to be in Canada for ever no matter where they live in Canada.  Canada takes care of all of Canada (remember the Great Depression). I happen to agree that ten years of fake greening of Canada (we do not see much in the way of results) was a waste we are better off to take advantage of what we have so that we can afford gradually and into the future to have a green Canada (and we should keep trying to do what we can do). Eventually oil will no longer be at the top of the selling as burning fossil fuels is hard on the environment world wide. The fifty year plans of the First Nations are much better than these greedy plans by a few to try to destroy what The Founders created. 

Tea drank and solitaire puzzles next (already 51 units of cardio from my first hour of calisthenics when I get up).  I have moments when I first awake when I push away the idea of one hour of exercise but thinking of the alternative I begin day after day with my slow moves to get myself stretched out and moving. So worthwhile but as always one should check with a doctor before you take up any big changes in your exercise routines especially when you are over 70. I will also run thirty minutes before lunch and after Church and then later in the day either yoga or weight lifting.