This is a follow-up on my post about the age of the Portuguese Eurasian race and my comment that, if I wanted to, I could trace my ancestry, certainly back to 1511 and, if there were viable Portuguese and local threads around (either Malay or Chinese, I’m guessing), back even further. If I was so inclined. Which I’m not.

But let’s just take 1511 as the interim deadline for my geneology forays here. Why, when I have a line already drawn in the sand, a concrete date at a concrete place, don’t I pursue this further and construct an entire family tree? I’ll tell you.

Imagine 1511. Imagine standing there on the beach at Malacca, watching eighteen Portuguese ships sail into the port. Imagine … the stench. Imagine the sailors. This ship has been across the ocean for heaven knows how long at a time when Europe (including England) was not renowned for its hygiene standards. The very stink of cramped humanity has soaked into its timbers and wafts across the water to you. And if that’s not bad enough, the sailors aren’t much better. You can see the hunger and greed in their eyes from where you’re standing. And, considering they haven’t washed for months, you’re sure you can smell them too! And if they haven’t washed, they certainly haven’t brushed their teeth or changed clothes, right?

While it may be terribly romantic to think that I may personally be the descendant of the leader of this expedition, Naval Admiral Alfonso d’Albuquerque, I have come to two conclusions. One, d’Alburquerque was probably as stinky as the rest of them, only he had a better standard of wig. And two, probability tells me that I’m more likely to be related to one of the flea-bitten, sex-starved, filthy sailors that either climbed the mast or cleaned the poop (ahem) deck. Continuing with this line of thought, it actually sets me wondering what on earth my female ancestor was thinking when she decided to do the wild thing with one of these louts? Or even whether it was by consent? Hmmmmmm.

And that, I fear, is the most probable outcome from any foray into geneaology. While you may be hoping you’re directly descended from Cleopatra, it’s more likely that your last recognisable ancestor was someone missing several teeth who used to maintain the cess pit at the local village. Which is why I also find “past lives” to be so amusing, especially as most people seem to think, under hypnosis, that they were Marie Antoinette.

I remember a psychic asking me once whether I had dreams of being someone else. No, I replied. Was there a period in history that particularly fascinated me? Yes, World War Two, was my answer. She sat back, satisifed. Ah, then it means you were probably alive in World War Two. Was there any group that especially drew my focus? The Germans, I replied. She literally recoiled from me. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

And I really couldn’t get that. If you truly believe in past lives, then you must believe in it in all its permutations. And that includes the fact that, if the population of today really contains the reincarnation of the people who lived and died in World War Two, then it logically follows that some people must have been soldiers guarding concentration camps, just as some must have been Spitfire aces. And no guesses for how many one outnumbered the other. So, this whole reincarnation thing seems a little cracked because — from what I’ve read — it appears to me that people are, to a large degree, able to cherry-pick who they were in a previous life, and I don’t think that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

But this gets off track, and dangerously close to another blog entry. What I’m trying to say is, the next time someone decides to boreregale you with their family history, just imagine some scratchy illiterate thug cackling by a miasma of extruded biological matter and, chances are, you won’t be far wrong.