Taino (tah-een-o) is the name of a tribe of indigenous people of the Caribbean. They are said to be the people who lived where Columbus landed. I never heard of them most of my life. Then, I thought I would be modern and adventurous and give the National Geographic Society a little of my saliva. Lynn wanted to do the same thing. My results said my ancestors derived from previous life, walked around the eastern end of the Mediterranean sea, traveled north to present-day Norway, turned back and made their way south along the west coast of Europe. My genetic markers are common among Irish and Spanish men.
Meanwhile, Lynn was storming and fuming over her impossible result. Her chart showed a path like mine up to going around the Mediterranean but then across Asia to the Bering Strait, over to North America and down. Anyone looking at my blonde, blue-eyed, light skinned wife would be confident of Scandinavian ancestry, which we knew about, but not about Caribbean native ancestry, which we do not know about.
She fumed, deeply disappointed that her Genographic analysis was screwed up. But, wait a minute. What about the Spanish ancestor known to have been disinherited by his family for marrying that woman? So! That is how Taino got to be an important word, group, concept in my life. Twice, other descendants and relatives of the Taino group have contacted her. Today, the BBC posted an article by Christopher P. Baker discussing the current Taino people of Cuba and their lives and history. http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190205-cubas-tano-people-a-flourishing-culture-believed-extinct
I can imagine a good-looking Taino woman wondering about those strange and frightening men who just arrived, unbidden and dangerous. One thing leading to another and here is her descendant living in Wisconsin's winter weather, about 526 years later.
