Sometimes... It Is All Plain As The Hair On One's Head -- If One REALLY... Looks.

Well -- I think I had mentioned this before -- as conjecture -- but now as nearly fact.

I cannot find that earlier post or aside though -- so I will use the graphic about the last time we mentioned him, in the concert for a Free Ukraine. So, do bear with me, here (and see the YouTube at bottom).

For at least 100 years, give or take, in various portions of the US African American community, there has been persistent talk of the probability that Ludwig Van Beethoven's mother may have had a lover of African descent. An extramarital liaison may have created the man we know as Beethoven the composer.

Moreover, the story repeatedly told (and disputed by supposed "scholars") held that marble busts subsequently made of him, as well as paintings -- all from artists' "memories" -- not actual live sessions -- were subsequently more or less "white-washed" to hide this fact. There were also persistent stories that suggested his existing hair samples showed some distinctly. . . African characteristics, on visual inspection. [And it turns out the ones that clearly. . . do not. . . are inauthentic, based on real DNA analysis -- likely coming from an Ashkenazi woman of about the same vintage -- but not Beethoven himself.]

Many "serious" (whyte) scholars scoffed at this entire notion.

But now, with five separate authentic samples of the hair of Beethoven, and a less patrician (more open minded) and yet rigorous research on the actual DNA in the hair samples. . . we can confirm that an "admixture event" occurred, with his maternal side.

That is, it is likely that Beethoven's two brothers were, in fact. . . only half brothers.

To be clear, due to the degradation of the five clearly authentic samples, and the lack of consistent German naming conventions of family-lines, prior to Beethoven's day. . . it is not definitively possible to discern too, too much about the precise identity, genetic or surname or locality-based, of this likely affair partner.

But it is doubtless true that either a generation or two before Beethoven, or one or two after. . . there was a non-related male in the line. Non-related to any other "Beethoven".

So -- at least one-half of the long told story now seems far more probable: he was of a markedly different DNA makeup, than his other "brothers", all birthed by his mother.

Is it really that hard to believe then, that this "true father" (or less likely but still possible, grandfather) of Beethoven might have been an African man, a man essentially without an assigned German surname, at least in "polite" German society at the time?

I, for one, am ready to accept the high probability that the Black community, world-wide, has been right after all, and that he may properly. . . be claimed by them. Not definitive, yet -- but probable.

And as more and more millions around the globe are fully sequenced by 23andMe and others, we may only be a few more years from identifying -- at least by village / region, in Africa. . . from whence his true biological father hailed.

And that is gratifying -- to me, at least.

An excellent treat. . . and printed on my Sol-day, to boot! नमस्ते.