I find genealogy very interesting, and I have spent a few days gathering information about my origins from wikipedia and my parents. So Hubski, how far back can you trace your ethnic roots? Anything interesting?
My roots, according to my dad, are explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagullanka#History
Basically, during the 11th century, the Tamil King Rajendra Chola gifted a group of 18 Brahmin families, the Konaseema Dravidulu, to his daughter and son-in-law, from which my dad came from. They performed fire rituals for the most part, which explains my last name (which I am not at liberty to disclose). Thus, they had to move to his son-in-law's kingdom up in Andhra Pradesh from Tamil Nadu. They settled in a few villages that were gifted to them and adopted Telugu customs and intermarried with the indigenous Brahmins (my mom is a native Telugu). Of course, there was intercaste marriage, but social norms discouraged it for the most part.
So I am a Telugu-Tamil-All-South-Indian-freedom-loving-non-commie-more-adjectives dude.
The best part is that my grandparents own a piece of land which was part of the original few villages that I can go frolick in every few years. It's also more fertile than y'all's mothers (sorry couldn't help it).