Aletta Penning, 13 April 2024

If the reader is familiar with terms like Carrickmacross, Koppies lace, Reticella and with the art of Pierre Fouche, then the world of lace needs no introduction.

For the rest of us at the GSSA Northern Branch, this world opened up with Aletta Penning's talk on April 13th. Lacework flourished during the opulent era of King Louis XIV as a sought-after commodity throughout old Europe. Before his time, it was practised in Italy and Flanders only.

Quality lacework was highly valued and even smuggled. Design techniques were kept secret, and styles developed geographically. For a long time it was reserved for the rich only. From baptism gowns to wedding dresses, undergarments, boothose and flamboyant collars, lace dictated the world of fashion.

Aletta is the chairperson of the Pretoria Lace Guild, a member of the Witwatersrand Guild, and has been a member of the international lace organisation OIDFA, for decades. She was indeed the perfect person to tell us more about lace, and the many photos in her presentation illustrated it beautifully.

The story of lace in South Africa is just as interesting and literally and figuratively woven into the country's history. Emily Hobhouse's role in this story is pivotal. Take a look at the recording and learn more about this craft practised with such dedication.

André Buys, 10 February 2024

The recital deals with André's recent ancestors from the present to the origin of mankind. Deep ancestry research is a multidisciplinary genealogical research methodology and contains disciplines such as research in archives, history, population dynamics, genetics and memetics.

A slide of a population dynamics model was shown and it shows the world population of the present back to and including the memetic Adam (the Adam of the Bible) and further back to the genetic Adam, the first human.

Afrikaners are lucky that there are comprehensive records from the landing of Jan van Riebeeck at the Cape. European ancestors can be traced back to the fifteenth century, before which the sources dry up. Before 1500 up to and including 400 there are only records of royalty and the aristocracy as they had to prove inheritance rights. Before 400 there are legendary records; some of the facts are actual facts and other "facts" are legendary.

The genealogy in the Bible is accurate because the Jews had to prove their Jewishness. The date of the memetic Adam is about 1890 BC and the date of the genetic Adam 245 760 BC.

The speaker has drawn up a table of his ancestors on an Excel spreadsheet, divided into: South Africa, Europe, Nobility (0 AD to 1400 AD) and Legendary, 5 000 AD to 0 AD.

He has 8264 progenitors in his list. He highlighted some of his ancestors, persons of the nobility as well as a proconsul at the time of Paul's missionary journeys (Acts 13:6-12), Sergius Paulus.

These days DNA tests are of great help. The Afrikaner's genes are e.g. Homo sapiens sapiens 97.7%. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis 1.7% and Homo sapiens Denisova 0.4%.