Do Humans have a Homing Instinct?
How many of you expats are living overseas in an ancestral homeland? What motivated you to move there? I have seen enough in my many years of travel and genealogical research to suggest that there is some sort of innate affinity–or perhaps a fascination–with the homeland of one’s ancestors. I have often heard travelers talk about the strange feeling of belonging they get when visiting the places their ancestors knew. (The Israelis certainly prove the point.)
If you were driven by this odd sense of belonging to pack up and move, please let me know.
If one is British, then it is very likely that the ancestors were also British, at least back until the time of the Norman Conquest (though British society is quickly becomeing far more mixed). But if one is American (and without a completely indigenous ancestry), than the ancestors came from somewhere else, and fairly recently. We still differentiate adamantly between African-Americans, Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, and any other minority group. (There is no separate recognition of English-Americans, though I don’t see why not.)