Ancient ancestors of
Thomas George Leslie Molineux
and his Descendants

We belong to the Stonemasons, haplogroup I2b1, which is about 30,000 years old. The Stonemasons are best known for crafting pointed stone blades, known as Gravette Points, to hunt bison, horse, reindeer and mammoths.

Stone played both a functional and religious role for the Stonemasons, who crafted voluptuous Venus figurines, possibly out of steatite, calcite, limestone or other soft stone. Although the exact significance of the figurines is not known, they may represent fertility or the Earth Mother goddess, a concept which prevails in many cultural mythologies. The Stonemasons could have regarded the Earth Mother as a symbol of security or as a deity who enabled plentiful harvests and numerous offspring.

The Ice Age probably shaped the story of the Stonemasons. An ice shelf formed during the final stages of the Ice Age moved as far as southern Ireland, mid England and northern Germany, covering all of Scandinavia, where the Stonemasons lived. Northern Spain and continental Europe were covered in tundra during these climatic shifts. As the Stonemasons moved their homes south to hunt game below the tree line, they settled primarily in the Balkans, southern France, Iberia (present day Spain and Portugal) and Italy. As they migrated, The Stonemasons played a possible role in developing the distinct difference in the languages of eastern and western Europe. When the Ice Age ended, many of the Stonemasons returned to their northern homes and repopulated Scandinavia, Iceland and northwest Europe.