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|  | | | | Hermann Goering, Daniel Boone And You: All Descended From Muhammad | | | | | found on: The Atlantic
written by Velvet Iguana, edited by Humberto (Plastic) [ read unedited ]
posted Wed 15 May 5:56pm | | | | |
 | "A mathematical study of geneology -- based on historical world populations and the exponential nature of ancestry -- suggests that everyone of European ancestry alive today is a direct descendant of both Charlemagne and Muhammad (and of the majority of Europeans circa 1000 A.D.). You only have to go back another 1000 years for the same logic to apply to the world as a whole. So, they claim, it's almost certain you are related to Confucius," writes Velvet Iguana. "I find these statistics a little counter-intuitive, but they do explain why so many people claim to be descended from royalty or the Mayflower. Does this surprise you? Will this news bring the world together in one, big, multilingual chorus of 'We Are Family'? "
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[ more plastic... ] |
| | | | | | | 1. Thanks VI!
| | | | by Utini |  | | | at Wed 15 May 6:12pm | score of 2 funny | | | | | | |
I used to think being a Shiite Muslim was a little like an exclusive club. But since I'm a descendant of Muhummad, I not only can join now, but I can lead! It's not that I would. I just like to keep my options open.
Plastics' answer to a question no one asked.
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| | | | | | | 2. Upwardly AND Downwardly mobile
| | | | by zhwj0119 |  | | | at Wed 15 May 6:37pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
Not only are we all (probably) descended from Confucius, but also around 80% of all of the peasantry of China and other parts of the world at that time.
There's a point in the article where the figure of 20% of the population of Europe halted bloodlines, but there's no way of knowing which 20%--that is, maybe No-one today is descended from Charlemagne or Muhammad.
And besides, when it really matters, it's only if you're firstborn, male, and rich. The rest of it is just family-tree ornamentation.
If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself. --A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
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| | | | | | 3. This explains so much...
| | | | by JET24 | | | | at Wed 15 May 6:39pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
about my conflicting emotions on important issues throughout my life.
For example, I understand why Christianity is so valued, yet I also understand the appeal of a Muslim faith. Hence, I'm agnostic because I can't decide.
Maybe our sense of nationalism is less about our differences and more about sibling rivalry?
Religion don't mean a thing; it's just another way to be right. - Spoon
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| | | | | | | 4. Another Geneology Outcome
| | | | by ridsel | | | | at Wed 15 May 6:42pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
The inevitable consequence of a wife taking her husbands name upon marriage is that we would all eventually have the same family name. I'm not sure how many generations it'd take, but it would happen.
This can effect can be observed in some countries right now (eg. Kim is winning in Korea, Smith is an English-speaking front runner). It used to happen a lot in isolated villages in England too.
In reality, it is increasingly common for women to keep their own name after marriage (if they marry at all) and some cultures do not employ this system... so it'll probably never happen.
If it did... well, I guess it'd make sense since we're all related.
*****
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| | | | | | 7. I thought that was because...
| | | | by Eli1021 | | | | at Wed 15 May 7:10pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 4 | | | | | |
...long ago Koreans didn't have their own last names but that of their feudal masters. So if Kim had ten times as many serfs as Lee, the name Kim would be ten times as common.
And that Smith is common because it was a common occupation.
I could be wrong.
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| | | | | 14. Re: I thought that was because...
| | | | by ridsel | | | | at Thu 16 May 12:47am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 7 | | | | | |
I guess I selected bad examples... with regards to those names I guess I could stay that the head starts they got (for whatever reason) should help them "win".
Better western examples might be Brown or Jones.
*****
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| | | | | 16. Those might also be bad examples
| | | | by Eli1021 | | | | at Thu 16 May 6:11am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 14 | | | | | |
Brown and Jones are common names among African Americans because they inherited the names of their owners during the slavery era (sort of like Koreans inheriting Kim).
It would be hard to find any good examples in the US I think, just because of how mixed up the country is. I understand your point though, I just think it would take so long as to be nearly irrelevant.
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| | | | | 44. Re: Those might also be bad examples
| | | | by M. Mosher | | | | at Thu 16 May 7:24pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 16 | | | | | |
Another reason names will remain varied is that they change over time. My own name of Mosher used to be spelled Moger in the 1500s and many people in France and England still spell it that way.
Add to it the number of people who change their names either to escape their pasts (like criminals or movie stars) or to simplify pronunciation and we will forever have a pool of new surnames.
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| | | | | | 5. Maybe Not
| | | | by Estimator | | | | at Wed 15 May 6:44pm | score of 2 informative | | | | | | |
Much to my chagrin, I cannot trace my ancestry back to royalty (although there is the chance I am descended from a bastard child). I thought there must be a reason for this, so I looked up the paper that is the basis for this article. The paper is found here. If you read the paper, it is at pains to stress that this result is so counter-intuitive that there is likely to be a problem with the model that produced it. Chang goes on to suggest that the problem with the model is that it allows for random mating among ancestors when mating was actually likely to be clustered geographically. The Atlantic article actually mentions this, but only briefly. Ultimately, The Atlantic couldn't let that get in the way of a good story. Particularly if that story allowed the author to parade his aristocratic ancestry.
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| | | | | | 42. Re: Maybe Not
| | | | by empathogen75 | | | | at Thu 16 May 1:19pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 5 | | | | | |
It says in the article itself that not everyone can trace their ancestry back:
>>"You can ask whether everyone in the Western world is descended from Charlemagne, and the answer is yes, we're all descended from Charlemagne. But can you prove it? That's the game of genealogy."
Just because you don't have the paper trail doesn't mean its true. Don't forget that as you go back, your number of ancestors increases exponentially. After a dozen generations, you're talking about a ridiculous number to keep track of. There's no way that you can say that none of them are royalty.
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| | | | | 45. Re: Maybe Not
| | | | by M. Mosher | | | | at Thu 16 May 7:46pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 42 | | | | | |
I've noticed recently during my own genealogical studies that some people show up as a direct ancestor several times on my family tree. This happens most obviously when cousins marry and have children. If first cousins marry, their children only have six great grandparents instead of eight. If you write it out on a standard family tree, one set of great grandparents show up in two lines.
The farther back we go, the more common (but the less obvious it is) that we have ancestors appear many times over. The reason we know it is common is that 20 generations back you would have to have over a trillion ancestors if there was no mixing of this sort - an impossibility.
The reason it is less obvious though is that women tend to give up their names upon marriage. Even when they don't (my own wife is an example) children usually take their father's name. This makes it easy to forget or lose the knowledge of the fact that your spouse may well be a distant cousin ten or fifteen times removed.
The attempt to keep royal lines unspoilt by commoners caused a wave of hemophelia among the English royal family and it is theorized that Tay-Sachs disease was caused by too much inbreeding among Eastern European Jews. Not only are we related to everyone else, we have to keep it that way. It was probably prolonged geographical separation and the lack of genetic mixing that led Neanderthal and Cro Magnon to diverge into two different species of humans several hundred thousand years ago.
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| | | | | | 6. I'm my own Grandpa
| | | | by 74westy | | | | at Wed 15 May 6:50pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
Yeah, twenty years or so ago, my mother's cousin's husband got into geneology. He eventually traced his lineage back to William the Conqueror. I remember that my dad was surprised at the shape of old Wilbur's family tree. I usually think of a family tree as being something that spreads out as you go back in time. 2 parents. 4 grandparents. 8 great-grandparents etc.
Wilburs's started 900 years ago at a point (W. the C.) and spread out as you got closer to our time.
Dad said that was so they could skip the prostitutes and horse thieves.
Anyway, it turns out Wilbur was not so unusual. For that matter, we must have a common grandmother. The link says she lived 200,000 years ago. I don't know if this story changes that. Maybe she was Mary, mother of God. Maybe she was my wife's Aunt Evelyn.
I'm just wondering exactly how closely me and my wife are related anyway. Might explain why our kids can't understand plain English.
I am Sparticus!
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| | | | | | 22. Re: I'm my own Grandpa
| | | | by gonzocanuck | | | | at Thu 16 May 8:42am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 6 | | | | | |
wow! that's so cool. I personally like to think I have more exotic relatives too. Seeing as my parents are a mix of Metis, Irish, Polish, Greek (possibly some Turkish thrown in) anything is possible :-)
I have never been much into genealogy either, but I'm always tempted, seeing how there aren't too many Culvers and Othitis' in this world. The coolest bit for me was finding I had Greek cousins of cousins living in Zimbabwe. Who knew?
You've got to coax him slow, that's the only way that he'll confess.
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| | | | | | 8. Unlikely.
| | | | by eiger | | | | at Wed 15 May 7:29pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
I find this to be unlikely. Why? Because as someone above mentions, people tend to cluster geographically in their mating habits. More than likely, if you went back and were able to reconstruct your family tree, you would find the same people popping up a lot as you went farther and farther back because most of your ancestors would have come from one (or several) geographical area(s). Therefore, it is possible that you would find surprising ancestors in your family tree if you could completely map it, but is seems unlikely that there would be that many surprises.
(This reminds me of an instance where they actually used DNA testing to find the living descendents of an ancient man in England. In the end they only found 1 and he didn't even live in the geographical area the ancient man was found. Sort of makes you wonder how accurate this report is.)
Then again I thought Kerry was going to win. So, what the hell do I know?
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| | | | | | 25. Re: Unlikely.
| | | | by masha | | | | at Thu 16 May 10:29am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 8 | | | | | |
This is a good point. Geography is probably much less indicative of mating habits now, in our global society, but only a short time ago travel was much more difficult.
I would also argue that social class has/had a lot to do with mating habits, particularly in a rigid class society. I don't think many serfs associated with vassars or other nobility. Except of course for the occasional Jefferson/Hemmings thing.
In any case, simplifying mating habits into random associations seems a serious detriment to this argument.
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| | | | | | 9. Counter-intuitive?
| | | | by random1 | | | | at Wed 15 May 7:39pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
I find these statistics a little counter-intuitive, but they do explain why so many people claim to be descended from royalty or the Mayflower. Does this surprise you?
I found it counter-intuitive for a minute, but then I thought about it a bit, and it seems obvious. People make the mistake of looking at a single strand of their family tree, especially discounting the branches of the women that "married into" families. A little math, as presented in the article: Assume 25 years per generation(very conservative, considering the age of marriage and childbirth in the past). Then, 1000 years = 40 generations. A quick check shows that 2^40= 1 trillion! ancestors. This is many times the number of people that have ever lived. Thus, many of these have to overlap for almost any two people, at least those that weren't geographically isolated from each other. That is why they only claim all people of European decent have a common ancestor 1000 years ago, and extrapolate another thousand for the rest of the world. It's amazing to think about in any case.
A pleasure to make your acquaintances, fellow Plasticians, brothers and sisters all...
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| | | | | | 17. Re: Counter-intuitive?
| | | | by MacGregor | | | | at Thu 16 May 6:12am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 9 | | | | | |
The vast number of ancestors each of us has can be somewhat explained through "pedigree collapse." As you go farther back in your family tree, you discover that people who were related to each other in some way usually distant cousins) married and reproduced. That means that two (or more) slots in the family tree are held by the same person.
"Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty" --As you like it, Act 2, Scene 3
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| | | | | | | 12. On a down note.
| | | | by MAYORBOB | | | | at Wed 15 May 10:25pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
If we are all related to either Muhammad and Charlemagne, we are also related to a bunch of other people too. I wonder how many goatherders one would have to go through to get to Muhammad. And I wonder how many village idiots one would have to go through to get to Charlemagne.
Tending to final details.
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| | | | | | | | | | 20. pardon my birth, i just slipped out
| | | | by Jozef K Rad | | | | at Thu 16 May 7:51am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
sure. it doesn't surprise me that i'm related to charlemagne and mohammed. it wouldn't even surprise me to learn that i'm related to prominent cannibal savage-kings. or to brilliant and disturbed bards, the ones homer stole all his ideas from and then got the credit for later.
but i'm sure as hell not related to tom arnold. and you can't make me be. fuckers.
i liked my cousin humphry's work in the article, but i'm afraid my cousin chang didn't come off nearly as well. or rather--the thing where a relatively thoughtful article drags out the work of a trendy and somewhat charismatic mathematician because it gives the article slightly more cred? you know, like when he hauls in chang's statistical research and then "simplifies" it for everyone? yeah. i hate that.
two things. first of all i'm pretty sure mathematics is witchcraft. and i don't want to piss off any powerful practitioners of the black arts. i'm happy that they have managed to legitimize their work as "mathematics" so people don't burn them at the stake anymore. but i don't trust them.
second, and this is the serious point, (see what i did there? i was flippant and now boom here i come with the analysis) i don't understand exactly what kind of voodoo chang was working there with the numbers. many other intelligent readers might not. but i understand when someone is pulling a quarter out from behind my ear and expecting me to clap my hands.
and that's what introducing chang's research felt like. i didn't understand it well enough to refute it or agree with it, and i didn't buy the facile summaries given of the research in the article.
for instance Chang's model incorporates one crucial assumption: random mating in the part of the world under consideration. For example, every person in Europe would have to have an equal chance of marrying every other European of the opposite sex. well that seems like a big problem to me. or a note of real encouragement.
not understanding chang's methods, but understanding just enough to understand when things seem wrong, i'm left scratching my head and going "that ain't right".
if you drag in some idea or some research that it's reasonable to assume an intelligent reader might not be familiar with, it's your obligation to explain it as thoughtfully as possible. or leave it out. an unacceptable way to do it is to say something like His model is a mathematical proof that relies on such abstractions as Poisson distributions and Markov chains, but it can readily be applied to the real world. oooh, scary. yes. please don't scare me anymore with details, please just explain to me in simple words spoken slowly what is going on, mr author, and i will believe you.
it isn't as bad as all that. i really liked the article and thought it was mostly well written. it's just that bringing in new ideas and then refusing to explain them adequately is dirty pool. if you can't at least take a crack at explaining something to someone, then don't use it when you're talking to them.
the kids of today should defend themselves against the reagan myth
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| | | | | | 21. Re: pardon my birth, i just slipped out
| | | | by alaffin | | | | at Thu 16 May 8:39am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 20 | | | | | |
Wait . . . so what you're saying is that according to this guy if I move to Europe I have exactly the same chance of nailing hot chicks as anyone else? That's brilliant!
I mean over here woman seem somewhat repulsed by my grooming habits (which could be characterized as haphazard at best) and the pronounced hunch in my back. And for some reason the general female population of the US don't seem too keen on getting freaky with a guy who is about as wide as he is tall.
God bless those hot European babes! I'm getting my tickets today!
(In an effort to horribly belabor the obvious I would like to point out that taking as given a completely random mating pattern blows the whole thing out of the water. I'm totally stealing JoeKR's pattern of silly followed by serious. Go me!)
satire
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| | | | | 29. Re: pardon my birth, i just slipped out
| | | | by Jozef K Rad | | | | at Thu 16 May 10:51am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 21 | | | | | |
Wait . . . so what you're saying is that according to this guy if I move to Europe I have exactly the same chance of nailing hot chicks as anyone else?
ha ha indeed. and they say america is the land of opportunity. phooey.
mean over here woman seem somewhat repulsed by my grooming habits (which could be characterized as haphazard at best)
mr phillip j fry of futurama put it best "my parents were always after me to change underpants and groom myself. i was all, 'what am i? the pope?' "
the kids of today should defend themselves against the reagan myth
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| | | | | 23. Re: pardon my birth, i just slipped out
| | | | by 74westy | | | | at Thu 16 May 10:09am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 20 | | | | | |
"every person in Europe would have to have an equal chance of marrying every other European of the opposite sex." well that seems like a big problem to me.
Completely unreasonable assumptions are frequently part of a mathematical model. Everyday, standard operating procedure in Economics. The question is, "does the obvious falsity of the assumption have that big of an effect on the outcome?" The answer is, "who knows?" You usually can't answer that question because without the simplifying assumption the analysis becomes impossible.
So those who favour the model say, "the assumption doesn't really matter all that much" and those who oppose it say "yes it does!"
Getting rid of simplifying assumptions would mean that what we know we would know with a very high level of certainty. The down side is we would not know very much.
Bad news for those who want absolute mathematical certainty; good news for those who want to debate unanswerable questions on electronic fora.
My nearly forgotten point was that Chang's analysis does not fall like a house of cards because of this criticism but you and others have done us all a favour by disabusing any of us who mistook it for a mathematical proof.
I am Sparticus!
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| | | | | 27. Re: pardon my birth, i just slipped out
| | | | by Jozef K Rad | | | | at Thu 16 May 10:47am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 23 | | | | | |
My nearly forgotten point was that Chang's analysis does not fall like a house of cards because of this criticism but you and others have done us all a favour by disabusing any of us who mistook it for a mathematical proof.
yes, very true. and i hope it didn't sound as if i was saying it did. i know enough about mathematical models to know that outrageous assumptions don't necessarily make the theories outrageous.
my complaint was that (and this is due to my own ignorance, but it's an ignorance i think doesn't disqualify me from being an intelligent reader and an ignorance i think other intelligence readers might share) i have no idea given the facts in evidence how to evaluate this model.
i think you're completely right--there is probably no way to "simplify" the issues behind chang's thesis and proof so that a novice could grasp it. and if there were a way, what it would give in simplicity would be taken away in brevity and it would drag on for so long the main point of the article would have been lost.
i guess all i was saying is, for my money, stronger article just leaving out chang's research, or giving it as a kind of footnote. "kids, if you're interested in this idea, go to the library and look up chang's work".
the kids of today should defend themselves against the reagan myth
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| | | | | 46. Re: pardon my birth, i just slipped out
| | | | by M. Mosher | | | | at Thu 16 May 8:17pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 23 | | | | | |
Statistical proof is an oxymoron. Statistics deals with probability, not certainty. In plainer English, "probably" does not mean "certainly".
The assumption of equal likelihood of intermarriage is only for analysis. Using it, Chang's model says we only have to go back 600 years to find that all Europeans are related to each other and 100 years to find that all humans are related. The only question once we throw out the assumption of equal likelihood is how much farther into the past do we have to go before we are all related. This can't be answered by statistics.
The Discover channel had a program recently about mitochondrial DNA and how it can be used to see how related two people are. Mitochondrial DNA undergoes a fairly constant rate of genetic mutation and the Discover program claimed it can be used to demonstrate that we all descend from a single woman who lived 150,000 years ago. Of course, we also descend from various men as well, but mitochondrial DNA only passes from mother to child. Men do not pass it along so it is only useful to trace our maternal lineages.
The point is that geneticists would say we have to go back 150,000 years. Chang and maybe other statisticians say we have to go back about 2000 years. One thing that is certain is that somewhere in the past all of our lines have to converge.
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| | | | | 34. Poisson Distributions and Markov Chains
| | | | by Gates VP | | | | at Thu 16 May 11:37am | score of 2 informative | | in reply to comment 20 | | | | | |
These two things are actually very early math concepts for University. I've taught Markov Chains to my first year Linear Algebra students and Poisson distributions can be understood by first year Statistics students.
That said, if you made it through high school math, you can do a search on Google and quite likely get an online lesson.
Distributions have to deal with the percentage chance of multiple states occurring... OK, make it simple... you flip a coin ten times and count the number of heads. What are the odds that this number is two? This is the concept of distribution, but the model will use more variables.
A Markov chain is a sequence of matrices indicating the chances of something happening. Simple idea... let's say that if it is Sunny today, there is a 60% chance that it will be Sunny tomorrow and thus a 40% chance that it will be Rainy tomorrow. Likewise we'll say that if it is Rainy today, there is a 55% chance that it will be Sunny tomorrow and a 45% chance that it will be Rainy, so our matrix looks something like this:
Sunny: 0.60 0.55
Rainy: 0.40 0.45
yay, that was simple, but here's the tough question... if it is sunny today, what is the chance that it will be sunny two days from now? ten days from now?...
Markov chains give us a method to solve this and more... but you'd best check around the web for more info.
Hope that helps.
The King is dead, long live the King. - Gates VP
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| | | | | 38. Re: Poisson Distributions and Markov Chains
| | | | by Jozef K Rad | | | | at Thu 16 May 12:08pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 34 | | | | | |
That said, if you made it through high school math, you can do a search on Google and quite likely get an online lesson
i did make it through high school math, but then i had photos of my math teacher doing naughty things with the principal's husband. so i think that helped.
no, i appreciate the explanation on poisson distributions/markov chains. i had assumed poisson distribution had something to do with the way fresh fish were disseminated to restaurants.
i was just saying, though, that i don't like when articles introduce just enough of a mathematic model/physics theorem to browbeat the reader into going "okay, okay" and then discuss the model as though it were entirely legit.
clearly, very very good mathematicians disagree about chang's work. just as very good physicists disagreed (and still disagree) about the validity of einstein's work.
as an outsider, i find things like this interesting. but i find it impossible to take seriously claims made by an article relying on a specific construct/model whose veracity i am in no position to judge.
that said, i realize the point of the article was to be mildly stimulating and to be entertaining. and as i've said, it does that. i was entertained and stimulated.
the kids of today should defend themselves against the reagan myth
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| | | | | 37. Re: pardon my birth, i just slipped out
| | | | by sammy baby | | | | at Thu 16 May 12:01pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 20 | | | | | |
if you drag in some idea or some research that it's reasonable to assume an intelligent reader might not be familiar with, it's your obligation to explain it as thoughtfully as possible. or leave it out. an unacceptable way to do it is to say something like His model is a mathematical proof that relies on such abstractions as Poisson distributions and Markov chains, but it can readily be applied to the real world. oooh, scary. yes. My impression from reading the article was that the author wasn't really clear on Chang's models himself, and therefore used the "such abstractions as..." quip as a way of deflecting criticism. ("Listen, bastard, you think you can handle the details? Try a Poisson distribution on for size!")
For the record: a Poisson distribution is just a numerical distribution, like a bell curve (usually called a "normal" distribution). The Poisson is often used to model discrete events over time: for example, the number of Anonymous Idiot posts in a given story over time. Google coughed up this link for me.
A Markov sequence... is tougher. It looks like a collection of relationships in which past results have no impact on future results. I see in another link courtesy of Google that a "simple random walk" qualifies as a Markov sequence, which makes me suspect that a relationship where any individual has an equal chance of mating with other sexually compatable individuals is Markovian.
See? I used the word "Markovian" in a Plastic post. I r cool. (Disclaimer: I got a C- in Statistics.)
- in my plastic heart, forever, for art: what kind of lover am I? (e. mckeown)
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| | | | | | 24. euro-centric
| | | | by MrConnieLingus | | | | at Thu 16 May 10:13am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
I find this article somewhat disturbing in the fact that no mention of Latin or even African ancestry is made. I find it hard to believe that somehow Shaq is an offspring of Charlemagne
MrConnieLingus's member profile karma: -786 (disingenous incoherent brainDead onDope)
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| | | | | | | | 30. Cabbages, Kings
| | | | by petiex | | | | at Thu 16 May 11:03am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
My mom's mom's mom's father, John O'Hart wrote "Irish Pedigrees," a dubious geneology that traces the author's ancestry back to the 11th century Irish Monarch, Brian Boru. So, now it seems that I most likely share that royal lineage with just about every other jackass to have spilled forth from that dinky two-bit hunk of sod next to England. Fine. I can accept that.
What I wonder is, are Kings singled out as genealogical landmarks simply because of their position, or is it a long inheritance of economic power that tends to guarantee the survival of a particular blood-line. Because, if it's that second thing, the future human population might be entirely composed of Bill Gates's progeny.
"Astute and Helpful Bear." - Owl
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| | | | | | 41. Re: Cabbages, Kings
| | | | by SerpentSkirt | | | | at Thu 16 May 1:13pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 30 | | | | | |
Kings are singled out for 2 reasons: 1) cachet, of course, and 2) because there are better records for nobles than for commoners. When someone knighted, their ancestry was actually written down and kept. So says my aunt, the family genealogist. The noble lines are easiest to trace, and frequently have the best stories, too. I suspect that kings are easiest of all because it takes a longer time to decay from king --> commoner than from earl --> commoner.
Of course, geneology is just guessing. There was plenty of hanky panky back in the day; unless you are decended strictly matrilineally from royalty, there's always a chance your ancestor was the gardener. And since records are poorer for the female lines, well. Good luck. and that doesn't even address the faked knights' genealogies.
-SS
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| | | | | | 31. Genealogy 101
| | | | by nmiguy | | | | at Thu 16 May 11:09am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
they do explain why so many people claim to be descended from royalty or the Mayflower.
A great resource for folks looking to trace their roots is here.
I traced my family roots and found a maternal line that goes back to the Mayflower. It was exciting to find myself 13 generations removed from John Alden, 23 generations removed from celtic royalty, and further back to knights. Genealogy can be a fun hobby that really can hone ones research skills.
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| | | | | | 33. Not necessarily from Muhammam...
| | | | by jeffbiss | | | | at Thu 16 May 11:37am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
but we do have common ancestors:
1. Geneticists have found that there was the mitochondrial eve (not eve in the biblical, so settle down). This didn't mean we came from one female but from a small population of humans at around 200,000 years ago; The mitochondrial eve was the most recent common ancestor with regards to matrilineal DNA to all living humans today.
2. Geneticists, by using mitochondrial mutation rates, noticed that there was a great reduction of human population in the past, probably down to as few as a few thousand worldwide. This bottleneck occurred at roughly between 70,000 to 80,000 years ago which coincidently, was the approximate time of the Toba supervolcano's eruption. It was from this small population that survived a volcanic winter that all of us descended.
Direct genetic scientific research provides hard evidence that we have been derived from common ancestors so it shouldn't come as a surprise that pure mathematics and genealogical research also supports this. Of course the article goes back to much more recent times since actual birth records were used, but it is interesting that the same conclusion was reached.
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| | | | | | 50. Re: Not necessarily from Muhammam...
| | | | by Solon | | | | at Fri 17 May 6:30am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 33 | | | | | |
The 200,000 year figure commonly bandied about is not the figure for the most recent common ancestor (or MRCA, as it is usually abbreviated.) The fact of the matter is that thanks to recombination, every gene (or to be precise, every codon) has a genealogical history of it's own. The only reason that mitochondrial DNA is popular is that it doesn't undergo recombination, unlike most nuclear DNA.
To illustrate that the MRCA can have been much lived much more recently than 200,000 years ago, data from the non-recombining part of the Y-chromosome indicates that the most recent male ancestor of all human beings alive today lived between 50-60,000 years ago. (The research is publicly available on PNAS, but the authors slip my mind at present. Just search under "Y chromosome" and look only at reports dating to the year 2000.)
In any case, all of you complaining about Chang's model are making a great deal of ado about very little. We already know from the genetic information that European populations are rather genetically homogenous, suggesting that there has been a great deal of mixing between adjacent populations down through to recent times (see Cavalli-Sforza, 1994, for instance.) At most, the true date for the MRCA of all living Europeans would be pushed back to, say, 600 A.D.
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| | | | | | 35. The Six Degrees Principle
| | | | by rananite | | | | at Thu 16 May 11:42am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
According to common lore, everyone alive in the world today is connected by six "degrees" of acquaintances: I know someone who knows someone who knows someone else ... who knows anyone on the planet that you can select. This concept was explored mathematically in a recent Discover article. The idea is that most people are very cliquish, socializing with small groups of friends, but every so often one friend has a random connection to someone in a completely different group of people -- say, a friend whose pastor ran a mission in Kenya, or someone whose business partner stayed with a family in Novosibirsk -- which suddenly expands the number of acquaintances available to you. Just a small proportion of random connections in a cliquish world can lead to six degrees among the entire population.
It's not surprising to me that family trees would turn out to be similar. Most of my family might be descended from a small and insular set of Russians and Eastern European Jews, but go back just a little bit and you might find that one of the women was a convert from the indigenous community, and suddenly the entire community of Europe is opened up to me, Charlemagne and all. Royal families might be pretty insular, but every once in a while (or more, knowing most royal families) there's a king who sleeps around, and suddenly there are a lot more people whose blood runs blue. Just a few random connections can bring us a lot closer together...
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| | | | | | | | 40. Approximations
| | | | by JulianA | | | | at Thu 16 May 1:04pm | score of 2 astute | | | | | | |
As a former theoretical physicist, I'm used to the kinds of approximations Joseph Chang made (assuming any man and women are equally likely to mate). It's a standard approach: make some explicit assumptions in order to simplify an otherwise unsolvable problem. The results are often reasonable, and greater accuracy would require significantly more effort.
I've wondered about related questions. How far back in my ancestry would I need to go to find someone who wasn't Jewish? Who was Black? Who was my ancestor through two different lines of descendents? Or who was also the ancestor of my girlfriend, or someone else I know?
Julian's Jabberings
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| | | | | | 51. Re: Approximations
| | | | by MacGregor | | | | at Fri 17 May 11:08am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 40 | | | | | |
I'm not sure about your first two questions, but, to quote Cecil Adams,
"Demographer Kenneth Wachtel estimates that the typical English child born in 1947 would have had around 60,000 theoretical ancestors at the time of the discovery of America. Of this number, 95 percent would have been different individuals and 5 percent duplicates. (Sounds like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but you know what I mean.) Twenty generations back the kid would have 600,000 ancestors, one-third of which would be duplicates. At the time of the Black Death, he'd have had 3.5 million--30 percent real, 70 percent duplicates. The maximum number of "real" ancestors occurs around 1200 AD--2 million, some 80 percent of the population of England."
With "Duplicates" being persons who occupy more than one slot in the family tree.
Now, I realize that this statement applies to English people, but the numbers are probably somewhat similar (or possibly more extreme) for any population which tends not to marry outside te group.
"Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty" --As you like it, Act 2, Scene 3
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