The further you go back, the more you're descended from everybody (or anybody) but from nobody in particular. Go back 10 generations, and that is 2 to the power of 10, so you share only a tiny bit with that particular ancestor, about a tenth of percent. So even if biological descent is relevant to you, you should not look back more than a few generations. If you know who your grandparents are and who they think they are descended from, more or less, that's all you need.
Monday, October 15, 2018
You are descended from who you think you are
Go back 30 generations or so, and you have billion ancestors. The only problem is that there weren't a billion people on the face of the earth 1,000 years ago, so you are really descended from just about everyone, in some particular corner of the world, everyone that is who actually has living descendants at all.
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Well, I think the Inquistion went back 10 generations and the Nazis, 5, although it was less serious if that Jewish blood & religious practice were in generations 4 and 5. Where I live your exact looks matter, too. And it is a matter of real pride to be descended from people who weren't slaves, were free before Emancipation. And I find that so much is explained about my family members when you know the history of their families, the identity narratives of those they grew up with. Most people don't know more than 3 generations' worth of information but I'm very glad to have more.
A minor issue in the argument:
"The only problem is that there weren't a billion people on the face of the earth 1,000 years ago, so you are really descended from just about everyone,..."
But not from everyone who was alive 1000 years ago. The branches of the tree start merging with one another much sooner than 30 generations up the tree. Put another way, the number of our ancestors alive a given number of years ago is not exponential, beyond say 200 years.
It's true that there's a point in the past where the sets of all our ancestors merge completely, but it's in the hundreds of thousands of years ago.
And as Leslie says, this is all irrelevant for the sort of descent that matters socially.
Right, so if your lines of descent merge, as must be the case mathematically, then you are descended from everyone relevant, say, in England if most of your ancestry is from there. The number of ancestors is not exponential in that sense, but there are a lot of them, and you descended from a hell of a lot of people in proportion to the number in the populations from which you descended.
What matters socially is a combination of fictive descent (how you want to identify, social conventions and outward appearance) and your more immediate parentage.
I know for a fact I am related to many of the founders of the US. The way this happened is that I have at least 1 line on each side that came in the early 17th C. If you have that, you are then almost necessarily related to, and if you're elite descended directly from the founders. It's not uncommon.
When I was working on genealogy of my father's paternal line I came across some Saudi prince who had had the time to actually trace his own paternal line back to king David. I'm sure he's right -- when you consider how many children all those kings had, it's not that unlikely to be living now and be a direct descendant.
Which is not to say that the specific pedigree he had worked out is correct.
Leslie, you and I must be related too (in the documentable sense) -- Mavericks came over about 1630 if I recall. As you say, not uncommon. When I was young, I thought it was interesting / important, to a degree that embarrasses me greatly now.
I'm probably Leslie's cousin too, and Vance's, since my family goes back to then in the US. But I don't put as much store in that as I used to either, my lineage to the Mayhews and Hinckleys of Mass.
There's a story about a Spaniard in my family many generations back. It's used to explain dark hair and emotional excess. I also sometimes use it to explain, like Leonard Cohen, the few good poems I've written.
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