3 ms·
Not necessarily. If you are descended from historically insular communities (like Ashkenazi Jews, for example) or geographically distant communities (take Nati
by evanb 6y ago
Not necessarily. If you are descended from historically insular communities (like Ashkenazi Jews, for example) or geographically distant communities (take Native Americans for a clear example) it is unlikely you have Dante as a direct ancestor.
You are right that in the infinite time limit, assuming nonzero mixing, either everybody or nobody will be Dante’s descendant.
- WalterBright 6y agoObviously. But everyone in Italy is fairly reasonable.
- barry-cotter 6y agoAshkenazi Jews are an insular community but I don’t think they’re insular enough not to have Dante among their ancestors. They have Polish/Slavic mitochondrial DNA among many other lines, and the explosion of that population was still in progress in Dante’s time. It’s entirely possible there’s no trace of Dante’s actual DNA because an ancestry share that small can just disappear by chance. But if he has living descendants he has living Ashkenazi descendants.