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By the same mathematical logic, almost everyone in the US today is a descendant of European royalty -- even people who are predominantly African or Native Ameri
by cs702 14y ago
By the same mathematical logic, almost everyone in the US today is a descendant of European royalty -- even people who are predominantly African or Native American. Similarly, everyone in the US with primarily European ancestry is a descendant of both Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and Charlemagne, the so-called "Father of Europe."
These claims were made by an entertaining article written 10 years ago in The Atlantic, "The Royal We," which covered the mathematical study of genealogy and is a good companion to the BBC piece: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/the-royal-we/302497/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/the-roya...
- arethuza 14y agoNice line from that article: "Just as we are descended from most of the people alive on the planet a few thousand years ago, several thousand years hence each of us will be an ancestor of the entire human race—or of no one at all."
- bstpierre 14y agoI've actually traced my ancestry back to Charlemagne. It's an interesting exercise. Some of my links are not very well substantiated, but the dozen or two generations from Charlemagne forward are fairly well documented, depending on how many of your ancestors were bastard children of some horny nobleman. (Of course there are countless poor peasant farmers between now and then as well.)
- te_platt 14y agoI've also traced my ancestry back to Charlemagne. It's good fun but it's not the iffy documentation that is the main problem. It's the milkman effect. In talking with a researcher at a genetic genealogy center he said that around 10% of the population has a different biological father than they think they do.
- pacaro 14y agoI'd love to see this either substantiated or debunked - I've seen this claim made and refuted many times, but have never found a truly reliable source.
- Cushman 14y agoMy recollection is that this number is based on a percentage of individuals seeking paternity tests-- where obviously we would expect to see a much larger number of false paternities showing up than in the general population.
- bstpierre 14y agoHi cousin! I've heard this too, but I thought it was a lower percentage. Are there any good (DNA-based?) studies to support it?