It's almost more surprising to reflect that every one of us is the result of an unbroken line of sexually active people, primates, mammals, amphibians and so on, back to the very beginning of life on earth.
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do you get freaked out knowing you dont know who you were related to in 950AD?
- Thread starter iOrlando
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That's something that's crossed my mind before too. Quite mind boggling when you think about it.
The House of Jaffa has only been traced back to the mid-Seventeeth Century, so unfortunately I couldn't identify any amphibians I might be related to with any degree of certainty.
Yes, I do know who my ancestors were in 950 AD.
I even have their photos and drivers licenses somewhere......
I even have their photos and drivers licenses somewhere......
We're all related
Any given forum user @ MacRumors is at least a 50th cousin to every user @ MacRumors...
Any given forum user @ MacRumors is at least a 50th cousin to every user @ MacRumors...
As I recall from an article in The Straight Dope, due to the effect of "pedigree collapse" (that fact that you don't have a true geometric progression in the generations of your ancestors owing to distant cousins marrying and producing offspring) when you get back to about 1200 AD, the number of actual ancestors maxes out at about two million. The rest are "duplicates" (I know, sounds like Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
So yeah, around 950 AD, I had about two million ancestors. Yikes.
So yeah, around 950 AD, I had about two million ancestors. Yikes.
If anything, you're ignoring history...
The 1890s were not only the "Gilded Age" but also the golden age of American genealogy. Probably the first stage of widespread interest in genealogy was the Napoleonic era.
There are any number of reasons why people lose track of who begat them, many of them valid. Probably the biggest one is that people's life spans in 950 were pretty short, not only that but the literacy rate was probably about 5%.
Peter's ancestors appeared in the early 1700s in Cornwall. I've been unable to trace them any further back. They may have come from France. Some of my Mom's ancestry has been traced back to 1519 in Finland. To go any further back is a matter of luck and perserverance.
Very few people have done this in the past few centuries, but now with all the ways possible, it would be nice to write something about ourselves, diary, journal, blog, facebook profile, whatever, so that in a few generations our descendants can have some, granted vague, knowledge of who we were, what we liked to do, how we looked like, etc.
Imagine if you had some info about a relative that lived some 250 years ago, if you could see what he looked like, maybe you look a bit like him/her, maybe they liked to watch the sky just like you, etc.
We usually do this by looking at our parents or grandparents, they are the first people that tell us that we look like another relative, maybe a grandma tells you that you look like a great uncle she had, so you end up looking like a guy that was born some 100 years before you, relatives often they say that you have the same attitude/temper/likes/looks/etc as this other relative that was dead long before your parents were even born and you're just left wondering why is that, what else was this person into, etc.
Yeah it is interesting when you really think about it.
Imagine if you had some info about a relative that lived some 250 years ago, if you could see what he looked like, maybe you look a bit like him/her, maybe they liked to watch the sky just like you, etc.
We usually do this by looking at our parents or grandparents, they are the first people that tell us that we look like another relative, maybe a grandma tells you that you look like a great uncle she had, so you end up looking like a guy that was born some 100 years before you, relatives often they say that you have the same attitude/temper/likes/looks/etc as this other relative that was dead long before your parents were even born and you're just left wondering why is that, what else was this person into, etc.
Yeah it is interesting when you really think about it.
My Great Aunt Opal has traced my father's side of the family back to an ancestor named Benjamin who came to America as an indentured servant from England. She compiled the family tree/geneology going all the way back to him and put it all together in a hardbound book that is about two inches thick. For a long time every member of the family was given a copy as a high school graduation present. I'm in the book, but I'm not sure about generations beyond me.
I remember reading somewhere... take any two Europeans... now go back 1000 years (1009 AD)... and there is a 75% chance that these two random people have a common relative. People in ancient times moved about a lot more than we think.
Another one (has nothing to do with this topic) is immortality. Lets say that you don't grow old, don't get sick. The only things you can die from is accidents (plane, car, earthquake, volcano, etc). The average age of death would be about 2000 years old and the oldest people on earth would only live to be 12000 to 14000 years old before the law of averages caught up to them and they died in an accident or natural disaster.
Another one (has nothing to do with this topic) is immortality. Lets say that you don't grow old, don't get sick. The only things you can die from is accidents (plane, car, earthquake, volcano, etc). The average age of death would be about 2000 years old and the oldest people on earth would only live to be 12000 to 14000 years old before the law of averages caught up to them and they died in an accident or natural disaster.
I tell people that all the time. All our ancestors lived long enough to have children. Not a small feat considering how hard life was at times.
I never worried about that far back, but I did want to make a family tree going back to the early 1800s, which is hard for some countries that don't keep good records.
I talked to a geneologist who works with the Mormon Church, and they said it's very hard to get accurate records for countries that were closed off to the west, or even for the church who first introduced a form a Christianity to their country in measurable numbers.
One thing that helped was the fact that women started having babies almost as soon as they could. Marriage at fourteen was not uncommon. Having six or seven kids by the time she was twenty-five might have been considered average.
See? Teen sex was not invented in the 1960s...
It really depended upon the time period. During the Napoleonic era, early 1800s, the average girl was having her first period at the age of 17. Most did not get married until they were 17 or 18.
In my family tree, out of about 20 marriages where the girl was less than 18, only three of them happened in the old countries, the rest happened in Canada or the US and most from 1850 onwards. Peter, the guy in my avatar, was 28 when he married his wife who was 14. Their first child wasn't born until Mary Ann was 17.5 years old. It's actually very rare to find women who gave birth earlier than 16 during the industrial era (~late 1700s to early 1900s).
In today's youth, it's unfortunate to hear more than a few stories of girls 15-18 having kids that are unplanned. I have seen more of this on the rise in my county. But I concede it could be the popular news shocker story that seems to have graced the boob tube in the last five or ten years.
During the whole AIDS campaign and incredible popularity, here and elsewhere, of condoms in the 80s and 90s had a positive side effect in reducing teen pregnancy.
But this last decade has been a disaster and there could be more than a few major factors contributing to this. Killing off science and sex ed classes, either due to lack of funds or political pressure, does not help and neither does using the "abstinence" until marriage argument.
It's hard enough for an adult, for whatever reason, to be abstinent, but how could we expect this of teens with their usual lack of judgment and raging hormones?
I agree wholeheartedly. So many people get married, and then get busy w having many children - which they then proceed to NOT raise to be respectful, contributing members of society.