But
what does that really mean? James Tanner commented in a recent blog post (Genealogy
is not a competitive sport) about family trees that contain thousands
of names. He also made the point that having those large numbers is, for all
intents and purposes, meaningless.
Anyone
can add names to their family tree. And many only do just (or only) that,
regardless of whether they can justify relationships.
But
so what! If you want to go back a few million years we can make a case that we
are all related. In reality we can confidently only go back a few hundred
years - perhaps 15 generations. Beyond the early part of the 16th century we are stretching
credibility by listing ancestors or stating relationships. Few medieval records
list the names of people, certainly true for the “common” people from whom most
of us descend.
Many
family historians want to latch on to the nobility which I think happens
because only those few families published any kind of genealogical summaries.
How many times have you seen someone’s tree that goes back to Charlemagne? That’s 30 to 40 generations.
Adam
Rutherford poked a little fun about about relationships to the King of the
Franks in a 24 May 2015 piece in The
Guardian: So
you’re related to Charlemagne? You and every other living European… He
comments: “I am a direct descendent of
someone of similar greatness: Charlemagne, Carolingian King of the Franks, Holy
Roman Emperor, the great European conciliator. Quelle surprise!” He goes on
to state, “This is merely a numbers game.
You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on.
But this ancestral expansion is not borne back ceaselessly into the past. If it
were, your family tree when Charlemagne was Le Grand Fromage would harbour more than a billion ancestors
– more people than were alive then.”
The
absence of true records of the greater proportion of the population over the
centuries before about AD 1300 compels many people to attach themselves to
those who have been named in formal documents. Seemingly, if you can trace a
connection to any member of a European royal family then you are a descendant of
Charlemagne (see Descendants
of Charlemagne).
There
is also an assumption that many members of ruling or royal families had scores
of illegitimate children who somehow became the ancestors of so many of us. I
seriously doubt that is true as there has always been a much larger number of
people unrelated to those families. Their descendants would logically still
make up most of the population today. Connections to any branch of royalty are
often very tentative, perhaps even more like wishful thinking.
If
you want to go back to Numero Uno in
terms of human evolution then we can probably say we are all related. But that
analysis is meaningless for family history studies. DNA may help us find or
confirm some familial relationships within a few generations and among some
close cousins but it won’t tell the whole story about our families and that is
what we are really after, aren’t we?
There
should be reservations even using DNA, assuming we could get samples from
people as far back as the 9th century. One shares less than 1% of
their DNA with their 6th great-grandparents which would make you
wonder whether you can even truly demonstrate a blood relationship. The number is not
even statistically relevant going back past 20 generations.
Going back to another post by James Tanner (Sourcecentric
Genealogy), to conclusively show relationships or connections to past
generations, one must work with bona fide
historical records. Even some royal families’ trees or publication of them may
be more fiction than fact so researchers must go beyond the summaries to find
actual church or other records. And, again, any document dated earlier than the
14th century should be used with caution.
So,
is everyone related to everyone else? Only in the most general, biological
sense but not in any meaningful one with regard to family history!
