Author Topic: Oldest families  (Read 7474 times)

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #25 on: 14 October, 2018, 08:57:24 pm »
The idea of a family going back more than a few generations is dubious anyway.

Go back 10 generations which is only about 250 years and you've got 1,000 great great great...parents.

20 generations or 500 years it's 1 million.

And that's not including all the ancestors in the generations in between.

From my mother's studies into the relations of every single Devonian her family tree, after a few generations you start to see that a lot of those relatives are actually not individually exclusive. Back more than about 150 years people invariably married within a few miles of where they grew up. Outside of major cities, that would have been from villages of only a few families, so the family inter-relationships get rather complex.

Continuous to this day. My sister and her husband are both second generation descendants of the Irish diaspora. Turns out our grandparents are form the same small market town in Mayo and we have several relatives in common.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #26 on: 14 October, 2018, 09:32:51 pm »
The idea of a family going back more than a few generations is dubious anyway.

Go back 10 generations which is only about 250 years and you've got 1,000 great great great...parents.

20 generations or 500 years it's 1 million.

And that's not including all the ancestors in the generations in between.

From my mother's studies into the relations of every single Devonian her family tree, after a few generations you start to see that a lot of those relatives are actually not individually exclusive. Back more than about 150 years people invariably mostly married within a few miles of where they grew up. Outside of major cities, that would have been from villages of only a few families, so the family inter-relationships get rather complex.

People have always travelled. That might be a minority, but it has always happened both in the poorer classes (builders, entertainers, whatever) and the richer (anyone for a crusade?)

ian

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #27 on: 14 October, 2018, 09:51:27 pm »
Populations aren't nearly as static as we think, it just takes one person each generation to flee the familial abode. Inbreeding will certainly push it back in some areas, but ultimately, once you pass between 30-35 generations, we all share an ancestor. I may except Norfolk, of course.

Really, even with someone from China, Central Africa or an indignant New Zealander ? Plus if we restrict this to Europe the Black Death did a great big reset wiping out 1/3 of teh population and whole villages.

The estimate is for Europe, but holds elsewhere, we can do the math – it's actually straightforward to model. Die-offs, of course, concentrate the effect, as does any other genetic bottleneck. It's quite surprising, even assuming limited levels of outbreeding, how quickly genetic material spreads, despite a clear historical preference for ringing the bells of our first and second cousins.

I'm not arguing that it's not fun to trace your ancestry (mine are all miners, bare-knuckle fighters, and carnies), just that ultimately, we're all related, and you generally don't need to go back that far to find shared ancestry.

Kim

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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #28 on: 14 October, 2018, 09:53:30 pm »
I'm not arguing that it's not fun to trace your ancestry (mine are all miners, bare-knuckle fighters, and carnies)

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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #29 on: 14 October, 2018, 10:02:58 pm »
Doesn't mitochondrial DNA analysis reveal that all of western Europe's indigenous population came from only six women ?
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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #30 on: 14 October, 2018, 10:32:14 pm »
Who signally failed to die in chilbirth........

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #31 on: 14 October, 2018, 10:58:02 pm »
The Spanish Armada is supposed to have brought an influx of foreign genes into Scotland as the Spanish sailors who survived married local women.

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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #32 on: 14 October, 2018, 11:28:11 pm »
Dunno but if it's true, probably explains why Scots and Englanders can't understand each other.
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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #33 on: 14 October, 2018, 11:36:34 pm »
I wonder how old the oldest families are? Well I know we all go back to some ancestor in teh rift valley but I mean documented. Can any family in Europe for example trace its ancestry back to Imperial Rome ?

Aren't all "families" by definition as old as mankind itself? No one just "sprung up" out of nowhere, everyone was born to two parents.

Define "family" though...

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #34 on: 15 October, 2018, 11:06:59 am »
Ooh they did find some chaps in a German village are definitely related (DNA tests) to some 3000 year old remains found in a cave in the same area. Nothing about anyone in-between though so that doesn't really count just shows some people don't travel much ...
There was also a bloke in Cheddar who was found by DNA tests to be related to a skeleton of similar age found in one of the caves there.

He shared a still extant Mt DNA haplogroup with the skeleton which means at some point in the distant past they shared a female ancestor. I can't remember which haplogroup it was but the relation ship could have applied to a good proportion of the indigenous population. (He was a local teacher and the team did actually get a closer match with one of the schools pupils. Common sense triumphed when they realised that some grubby tabloid was likely to try and get the girl to pose in a loincloth or something worse and they agreed to put the safely middleaged teacher forward as the suggested descendent.)

Doesn't mitochondrial DNA analysis reveal that all of western Europe's indigenous population came from only six women ?

The original estimate was seven indigenous haplogroups in West Eurasia, subsequent research has expanded and complicated that a bit but it's still mostly valid
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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #35 on: 15 October, 2018, 11:14:38 am »
I wonder how old the oldest families are? Well I know we all go back to some ancestor in teh rift valley but I mean documented. Can any family in Europe for example trace its ancestry back to Imperial Rome ?

Aren't all "families" by definition as old as mankind itself? No one just "sprung up" out of nowhere, everyone was born to two parents.


This is of course true. The original point was a family who has documented history going back to imperial Rome.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

T42

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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #36 on: 15 October, 2018, 01:58:44 pm »
The Spanish Armada is supposed to have brought an influx of foreign genes into Scotland as the Spanish sailors who survived married local women.

Yup: I used to work with a bloke from Buckie whose name was Hendry Dalgano.
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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #37 on: 15 October, 2018, 07:34:22 pm »
Or Tedeschi, which is Italian for German (and some are now in England).

Meanwhile there is something called the <my-family-name> scroll which purports to trace lineage back* via Noah to Seth and Adam.  I suspect it is a work of fiction.  ::-)
I can, otoh, probably trace back to the normans (with massive help from previous family historians), but no further.
(Same should be true for JenM as she has same surname and I've always been told we're all related on account of said norman invader.)

Royal ('royal') lineage is probably the best documented.

*I think assorted kings of some description were involved, but the only time I saw (a copy of) this wonder was over 30 years ago.
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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #38 on: 16 October, 2018, 06:15:29 am »
Royal ('royal') lineage is probably the best documented.

Yes, and, although kings and noblemen fathered numerous bastard offspring in days of yore, it would have been much less common for their wives to provide illegitimate progeny.  *cough* Harry *cough* thobut...

T42

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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #39 on: 16 October, 2018, 10:21:08 am »
Chum of mine managed to trace his lineage back to one of the Bourbons' bastards.  My own are none so distinguished: Scots transplanted to Ulster under James I and a Yorkshireman who helped Cromwell slaughter half of Wexford and settled there in the goodwill thus generated. And that lot just on my father's side. Mum's side was untraceable beyond 2 generations: Vale of Leven, she always said.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #40 on: 29 October, 2018, 06:05:36 am »

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #41 on: 29 October, 2018, 09:26:09 am »
I met an interesting chap in France some years ago ( a prof at a northern university)  who claimed that his family having changed their name during the revolution, were actually decended from the first kings of Jerusalem.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #42 on: 29 October, 2018, 10:16:50 am »
I met an interesting chap in France some years ago ( a prof at a northern university)  who claimed that his family having changed their name during the revolution, were actually decended from the first kings of Jerusalem.

Crusader or Jewish?
;D  Andrij.  I pronounce you Complete and Utter GIT   :thumbsup:

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #43 on: 29 October, 2018, 11:15:38 am »
Godfrey de Bouillon - Crusader 1099 or thereabouts.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #44 on: 29 October, 2018, 11:21:53 am »
that's souper!

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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #45 on: 29 October, 2018, 11:51:03 am »
Go back to 1400 and everyone in Europe shares their ancestry, so it's a bit of a vanity to trace back further. Even if you find an ancestor in Imperial Rome, you'll share that lineage with practically everyone else in Europe (and much of the western world).

See https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/the-royal-we/302497/

That's a vast simplification and probably incorrect. It takes no account of how stationary populations were. The chances of someone from the Lake District meeting never mind having offspring with someone form Greece in 400-1800BC (basically from the withdrawal of |Roman Imperial troops from the UK to the Industrial revolution) was tiny. The same for most of Europe.  Don't they say the bicycle was the most important thing ever for the mixing up of genes in Europe.

Future generations will all claim to be descended from Abraham.

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Re: Oldest families
« Reply #46 on: 29 October, 2018, 12:37:02 pm »
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #47 on: 29 October, 2018, 01:44:09 pm »
Yeah, came from hardy stock

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #48 on: 29 October, 2018, 03:06:03 pm »
A soupcon. We have currently got back to 1571 on my dad's side whereas the Missus is 17th gen grandaughter of the Bruce, apparently. Lot of Irish in the mix and one grandparent who was allegedly thrown off a train by his platoon during the Boer War.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Re: Oldest families
« Reply #49 on: 05 November, 2018, 11:51:55 am »
Mrs E's great, great, great grandmother is said to have been a Persian princess, descended from Alexander the Great. She is said to have been rescued from her stepfather, an Afghan warlord , during the First Afghan War, by a Scottish officer in the East India Companys private army.

I don't know what (if any) documentation there is. I suspect that any records have long been lost in the mists of time in Iran or Afghanistan.