Man says he goes back to William the Conqueror

[zooterkin]

No it doesn't necessarily.

Royal families tend to have family nets rather than family trees.

Of course, so does everyone in this situation, but the mesh is pretty fine in European Royal families.

That would mean that more of the ancestors (say by the fourth generation from Charlemagne) are direct descendants of Charlemagne than the average European.

Indeed, and that’s taken to the extreme in the case of the Hapsburg family; covered in Rutherford’s book (and particularly amusing when you see him talking about it live).

 

[Retrograde]

Many of those "extinct" lines left a number of descendants through out of wedlock births, adultery, or morganatic marriages. Those decedents were ineligible to inherit much of anything or rule, but if we are discussing genetic lineages, they are still there.

Not to mention descent through female lines, also, with rare exceptions, likely ineligible to inherit or rule. England's Tudor dynasty is still around and thriving, although with several name changes, for example.

 

[Vixen]

See, now that's what an argument from authority looks like.

'I'm right because authority X says so too'. It's probably also a strawman because I don't believe that Dr. Sykes said there's something like 'the original Briton gene'

I clearly stated Sykes' ideas were archaic. At least he got the ball rolling. Study of Brits genetics is surprisingly modern.

 

[Vixen]

And whatever he said, it was about a decade ago, which is a long time in the very fast-moving area of genetic research.

Ninja-ed.

 

[Vixen]

Can you give a reason for your skepticism?

Because it is obvious to me that 'all Europeans are direct descendants of Charlemagne' is patently false. You would need to go back to say circa 300AD, and that person is more than likely to not be anyone particularly famous at all.

Why? Because for every 'king', 'royal' or 'noble', there are several million 'ordinary' folk. By those odds, 1/>1m, your chances of being royal are actually low probability, not high.

 

[Vixen]

I google (Bryan Sykes "briton gene") and this thread is the first hit. I don't think Sykes can be held responsible.

From wiki:

Bryan Clifford Sykes (born 9 September 1947) is a Fellow of Wolfson College, and Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford.[1][2]

Sykes published the first report on retrieving DNA from ancient bone (Nature, 1989). Sykes has been involved in a number of high-profile cases dealing with ancient DNA, including that of Cheddar Man. However, the Cheddar Man findings have been disputed and it has been suggested that the results were the consequence of contamination with modern DNA.[3] His work also suggested a Florida accountant by the name of Tom Robinson was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, a claim that was subsequently disproved.[4][5][6][7]

Sykes is best known outside the community of geneticists for his bestselling books on the investigation of human history and prehistory through studies of mitochondrial DNA. He is also the founder of Oxford Ancestors, a genealogical DNA testing firm.

Sykes was a leading authority until he fell out big time with new leading authority [=establishment] Chris Stringer. Before that it was Thor Heyerdahl who claimed there was no way Homo sapiens ever mated with Homo neanderthalensis. His was the final word set in stone.


...until it was discovered that, actually, they did. Whoops.

Moral: all of this is 'best opinion' from what we know so far.

 

[jimbob]

Because it is obvious to me that 'all Europeans are direct descendants of Charlemagne' is patently false. You would need to go back to say circa 300AD, and that person is more than likely to not be anyone particularly famous at all.

Why? Because for every 'king', 'royal' or 'noble', there are several million 'ordinary' folk. By those odds, 1/>1m, your chances of being royal are actually low probability, not high.

That isn't what they are saying.

High-status males with more offspring are likely to be later last common ancestors than other people simply by virtue of maths.

If Ghengis Khan sired 200 children and some of his higher-status male offspring also sired 200 children, then they are maybe 16 generations ahead of someone who only sired two children who survived to breed


But by your own figures, five centuries, one needs about one million ancestors, although there can be doubling up.

By ten centuries, you need a thousand billion ancestors, (and a smaller human population)

And you are still two centuries away from Charlemagne.

Every European alive in the Eighth Century either has no living descendants or is the ancestor of every living European.

 

[Vixen]

Why?



And?

Commonsense tells you. Just because as a male you have a near 50% chance of being an 'R' haplotype, it doesn't necessarily follow the guy sitting next to you is a near cousin even if he does have the same haplotype. R goes back about eight thousand years. A fourth or fifth cousin by definition only goes back four or five generations. It's crap logic.

The last seminar I attended (and yes, we were told to 'say hello to the person sitting next to you' [corny icebreaker {even vicars are at it}]) there was Raj on one side and a Kim Tse Tong on the other. As much as we like each other, we would be most disbelieving to be told we were 'fourth cousins'.

 

[Vixen]

Many of those "extinct" lines left a number of descendants through out of wedlock births, adultery, or morganatic marriages. Those decedents were ineligible to inherit much of anything or rule, but if we are discussing genetic lineages, they are still there.

Aha! False premise. Whilst the royals have concubines and mistresses all over the place, all it means is that a lot of working-class people have royal blood. It doesn't follow 'all Europeans are directly descended from Charlemagne, nor does follow in reverse that royals have equal amounts of 'common' blood. Court officials used to stand at the marital bed of a new king and queen to witness that she was a virgin and the marriage was consumed. Any hint of the baby being the valet's and she'd be executed.

 

[Vixen]

I've traced my family back to Piltdown Man.

I admire your courage in owning up to one of the biggest frauds in history.

 

[Vixen]

And even if there are currently no living descentants of those lineages (it happens), that doesn't apply to Charlemagne, because there are families who can trace their family tree back to him.

So by Rutherford's calculations, everyone with Western European ancestry alive today is directly related to Charlemagne. And to every other person alive in Europe at that time (provided their lineage hasn't completely died out).

And no, that does not mean a direct unbroken line of patrilineal descent.
But it does mean that every one of us has as much of Charlemagne's genes in us as some German count who can trace his family tree all the way back to the Carolingians.

Pure unsubstantiated conjecture.

 

[Vixen]

Indeed, and that’s taken to the extreme in the case of the Hapsburg family; covered in Rutherford’s book (and particularly amusing when you see him talking about it live).

If you knew anything about the Hapsburg dynasty, you would know they were anethema to the protestant reformists, so any interbreeding would have halted as of mid-1500's. People don't mate randomly, they are choosy.

 

[jimbob]

Aha! False premise. Whilst the royals have concubines and mistresses all over the place, all it means is that a lot of working-class people have royal blood. It doesn't follow 'all Europeans are directly descended from Charlemagne, nor does follow in reverse that royals have equal amounts of 'common' blood. Court officials used to stand at the marital bed of a new king and queen to witness that she was a virgin and the marriage was consumed. Any hint of the baby being the valet's and she'd be executed.

You are missing the point spectacularly.

By your own sums, if we were to get to the time of Charlemagne (8th Century) then if there was no inbreeding, you'd have needed more than a trillion ancestors alive at that time.

There was some social mobility between minor nobility and peasants in both directions, as well as between other strata of society in medieval Europe, and certainly before the futile* system was fully established.

It doesn't need much along with some intermarriage between moderately isolated communities, for the genes to spread given that you have 13 centuries for it to occur.




*cf Seller and Yeatman

 

[Vixen]

Not to mention descent through female lines, also, with rare exceptions, likely ineligible to inherit or rule. England's Tudor dynasty is still around and thriving, although with several name changes, for example.

Whilst 'commoners' did indeed not register marriages or births until relatively recently it does not follow in reverse that 'upper class' women had lots of babies with the servants, in sufficient quantity to claim, 'all of Europe can claim descent from her.'

 

[jimbob]

If you knew anything about the Hapsburg dynasty, you would know they were anethema to the protestant reformists, so any interbreeding would have halted as of mid-1500's. People don't mate randomly, they are choosy.

The British Royal family is definitely not Roman Catholic but are related to the protestant royal family trees, and the Catholic ones since before the Reformation at least.

a bit of light relief

https://www.nature.com/articles/hdy201325

 

[Vixen]

That isn't what they are saying.

High-status males with more offspring are likely to be later last common ancestors than other people simply by virtue of maths.

If Ghengis Khan sired 200 children and some of his higher-status male offspring also sired 200 children, then they are maybe 16 generations ahead of someone who only sired two children who survived to breed


But by your own figures, five centuries, one needs about one million ancestors, although there can be doubling up.

By ten centuries, you need a thousand billion ancestors, (and a smaller human population)

And you are still two centuries away from Charlemagne.

Every European alive in the Eighth Century either has no living descendants or is the ancestor of every living European.

Actually, there is a lot of 'doubling up'. For example, the relatively homogenous population of Finland. A few hundred years ago, it was only about 300K. Today it is 5m and still regarded as quite homogenous, compared to other populations. In effect, they have all been marrying distant cousins, amongst themselves. All Europeans do not have the same genes as each other.

Thomas Burke is 99% Irish which means his forebears have hardly mixed at all.

 

[crescent]

Court officials used to stand at the marital bed of a new king and queen to witness that she was a virgin and the marriage was consumed. Any hint of the baby being the valet's and she'd be executed.

"She" might have been a virgin. "He" might not have been, and might have fathered any number of illegitimate children by then.

We Americans get that Thomas Jefferson and any other number of slave owners fathered children by their slaves - whether by rape or (unequal) consent, they clearly had children with slaves. We know that much of the African American population (at least that portion descended from slavery) has white ancestors in the mix, even if there is no documentation of it. Power breeds unequally, immoral, and without consent - but it still breeds.

Things were different with European nobility, but the concept still applies. The rich and powerful men sleep around with the less powerful women. Maybe they rape them and use their power to get away with it. Maybe they use the power imbalance to gain something like consent. Either way, the powerful men father illegitimate children with the less powerful women. That has always been the case.

 

[Vixen]

You are missing the point spectacularly.

By your own sums, if we were to get to the time of Charlemagne (8th Century) then if there was no inbreeding, you'd have needed more than a trillion ancestors alive at that time.

There was some social mobility between minor nobility and peasants in both directions, as well as between other strata of society in medieval Europe, and certainly before the futile* system was fully established.

It doesn't need much along with some intermarriage between moderately isolated communities, for the genes to spread given that you have 13 centuries for it to occur.




*cf Seller and Yeatman

I agree there was much interbreeding of social classes. However, the claim 'All Europeans are descended from Charlemange' is patronising garbage, best reserved for impressionable school kids.

 

[jimbob]

Actually, there is a lot of 'doubling up'. For example, the relatively homogenous population of Finland. A few hundred years ago, it was only about 300K. Today it is 5m and still regarded as quite homogenous, compared to other populations. In effect, they have all been marrying distant cousins, amongst themselves. All Europeans do not have the same genes as each other.

Thomas Burke is 99% Irish which means his forebears have hardly mixed at all.

However, go back thirteen centuries, and you will find that there has been sufficient interbreeding that present Finns are still all would have Charlemagne as an ancestor (along with most other Europeans alive at that time who have any living descendants).

 

[Vixen]

"She" might have been a virgin. "He" might not have been, and might have fathered any number of illegitimate children by then.

We Americans get that Thomas Jefferson and any other number of slave owners fathered children by their slaves - whether by rape or (unequal) consent, they clearly had children with slaves. We know that much of the African American population (at least that portion descended from slavery) has white ancestors in the mix, even if there is no documentation of it. Power breeds unequally, immoral, and without consent - but it still breeds.

Things were different with European nobility, but the concept still applies. The rich and powerful men sleep around with the less powerful women. Maybe they rape them and use their power to get away with it. Maybe they use the power imbalance to gain something like consent. Either way, the powerful men father illegitimate children with the less powerful women. That has always been the case.

Now we are getting somewhere. Extrapolating from that, you can readily see that not 'all Americans are descended from Charlemagne', even if its Europeans slept with African slaves brought over from C16. Some will be a descendant, many will not be. This is because populations don't tend to mate randomly.