Genealogy research by Mark Humphrys.
Genealogy research by Mark Humphrys.
| Introduction |
Common ancestors of all humans The "Bush and Strongbow" controversy The "McCain and Robert the Bruce" controversy
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All humanity is interrelated many times over (contrary to what an endless procession of racists and tribalists throughout history have claimed or implied). For any two humans in history or today, it is not a question of do they have a common ancestor, it is only a question of when was the most recent one. If we had full genealogical records for all of human history and pre-history, then any two living people on earth could identify their closest relationship to each other. Or indeed any two living organisms on earth, since DNA probably did not evolve twice. One could also pick any famous person, alive or dead, and show your closest relationship to them. For they are all related. See pre-historical estimates for Common ancestors of all humans.
Since we don't have such records, we have to make do with what is documented. As we travel far enough back in time, what is documented continuously is of course only the royalty and nobility - the ruling elite, if you like. Lines from major religious figures are also sometimes preserved, but usually only because the ruling elite ends up descended from them.
You will be aware, hopefully, that the English, French and other European royal families are all inter-related, and all descend ultimately from Charlemagne.
So to give the list some structure, I organise it around the English monarchs, and I show short descents from the most recent monarch, rather than everyone needing a very long descent going all the way back to Charlemagne. I organise the list in a nested format to make it easy to see how later monarchs descend from earlier ones. Every person in my list descends ultimately from Charlemagne.
The Irish Royal line is another. It can easily be seen that, of the people below, almost all of them after Edward I (and all of them after Henry VII) are descendants of the High Kings of Ireland.
There have been attempts to construct an Islamic family tree, on which would be famous Muslims and (maybe) famous Christian westerners. The Islamic world collects alleged descents of famous Muslim people from the Prophet Muhammad. Some of these may be true.
There have also been attempts to show descent of European royal and noble houses from Muslim lines and ultimately from the Prophet Muhammad, but none are proved.
For much of the non-Western world, genealogies are lost. In many parts of the world, a succession of tyrants have destroyed people's connection to the past by burning the country's genealogies. Communists did this deliberately, as part of their ideology. (*) Religions also often destroyed the libraries and genealogies of other religions. Examples include:
(*) Ironically, given communist contempt for genealogy, all the following have proven Royal Descents:
Really unifying the world on one tree now will have to depend on ongoing marriage rather than further historical discoveries. With the increasing rate of intermarriage between different cultures (or at least, people with different ancestral cultures) there will eventually develop a "World Family Tree", outside of which very few people will lie. In a few centuries' time, the entire world will be provably descended from Charlemagne (or perhaps some non-Western common ancestor) at birth. Everyone will be provably related to everyone else.
There is exponential growth (going backward) and also exponential growth (going forward).
See estimates for Common ancestors of all humans, which has some surprising findings. Restricting ourselves just to Europe (and those of European descent abroad) it is quite likely that the most recent common ancestor of the West lies within historical times. It is possible, for example, that every single westerner descends from Charlemagne.
Some people think these kind of descents are contrived, in that, say, Elizabeth II is the "real" descendant of William the Conqueror, and all these are rather artificial descents. This betrays a lack of understanding of history. The House of Windsor is an arbitrary subset of the millions of proven direct descendants of William the Conqueror. The Royal line is the product of a long series of political decisions over the years, rather than the result of following any unvarying rule. (And arguably there's nothing wrong with that. After all, it makes it more democratic.)
To make it clear, everyone in this list is a direct descendant of Charlemagne in the same sense that any member of modern royalty is. I only ever use "ancestor" or "descendant" to mean "direct ancestor" or "direct descendant". If someone is a brother or cousin of your direct ancestor, some people would call them a "collateral ancestor", or even just an "ancestor". To me they are not your ancestor but rather a blood relation.
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Known Royal Descents:
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No proven Royal Descent:
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"To nationalists, shared blood is everything: for them, history is made in bed.
Biology is the test of their ideas, and usually it proves them wrong."
- Steve Jones, in [Jones, 1996].
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