Ryan Tubridy
was shocked to discover he descends from
Edward III.
It may be some comfort to his Irish nationalist beliefs
to learn he also descends
(through the House of York)
from
Brian Boru.
Contrary to the program,
Rosanna Davison
does not descend from the half-brother of William the Conqueror.
However she does descend from
William the Conqueror
himself many times over.
In fact, she descends from
James IV, King of Scotland
and from
Edward III.
After my father's death, I got serious about solving the Blennerhassett problem before my time ran out.
Dad was always interested in this problem,
but he never got to see the solution.
My father, with whom I went on family tree research trips for 25 years,
died of a sudden and unexpected illness on 27 Feb 2008.
His family is heartbroken.
He was a great father. I was very close to him.
Crenson nicely phrases how we only need one ancestor to be
physically descended from someone.
That genealogy is not the pursuit of broad patterns (like genetics).
Genealogy is the pursuit of statistical artefacts.
"Though people like to think of culture, language and religion as barriers between groups,
history is full of religious conversions, intermarriages, illegitimate births and adoptions
across those lines. ...
"And the thing is, you only need one," said Mark Humphrys,
...
One ancestral link to another cultural group among your millions of forbears,
and you share ancestors with everyone in that group. So everyone who reproduced with somebody
who was born far from their own natal home
- every sailor blown off course, every young man who set off to seek his fortune,
every woman who left home with a trader from a foreign land
- as long as they had children, they helped weave the tight web of brotherhood we all share."
Olson points out that
The Da Vinci Code does not understand genealogy:
"no matter how the court case turns out, both books are confused. If anyone living today is descended from Jesus, so are most of us on the planet."
He criticises DNA studies, which
- by focusing on male-male or female-female lines only -
make people
look less connected than they really are:
"The risk of today's genetic genealogy tests is that they tend to
divide people into groups,
whereas the real message that emerges from genealogy is one of connections.
...
People may like to think that they're descended from some ancient group while other people are not. But human ancestry doesn't work that way".
In 2005 I got non-shared-PC,
always-on broadband at home
for the first time in my life.
(Previously it was dial-up,
or for one year shared-PC broadband.)
As a result, since 2005 I have made huge progress on the family tree
and getting it all online.
Burke's Peerage
was
first published in 1826,
and for 178 years their entry for PEMBROKE excluded the Gibbon line
because it was illegitimate.
When Burke's Peerage was re-launched in 1999,
they said they would include illegitimate lines,
so I contacted them in 2000.
Due to my research, in 2004
I managed to get Gibbon
into
Burke's Peerage.
They had been excluded from it for
178 years.
I am quoted in a
Nature news feature
(copied here)
on
the paper
[Rohde et al., 2004].
I speculate:
"Looking at the whole sweep of the Americas, Europe, Asia, right across to Japan,
I wouldn't be surprised if we had a common ancestor in the AD years."
Note that it slightly misquotes me that:
"A single prolific parent can have a vast influence".
The original parent doesn't actually have to be prolific.
All they need to have is 2 children to be a MRCA.
The Europeans,
Radio National, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation),
brief interview,
11 Nov,
broadcast
15th Dec 2002.
The audio link
is not working.
See a hilarious reference to this in
Opinion Journal
(copied here)
from The Wall Street Journal,
25 Nov 2002,
in a discussion of "post-traumatic slavery disorder"
and the universal victimhood (and guilt!)
of our ancestors.
The readers' suggestions here,
with their laid-back approach to
crimes committed against their ancestors,
is
exactly how I think people should think about ancestry -
instead of nursing ancient grievances
like children.
The Todd Mundt Show,
National Public Radio,
4 minute interview,
6 June,
broadcast
28 June 2002.
Formerly here:
at 28 minutes in.
I thought this went well, except one point:
A caller to the show asked how this related to
all of humanity descending from
the sons of Noah,
or some such nonsense.
I did not want to waste the show
discussing
creationism and biblical literalism,
so I just ignored it.
Anyway, for the record, no, it does not relate to the sons of Noah
after the Flood, since
no such people existed
and no such event ever took place.
Steve Cook, May 25, 2004:
"If Mark Humphrys is right, a thousand secret kings walk down every city street, untroubled by the weight of their crowns."
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Research involves travel and many expenses.
Some research "things to do"
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