
You’re Descended from Royalty and So Is Everybody Else - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/56/perspective/youre-descended-from-royalty-and-so-is-everybody-else
======
rzzzwilson

        Charlemagne is one of a handful of kings who gets awarded
        the post-nominal accolade “the Great.” His early life
        remains mysterious and the stories are assembled from
        various sources, but it seems he was born around 742 B.C.
    

So, Charlemagne was born around 742 B.C.? Doubt it!

~~~
gumby
Makes sense: since he noticed the calendar counting backwards he hung around
to collect the holy foreskin and then waited until the Popes evolved and
became powerful enough so he could give it to them.

It’s the simplest explanation.

~~~
QAPereo
Oh it would be, but we’ve known for centuries that the holy prepuce was
actually...

 _According to an unconfirmed 19th-century source,[14][15] in the late 17th
century the Vatican librarian Leo Allatius wrote an unpublished[16] treatise
entitled De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba (A Discussion of the
Foreskin of Our Lord Jesus Christ), claiming that the Holy Prepuce ascended,
like Jesus himself, and was transformed into the rings of Saturn._

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce#Literary_allusi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce#Literary_allusions)

~~~
gumby
Woah, so Charlemagne was making it up??? _Mind blown_

~~~
QAPereo
Never meet your heroes, am I right?

------
hateful
I prefer the Wait But Why article on this subject:
[https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/01/your-family-past-present-
and-...](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/01/your-family-past-present-and-
future.html)

~~~
freedomben
I really resonate with his story about asking Nana about her history. My
grandparents died several years ago, and just a couple years back I started to
actually care about my family history and wanting to know more. I asked my dad
a bunch of questions, and I was quite disappointed at how many of his answers
were variants of: "Your grandma would know this, but I'm not sure. I was too
young #{['to care', 'to remember', 'to understand'].shuffle.first}"

If your grandparents are still alive, I completely second the author's advice
to talk to them about the family history. I'm in the process of recording
podcasts (for family use only, never to be released publicly) with my parents
while they still have sharp-ish minds. Assuming the AI apocalypse doesn't wipe
us out, I think my kids will really treasure this, and their kids maybe more
so.

~~~
nitwit005
You might not have missed as much as you think, as I tried this with my
grandmother. She actually insisted on telling us the family history.
Unfortunately, the moment I started asking deeper questions like "And where
was he during the war?" she didn't know, even for close relatives. I basically
got her story.

My father made her sit down and tell us who the people in the photographs she
had were, writing in the names on the pages they were glued to. She got about
50% of them, but given the bias toward more photos close family members, I
think she could only identify about 25-30% of the people.

------
improbable22
You're more strongly descended from royalty (or at least nobility) than this.
Because rich people had more children for most of history, and thus their
offspring tended to displace those of the poor.

For instance, if the top 10% have four kids each, and the total population
barely grows for 5 centuries (not implausible numbers, from memory) then this
isn't a small effect.

If this sounds interesting you should read Gregory Clark:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The poor traditionally have much larger families. But counting surviving
children, perhaps the rich make out ahead in the end?

~~~
improbable22
No, this is not true. Or rather, it's true today (in the west) but this is
historically very unusual.

We actually have surprisingly good records of such things, and digging them up
demolished lots of commonly held beliefs. For instance Peter Laslett (The
World We Have Lost) did exactly this for England.

~~~
irrational
When did the change happen? For instance, my sixth great grandparents were
farmers in the mid west (Missouri). They had 12 children of their own. So, for
my family, the poor having fewer children than the rich probably would have
happened farther back than the late-1700s/early-1800s.

~~~
btilly
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolutio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution)
is the primary cause of this change. Until food productivity started growing
dramatically, populations were generally kept in check by the threat of
famine. And famine was more a problem for peasants than nobles.

The change happened earlier in the Americas for the simple reason that due to
recent settlement, population density did not yet match what the land could
sustain.

~~~
improbable22
Certainly these improvements led to overall population growth, which
accelerated over a few centuries. But the pattern that richer people had more
kids than poor is a different thing. I believe this persisted until Victorian
times in England. The US frontier was a gigantic anomaly in other ways, and
could be in this way too, I don't think I've seen data.

------
jimmytucson
I read something while researching my DNA results that made me realize how
little my ancestors have to do with me. Maybe somebody here can tell me if
it's actually true.

You share about 0.5^n percent of your DNA with each member of generation n,
where n = 1 are your parents, n = 2 your grandparents, and so on. The
explanation that was given to me is that each of your parents contributes 50%
to your genes. Depending on which of their parents' genes they gave you, you
share anywhere from 0 to 50% of your DNA with each of your grandparents, but
for simplicity's sake let's call it 25%.

The point is, most of the people we're trying to find out more about through
ancestry websites and DNA tests are barely related to you. Searching for your
great, great, great grandfather from the old country? Fine, you only share
about 3% of your DNA with him.

~~~
irrational
What surprised me is when I realized that it was entirely possible (though
maybe not probable) for siblings to share 0% of their DNA. That is, if one
sibling received the "first" 50% of the father and mother's genes, and the
other sibling received the "second" 50%, they would have 0 overlapping genes.

~~~
lordnacho
Wouldn't some of the genes be identical, ie you randomly get one of two
identical copies? I'm thinking some of the essential genetic code sections
might be of a nature where having them damaged would kill the kid.

------
nyrikki
Funny enough the right information was available and accessible that made it
trivial for me to follow my direct lineage back to Charlemagne

Of course being 42 generations removed, he is only 1 of 4,398,046,511,104
potential direct ancestor paths back at that level.

That number made me realize that we don't have branches in a family tree, we
have laurels in a family wreath.

~~~
falsprofet
2^42 is a number so large, it seems highly unlikely. The world population
today is only 2^33. There might be - must be - multiple paths leading to the
same person, for many persons. In any pedigree.

------
sandworm101
Being descended from royalty is less about genetics and more about the rules
that govern inheritance amongst european houses. What matters to European
royals is first son to first son. Drop all the bastard lines (Fitzroys). Then
drop all but a few female lines. Those with no sons can stay (ie the current
QoE). Don't try to democratize an elitist and unfair system by suggesting we
are all participants. Something like half of Asia is genetically related to
Genghis Kan. That doesn't mean he would have ever considered them family. But
given the genetic car crash that is european monarchy (google "Hapsburg chin"
or Haemophilia in the UK royals) I don't want to be related to any of them.

>> You are of Viking descent, because everyone is.

No. The real vikings (not the TV ones) were almost universally blond or red-
headed. If you are black, your ancestors were not vikings any more than my
ancestors were Zulu warriors. The genetic lines merge further back than the
existence of these named groups, making us at best _related to_ them, not
descended from.

~~~
mjmahone17
> No. The real vikings (not the TV ones) were almost universally blond or red-
> headed. If you are black, your ancestors were not vikings any more than my
> ancestors were Zulu warriors.

I'm confused why you think "blond or red-headed" has anything to do with
whether you have any viking ancestry. Just because my father is blonde does
not mean I am. And the point of the article is that our lines merge much
sooner than we intuitively believe.

If you are black in any society that has had a mix of European and African
ancestry more than ~200 years ago, you are almost certainly partially of
European descent. Unless somehow all of your 200+ descendents avoided any
sexual contact with any colonial. If you're of Western European descent, you
are almost certainly of Viking (i.e. Danish/Norse) descent: they spent
centuries pillaging and colonizing different areas of Europe (including
England). Therefore, if you're black in the Americas, you're almost certainly
descended from both Vikings and the ancestors of the Zulu (considering the
Zulu were a kingdom from the 19th century, so you're right, it's unlikely
everyone with European ancestors, or even everyone with African ancestors,
is). If you're from any country that was a European colony more than 300 years
ago, this is likely true, too.

And remember, cross-continental trade is old. People from the African
continent have been having children with people from the European continent
for thousands of years.

~~~
canoebuilder
_And remember, cross-continental trade is old._

What is your source for claims of trade?

There is no evidence for trade between Europe and Africa going back thousands
of years.

Sub-Saharan Africans never developed a written language, this would seem to be
a not quite vital, but certainly helpful thing when engaging in trade.

Thousands of years ago there was very little, if any, industry to speak of in
sub-Saharan Africa. What was being traded?

Edit:

The poster above referenced black Africans, a distinct population from north
Africans, and "cross-continental" trade implying a great distance and regular
contact between the African and European races.

While some could argue that it is technically cross-continental as we
understand geography today, I don't believe a good faith interpretation(in
this discussion) of 'cross-continental trade' includes trade conducted in
ancient Mediterranean world.

~~~
jcranmer
Uh...

The Nile river valley in Egypt and the coast of the Maghreb was very much a
part of the Mediterranean sea network back to the beginning of recorded
history. The Phoenician alphabet is actually the ancestor of basically every
written language save Chinese and its descendant scripts.

But you're clearly ignoring North Africa. Even without North Africa, Africa
was still very much connected to the wider Mediterranean, Middle Eastern,
Indian and Chinese worlds. Musa I of Mali was the person who gave away so much
gold on his pilgrimage from Mecca that he literally broke the economy. The
crest of the Niger river was a major center of learning (Timbuktu, Djenne),
and the geography was known as far back as Greek times. The Ethiopian
highlands were early converts to Christianity, breaking off from "mainstream"
Christianity circa 200. The Indian Ocean coasts provided one of the major
sources of trading fleets for the vibrant Indian Ocean trade, again back at
least to Greco-Roman times.

That's the stuff I know off the top of my head.

------
coldcode
We are also all African descendents; it's only a question of how far back.

~~~
to_bpr
This is essentially factually untrue at this point.

[wrong-link]

~~~
kens
I think you're misinterpreting the article you link to. Among other things,
note that Morocco is in Africa.

------
valuearb
8% of chinese men descended from Ghengis Khan?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan)

~~~
shkkmo
8% with a perticular genetic marker, but the data from this article would seem
to indicate that all Chinese are descended from Ghengis Khan if any of them
are.

------
legitster
Growing up, I heard the same anecdote 10+ from all sorts of people:

"I'm descended from the guy who fell overboard on the Mayflower!"

I concluded pretty early on that the claim must be either dubious, or that any
claims of ancestry become uninteresting past your grandfather.

Heck, if we are going back to pre-Colonial ages, the pool of people I am
related to is likely in the millions. For a world that was much, much smaller
than it is today. It seems so weird to me that people want to just follow
occasional threads and tell you how special they are.

~~~
spiznnx
In the article, if you go back to 1000AD, you're descended from literally
every European alive who has any descendants at all. I think that's a much
more interesting claim than the headline.

------
bra-ket
if you're interested in this check out the coalescent theory, a very elegant
mathematical model of population genetics:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalescent_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalescent_theory)

The Coalescent, from a book by John Wakeley:
[http://www.faculty.biol.ttu.edu/olson/Molecular_Ecology_and_...](http://www.faculty.biol.ttu.edu/olson/Molecular_Ecology_and_Evolution_files/Wakeley_06_Chapter_3.pdf)

a good intro to population genetics by Hartl & Clark:
[https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Population-Genetics-
Daniel...](https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Population-Genetics-Daniel-
Hartl/dp/0878933085/)

------
bentrevor
It's not quite on-topic, but I was a little surprised that the article didn't
mention that Christopher Lee recorded two metal albums about King Charlemagne:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne:_By_the_Sword_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne:_By_the_Sword_and_the_Cross)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne:_The_Omens_of_Deat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne:_The_Omens_of_Death)
. He has a great voice for narrating a metal album, even though he recorded
them when he was 80-something years old.

------
StanislavPetrov
Interesting article, but the part about everyone having a common ancestor
3,400 years ago is questionable, at best. Recent studies have shown that some
populations have been isolated for 10,000 years or (much) longer, such as
aboriginal Australians.

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2017/jul/19/dig-f...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2017/jul/19/dig-finds-evidence-of-aboriginal-habitation-up-
to-80000-years-ago)

~~~
Udik
Thought the same. However, consider that it requires a single person of
european descent mating with a single person of aboriginal descent to give to
the offspring all european and aboriginal ancestry up to a few hundred years
earlier. If the offspring mates again within the aboriginal population it
starts spreading this ancestry. In a few hundred years it might have spread it
to the whole population (even if not a single european gene is actually still
present in the dna).

The point is: we consider ancestry a purely _additive_ mechanism; in fact at
each generation the amount of dna actually received from a specific ancestor
halves, so that you can be of european, or asian or african descent and yet
have practically no genes from that side.

------
excalibur
> A thousand years ago, we Europeans share all of our ancestry. Triple that
> time and we share all our ancestry with everyone on Earth. We are all
> cousins, of some degree. I find this pleasing, a warm light for all mankind
> to share.

I've always found it mildly disturbing, to know that anybody you could
possibly mate with is related to you somehow.

~~~
1stranger
Well we also constantly mass-murder our cousins (cows, fish, pigs, etc.) So
not sure mating is more disturbing. Well unless you're talking about cows.

~~~
jotm
And our actual cousins (all the wars). So not sure what's more disturbing.

------
freedomben
This timing is apt for me, as my sister just recently emailed to tell me we
are descended from Charlemagne :-)

------
cs1717p
Somewhat off topic, but I have often wondered if this sort of phenomenon could
also occur within 'timelines' (as in the multiverse concept):

As the article mentions, initially our ancestry is basically linear -- one
mother and father, two grandparents per parent, etc. But the further back we
go, the more our lineage begins to resemble a mesh web with certain ancestors
reappearing at other points.

Could the same happen with the flow of time? Say we were to go back 10 years,
maybe there is only a single possible 'timeline' between now and then. But is
it possible that the further we go back, there are multiple 'nodes' which
cross over, much like ancestry?

Is it possible there were two, or more, say, 1900ADs, which then every e.g.
1915 was descended from, splitting again into different timelines before
recombining, in much the same manner as biological descent?

Largely off topic, but an interesting thought experiment.

~~~
pedrocr
The convergence at a later time sounds highly improbable. The total state of
the universe is so large that this would only work if there was something
forcing the timelines to converge and never by chance.

~~~
cs1717p
I guess it would work if there is some kind of force that leads some timelines
to go out of existence or converge back towards heavier nodes, something like
a neural network structure.

~~~
travisjungroth
I've always enjoyed the thought that there are multiple universes, and there
are two opposing forces at play. Chaos causes the universes to drift over
time. Another stabilizing force tends to bring them back together in the most
efficient way possible. This stabilizing force is felt by us as experiences of
fate, or a sense (or lack) of belonging. It's not that there's a preordained
destiny, but a consensus among universes that you are either in or out of.

~~~
cs1717p
Have had very much the same thought myself.

If there were two opposing forces, always exponentially self improving towards
maximum efficiency in two opposite sides: 1)
ordered/creative/perfectionist/preservative/etc, 2)
chaotic/destructive/disruptive/etc... suppose our universe sits roughly in the
middle of these two, does that not seem to explain where we are?

Also, given the seemingly limitless propensity of the universe towards
balance, and its apparently limitless capacity in both regards, it would seem
natural to infer that both forces keep going in ways beyond that which we can
directly observe.

Intuitively, certainly, it seems very right. Of course, it also gels very well
with countless esoteric/mystical beliefs going back eons as well.

------
jsharpe

        Conversely, the remaining 80 percent are the ancestor of everyone living today.
    

To nitpick, this is not necessarily true. You can imagine a person who had
exactly one descendant, who had exactly one descendant, and so on, to the
present day. This person would be the ancestor of only one person living
today.

~~~
pelario
The point is, although your example is possible, the probability of this
happening is pretty close to zero.

~~~
Retric
It's still effectively possible for someone to only have 1 kid that had a
child that had a child etc. Each link could have multiple children as long as
none of those descendants had children that survived to the present day.

This becomes more likely if you include genocides that may have quipped out
large swaths of someones descendants.

You also have rather insular groups where a few thousand people may be largely
segregated from the rest the world. That's not going to be particularly stable
over hundreds of years, but you only need 1.

~~~
lyso
But as you go back in time, it becomes increasingly unlikely. At some point it
is so unlikely it can be disregarded. And the point of the article is that
point is closer in history than you might expect.

------
skywhopper

        Charlemagne [...] your ancestor. I am making an
        assumption that you are broadly of European descent,
        which is not statistically unreasonable but certainly
        not definitive.
    

That's a disappointingly exclusionary way to open an otherwise interesting
article that attempts to convey the interconnectedness of humanity.

It's also a good example of putting too much weight into statistical
"reasonableness" when making generalizations about your audience. Even if the
expected audience is just native-English-speaking countries, you've excluded
millions of potential readers.

The article is mostly about Charlemagne, so fair enough to frame the intro
using him, but "he's your ancestor, unless you are a statistical anomaly"? I
find that depressing.

~~~
noxToken
Literally the next sentence:

    
    
        If you’re not, be patient, and we’ll come to your own very regal ancestry soon enough.
    

I get what you're saying, but finishing the opening paragraph puts that
possible exclusionary feeling down rather quickly.

