Holy Shit!!! Forty Generations? How many ancestors is that? A couple hundred thousand? When you say a couple lines what do you mean? Did you follow the paternal father side back 40 denerations or something?
What? I am the rightful Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire! Americans have a virtually 100% chance of being descended from Charlemagne, even MASTERMIND. When you do a geneaology of five or six generations, your tree looks like a fan. You have 2 grandfathers, 4 great grandfathers, 8 great greats and so on with the number of grandfathers doubling each generation. If you go back 40 generations you theoretically have over a Trillion grandfathers. Of course there are not a Trillion people alive today. In Europe 40 generations ago, there may have been 250,000 people. It doesn't take long to realize that you are related to practically everyone alive in the year 800. So it doesn't keep fanning out forever. Within 10 generations you start seeing the same names on different lines in your tree. The further back you go, the more inbred populations become because most people never traveled far from where they were born. This is why there are so many regional races, clans, dialects, etc. You inevitably will find that you are related to a European royal family in several lines. Royal families are deeply inbred and every royal family in Europe is descended from Charlemagne who had 20 children. Among my ancestors are Roman Emperors, Charlemagne and multiple Kings of England, France, Scotland, Mercia, Denmark, Northumberland, and Sweden. You should address me as Sire or Your Majesty. But I would have to address you as the same, so forget it.
although i am basically 100% pre-america colonial and very deep south, i would be shocked if i am at all native american or african. i make prince harry look like wesley snipes. both my last name and my mothers maiden name are places in northern england.
My direct father to father line peters out in the 13th century, but several maternal branches go way back. Once you hit a royal lineage, the record-keeping is very good. Royals paid a lot of attention to ancestry. Your commoner ancestors usually peter out in the 13th-15th century because so many were illiterate and church baptismal and marriage records don't go back much further than that. English ancestry is much easier to trace because England has not been invaded and sacked since 1066. Europe suffered multiple wars and sackings and burning of towns and churches. But English churches have records going back over 1,000 years. Last names did not come into use before the 12th century when individual taxation came along. Before that people usually had only one name. That makes tracking ancestors hard, even with records. There were a lot of Alfreds in Anglo-Saxon England. Am I descended from Alfred of Wakefield, Alfred of Thursley, Alfred of Bedford, etc. etc. The Viking ancestry is a little better because they used Patronyms. Sorli Jonakrson's father was Jonak Ericsson whose father was Eric Olafsson, whose father was Olaf Thordsson, etc. etc. My earliest recorded direct paternal ancestor was named Ligulf. He had a son named Kilgert Ligulfsson and a daughter named Ecgfrida Ligulfsdottir.
No more shocked than I. Dude, I am so white with my red-headed complexion that I cannot tan at all. I just turn red, peel and become pink again.
There's no way I'm not doing this. How did you track the actual names etc of your ancestors? The old fashion way at a courthouse or something? I would rather pay someone. Is there a service that does this or is that part of the national geographic thing?
National Geographic just does the DNA analysis. I have been tracking my genealogy using Ancestry.com for about four years now and I'm still working on it. They have vast amounts of census and birth records available online so you can do it from your computer. You also have access to other completed family trees that you can use for clues. I also do a lot of Googling for records not available at ancestry.com. The British are fanatics about genealogy and have tons of records online. There are professionals who will do the work for you, I have no idea what it costs. Probably too much with tools like these available. Essentially, genealogical records can take you back 1,000 years or more, then ethnology and linguistics can take you back further, then archaeological evidence adds more information (I am definitely descended from Cro-Magnons with about 2% Neanderthal genes) then the DNA can take you back to Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam. By tracking the genetic mutations in your DNA they can map when they left Africa and traveled through the Middle East and Central Asia, then east into Europe. The last Ice Age drove my ancestors south into Spain and Portugal. When the glaciers retreated they moved up the coast into Britain (not an island at the time) and into western Europe and Scandinavia. At this point archeaology, linguistics, and ethnology takes over and tracks local migrations and tribal groups until the point where oral legends and later true history tells the tale of people and leaders until genealogical records can tell the detailed story right up to Mom and Dad. I literally know where I came from now. It was worth the effort to learn about it.
I can handle ancestry.com and internet searches. I thought I was looking at various courthouses and other archive systems that I know nothing about. Interesting stuff. Thanks.
