welcome to the ancestral findings podcast this is episode 237 are you descended from
royalty most genealogists would love to discover this it is something that sounds
prestigious and gives you bragging rights in genealogical circles the
thing is mathematics says we are all descended from royalty whether or not
we can prove it on paper today I'll show you how your royal heritage is possible
it is nice to think that there may be some royalty in our family trees it makes for an
interesting conversation topic with friends and family it also makes us feel special to know we
have ancestors who were kings and queens carrying that DNA isn't something just anyone combust of or
is it while only a very small percentage of us may be able to prove royal ancestry with
paperwork or in even fewer cases DNA testing mathematicians have produced a pretty good
model that practically proves we all have to be descended from royalty whether we can prove it
on paper or not somewhere in the deep depths of your family tree are the great and well-known
leaders of the medieval ancient world how is this possible it takes a little explaining but once
you understand the basics of it it does make sense scientists are now saying virtually everyone with
European ancestry is descended from the great 800 ad era ruler Charlemagne and almost everyone with
Asian ancestry can claim descent from Genghis Khan go back even further and most people on
the planet except possibly Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians can claim descent
from ancient Egyptian royalty like Nefertiti like Nefertiti or Ramses 3 you see there is a
paradox in genealogy and mathematicians look at this paradox as a puzzle to be solved the
paradox is one of numbers you start with you on a family tree chart as you go back each generation
doubles in numbers from your two parents to your four grandparents eight great-grandparents 16
great-great grandparents 32 great-great-great grandparents and more by the time you reach
Charlemagne that famous guy who united the Frankish kingdoms into one United France you
should have more than a trillion ancestors on your family tree only that's not possible a trillion
people is more than we're living on earth at the time of Charlemagne it's more than our here now
if you added up all the humans who have roamed the earth you still probably wouldn't have a trillion
people so even though you should have more than a trillion ancestors on your family tree by the
time you reach Charlemagne's time in the 880's you don't how is this possible where did all
the missing people go according to mathematicians they overlapped you have probably come across this
on your family tree before if you have gone back more than a century or two and especially if those
ancestors lived in the same geographic area for a long time you will find the same couple appearing
on your family tree as great plus grandparent in the same generation or as third fourth fifth and
more great grandparents to you via different family lines quite a few of your family lines
probably go back to the same couple at different points at which point your family tree software
should allow you to merge of the lines the thing is that overlapping we're cousins marry cousins
giving you the same great whatever grandparents many times over happens a lot more in history than
you may think your family tree is not a tree or a fan at all it is more like a web or a tapestry
it gives you a whole new way of looking at your ancestry this web doesn't even have to mean first
cousins marrying first cousins in every generation or most generations in fact most of the time the
cousin relationships in your genealogy will be far more distant than that though it was not
uncommon until quite recently in human history for first cousins to marry a good example is
my own Perkins family line which came directly to Massachusetts from England and stayed there
I have a friend who also has a Perkins line but from much more recently in history than my own
and that is from upstate New York since Perkins is a fairly common name we never suspected any action
however last year while working on that line I connected both my line and my friends purely by
accident both Perkins families originated in the English colonies with the same Perkins couple as
you go back farther in time you find this crossing of family lines happening far more often and then
you get to a point where any one person alive in the past who had any descendants is the ancestor
of every one of that ethnicity in the world today go back even farther and you will eventually find
an ancient person whose identity is probably lost to time who had descendants and who is
the ancestor of every person alive on earth today regardless of ethnicity some interesting
mathematical models show everyone of European descent having a common ancestor who lived in
about the Year 1400 somewhere in Europe if you go back a bit farther to Charlemagne's
time the model shows 20% of Europeans alive at Charlemagne's time have no descendants living
today they either did not have children or their children's lines died out the other 80% alive as
Charlemagne's time in Europe do have living descendants today studies of DNA have proven
this mathematical model to be true using common DNA segments among Europeans to determine their
most recent common ancestor shows that everyone who was alive during Charlemagne's time who had
any descendants has living descendants today since Charlemagne was known to have had much progeny
from a few different wives this means every European from Turkey to England alive today is
a descendant of the great historically famous and royal Charlemagne so that royal ancestry you've
been dreaming about and hoping to find you have it you are royal we all are go back far enough
and the whole planet is descended from royalty in some part of the world or other the only question
is if you want to join a royal descendants lineage society can you prove it on paper
familysearch.org is the most popular free genealogy website online and often one of
the first ones new genealogists use their collection of records is impressive it's
the largest in the world however billions of it's billions of records are still not
indexed next time I'll show you how to find some hidden gems on the website even without
the benefit of indexing thanks for joining me today I'll see you next time on the ancestral
findings podcast and for further info you can visit us at ancestral findings com