Yale Statistician claims everyone with European Ancestor related to English Royalty. (world, family tree)

[CAVA1990]

I've spent most of my years in genealogy disproving bogus accounts of relationships to royalty. I still get steamed when I see the same old canards repeated over and over on various peoples' websites. My particular favorite (not) is the one that has a wealthy guy in Philadelphia who's descended from British nobility suddenly picking up and moving to Culpeper, VA. If you've ever been to Culpeper or know its history you'd immediately understand how unlikely that would have been.

[runningncircles1]

Originally Posted by justamere10

A Yale Statistician, Dr. Joseph Chang, claims that everyone with a European ancestor is related to English Royalty, each having a common ancestor who lived about 1400 A.D.

And that the most recent common ancestor of all six billion people on earth today probably lived about the time of Christ.

Apparently it's mathematically certain, but where's the common sense? Can you believe it?

Can anyone explain the math in grassroots English? What's the probability that everyone reading this will believe it?


Comments invited.


"The idea that virtually anyone with a European ancestor descends from English royalty seems bizarre, but it accords perfectly with some recent research done by Joseph Chang, a statistician at Yale University. The mathematics of our ancestry is exceedingly complex, because the number of our ancestors increases exponentially, not linearly. These numbers are manageable in the first few generations—two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents—but they quickly spiral out of control. Go back forty generations, or about a thousand years, and each of us theoretically has more than a trillion direct ancestors—a figure that far exceeds the total number of human beings who have ever lived...

MOD EDIT: C-D Members may only quote two sentences from any source. The first paragraph was allowed to stand in this case ONLY - as it completes a thought...

Here's a link to the article in Atlantic Magazine: The Royal We - Magazine - The Atlantic

The math would look something like this:

Suppose there is ONE person of English Royalty originally(it's more than that, but I'm just going to start smaller to show the concept). There is a population of say 1 million in England at the start of English Royal families. So, that one person then chooses someone from the public to reproduce with, has 5 children (this person becomes royalty by marriage and the offspring by blood). Before, there was maybe a 1 in a million chance that a person would be chosen from a population for mating with royalty. Assuming constant, or even declining population (black plague, et. al), there is now a better chance that a person will mate with a royal heir (5 in 1 million or more). Those reproduce and the chances of collisions with royal blood keep increasing until finally, almost everyone in Europe has some inkling of DNA from royalty.

[bjh]

Cava is correct. There are known false genealogies that were sold to well off American families even back inthe 1800s that are now repeated on the internet. Sometimes it seems people prefer fiction to fact. So much fancier to claim royal heritage than to acknowledge peasant heritage which is much more likely.

[walke]

I read this paper, it has a really unrealistic model, it assumes that a persons parents are RANDOMLY ANYBODY from the previous generation.

Meaning that there is an equal chance for everybody that their father and mother may be any person from the previous generation.

Unfortunately, this just is not the case, I would say that when we are talking, oh 500 or 1000 years ago, there is a much more higher probability that a persons parents are geographically from within 100 miles of each other, and probably much less.

The idea that everyone's parents have an equal chance of being from ANYWHERE, is what leads to the rapid mixing of the populations in the model used.

Also, when talking about royalty, there was a particular attempt to marry into certain families, it was not utterly random including all people on earth born in the previous generation.

I have one individual in my family tree who is a great grandfather of mine over 1500 times (and it took specialized software to calculate this), because almost all the ancestors of several lines married into this one persons family for almost 300 years.

Not random at all, the model used does not represent reality.

Perhaps if Chang used a model that took into account geographic locality, ethnicity, religious beliefs, or other belief systems involved, including royals desire to marry royals, then he might get more accurate results.

[RichardW]

I know that I am; I even had the privilege of living in Her Majesty's Windsor Castle, so I can look down on most of you working class commoners.

[CAVA1990]

Originally Posted by bjh

Cava is correct. There are known false genealogies that were sold to well off American families even back inthe 1800s that are now repeated on the internet. Sometimes it seems people prefer fiction to fact. So much fancier to claim royal heritage than to acknowledge peasant heritage which is much more likely.

What's funny is the ancestors that were falsely linked to royalty had a very interesting history in their own right, including traveling and living with Daniel Boone in KY, settling the furthest West of any Americans in the early 19th century, having a Missouri county named for them, being among the first Americans into New Mexico, traveling part way to CA with the Donner Party (not the cannibal section of the tour fortunately), and being present at the discovery of CA gold. I'm much more interested in what they did versus some obscure British noble family.

[ottomobeale]

Note: At 32 generations back you have 4+ billion ancestors= true... but... many many many repeats. Peasant scum were not that mobile except in emergencies.

>If you find British you will definitley find French. And German and Spanish and all the others. The Brits were just lineally closer to early American immigrants, therefore the first a genealogist usually comes across.<

Sort of. Continental Europe had harsher laws than UK against interbreeding with the (even relatively wealthy) masses. Thus noble lines are more common in old UK lines. Once you get UK royals, you eventually get back to Norman then Western Continental European lines.

Been at this 16 years. I have 3 suspect lines that MAY lead to royalty and have been able to prove NONE of them. FEW people do hard research like reading microfilms of churchbooks and even far fewer do even harder things like land records and testaments. I have a suspect where I even got the document numbers and posted them online that might just prove (or DISPROVE) a noble connection to a gentry line to an immigrant in VA. The documents are like L10 each (scotland) and Im poor so it just sits.

I am one of those rare nerdy types that can read a 16th century German Gothic Script Churchbook.

[bjh]

Originally Posted by walke

I read this paper, it has a really unrealistic model, it assumes that a persons parents are RANDOMLY ANYBODY from the previous generation.

Meaning that there is an equal chance for everybody that their father and mother may be any person from the previous generation.

Unfortunately, this just is not the case, I would say that when we are talking, oh 500 or 1000 years ago, there is a much more higher probability that a persons parents are geographically from within 100 miles of each other, and probably much less.

The idea that everyone's parents have an equal chance of being from ANYWHERE, is what leads to the rapid mixing of the populations in the model used.

Also, when talking about royalty, there was a particular attempt to marry into certain families, it was not utterly random including all people on earth born in the previous generation.

I have one individual in my family tree who is a great grandfather of mine over 1500 times (and it took specialized software to calculate this), because almost all the ancestors of several lines married into this one persons family for almost 300 years.

Not random at all, the model used does not represent reality.

Perhaps if Chang used a model that took into account geographic locality, ethnicity, religious beliefs, or other belief systems involved, including royals desire to marry royals, then he might get more accurate results.

Very good post and that explains that theory. So true that people couldn't travel around nearly as much as we can today. And religion and custom had a lot to do with it. One reason I have so much English heritage is all my Puritans who wouldn't marry anyone who wasn't also Puritan. Got a little scary onthe intermarriage a time or two. Second cousins once removed for instance.

As for royals and aristocracy...any naive American that imagines or hopes for a genetic link to them has not a clue about the levels of snobbery and sense of superiority of that class. Talk about inbreeding. Sheesh! At one time the average aristocratic baby was lucky not to be born with a third eye. J/k, but their intermarriage reached ridiculously alarming levels.

Now to be sure the aristocracy is less snobby than they used to be and have been no doubt strengthened by deigning to marry among the upper middle class in Britain. However, aristocrats still regard commoners as a sort of human level of insects. We Americans, separated even further by time and geography and openly intermarrying with people of other national heritages, are not exempt from the disregard of aristocrats.

Anyway what it comes down to is that aristocrats were given titles and lands for helping the royals hundreds of years ago in military conquests. These were not nice, friendly, stereotypically "classy" people.

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

What's funny is the ancestors that were falsely linked to royalty had a very interesting history in their own right, including traveling and living with Daniel Boone in KY, settling the furthest West of any Americans in the early 19th century, having a Missouri county named for them, being among the first Americans into New Mexico, traveling part way to CA with the Donner Party (not the cannibal section of the tour fortunately), and being present at the discovery of CA gold. I'm much more interested in what they did versus some obscure British noble family.

Agree. I'm proud of my ordinary folk, from nearly every NW European country.

[jewish_i]

The thing this statistician assumes is that there was absolutely no inbreeding in peoples' ancestors, which would limit the number of ancestors, when it is in fact known that about 80% of marriages throughout history occurred between two people of second cousin or closer degree of blood. In other words, people have repeated ancestors. For example, if two cousins marry, their children would have six great-grandparents instead of eight. If this happens many times, as is historical, people have much fewer ancestors than supposed.

[Giesela]

Well I for one am expecting my own bedroom, however small, in one of the royal castles