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It depends on how you define "common ancestor" as to how bizzarre it is.
Even the least bizzare scenario, that is, maybe we all share a distant cousin, is also a bit far fetched.
I am positive, there are people in Italy right now, that have both chains of lineage going back long before 1400.
Then you read the part of the article where Cheng assumes that every European has a random chance of marrying every other European, and there you have the kicker. Cheng actually admits that the common European ancestor would be dated further back than that.
As for American chains being tied to English Royalty, thats no real surprise. English people came to this country in such numbers in its earliest years, that nearly all of us can find a few in our backgrounds.
If everybody is connected to Royalty, then what about the people that served the royalty and the townspeople that were the subjects of the royalty? Were royalty the only ones that could reproduce? Did they have everyone else "fixed" so that all newborn were their direct descendants?
If you read the article, Cheng actually admits that he did not take in to consideration geography or economics. He assumed that royalty was interbreeding with the rabble, or the children of the servants were interbreeding with the children of royals, or even that people from England were interbreeding with people from Italy. That would push back the year some on the common ancestor, and would probably place them in Italy or Greece.
But if you think about it though, it really only takes that peasants great great great great great great great grandson, to have a kid with the kings great great great great great great great granddaughter, for that kid to be related to the king.
If you think of the sheer number of interweavings since then, really, the only people who probably arent somehow related to English royalty, are people who have been isolated within another area within Europe for generations, going before 1400.
I would imagine probably about 95% of Americans who trace their lineage back before 1900 in the USA, are probably at least a distant cousin of English royalty, and most of them probably can trace back directly to some form of English royalty.
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.
I have only found one person of note in my background that I can confirm, and he was a fairly famous pirate who was extremely wealthy, and who had kids who became part of high society in America (eventually producing the Vanderbilts), but other than that, Ive traced a number of lines in to the mid to late 1500's, and have yet to find a royal in my direct line.
Closest I came is on a very questionable branch that needs work, but if its correct as is, a manservant on the Mayflower.
Seems Im mostly descended from middle class/peasant types, and Im proud to admit it.
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.
Old thread ...
I might have answered already, but since this thread was revived and commented on, my thoughts on our alleged distinguished connections is "yeah? so?"
It's something I note and talk about at family gatherings. Few of my close kin are interested in the ho-hum part of genealogy, so I talk about the stuff that would make for entertaining gossip: the veryswish ggg-uncle who, when I detailed his life in the late 1800s, a burst of giggles erupted; our gggg-grandfather who was at Valley Forge with Washington; my tenuous conclusion that we may be related to Edward de Vere, and the argument about his connection to the Shakespeare speculations. That information keeps their eyes from glazing over, but I wish I could reach someone in the family who had the same light bulb moment I did - that all these (verified) people reaching back through the centuries are family to me; both noted and obscure; same as all the ones gathered around the deck, drinking beer and gossiping about people not present. And just as we don't want to be forgotten by future generations, I've done my best to bring these people back to life so that they will be remembered in our common family history in the future.
What I have found is that "ordinary" ancestors are very hard to trace back before the sixteen hundreds or so. Poor records were kept and many were destroyed in wars and also the black plague. If you can find a link to a member of the aristocracy, you can go back much much farther because good records were kept of them. There are many people that are putting these records up on the internet so if you find a few good connections its amazing how far you can go back. But to go really far you need a computer to do it so joining Geni is very helpful.
It depended upon where your ancestors lived. In Scotland few family events were recorded in the 1500s as few families had the money to hire a scribe to enter the information in church records. Dutch scribes entered church records in Latin but it didn't begin much before 1500. Earlier records might exist in archived legal documents, family bibles, or surviving documentation about an area. Much earlier than 1500 information is fragmented and sketchy at best.
The idea of English royalty is questionable as there was a time in history when a royal pedigree could be purchased for a price. European history as a whole is filled with kingdoms, large and small, marriages between the royal lines, wars and land grabs, etc.. . The most notable non-kingdom that held sway for the greater part of a thousand years was the Holy Roman Empire of German Nations [HRE]. It was not dismantled until the 19th century.
I have several lines of English ancestry, and William the Conqueror is in my "tree", though it's obviously very hard to verify information going back so long ago.
"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."
I think I have a problem with the bolded statement - by European does he mean England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal? Apparently he can't be including the Eastern European ancestors his study - or is he?
My geneology goes as far as my grandparents - and that's even spotty .... don't even know were to start ... they were born in Poland (when it wasn't) - now that part of Poland is in the Ukraine ... don't know if there are any records left
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...
Which English royalty? The current House of Windsor, or is he talking the Tudors?
There has been quite a few so I would say yes, absolutely...somewhere, so far back in history as to be totally irrelevant today. My mother always swore we were directly descended from Mary Queen of Scots, which is the next best thing.
The stats of how many people pass through this world are staggering when you think about it that way - a trillion direct ancestors - where are all the ghosts stored?
Although now I know where my belief I am really a princess has come from...!
If you read the article, Cheng actually admits that he did not take in to consideration geography or economics. He assumed that royalty was interbreeding with the rabble, or the children of the servants were interbreeding with the children of royals, or even that people from England were interbreeding with people from Italy. That would push back the year some on the common ancestor, and would probably place them in Italy or Greece.
But if you think about it though, it really only takes that peasants great great great great great great great grandson, to have a kid with the kings great great great great great great great granddaughter, for that kid to be related to the king.
If you think of the sheer number of interweavings since then, really, the only people who probably arent somehow related to English royalty, are people who have been isolated within another area within Europe for generations, going before 1400.
I would imagine probably about 95% of Americans who trace their lineage back before 1900 in the USA, are probably at least a distant cousin of English royalty, and most of them probably can trace back directly to some form of English royalty.
Allegedly, it was extremely common for the English upper classes to source children from servants, if for some reason they were unable to have their own.
Allegedly, our own Queen Mum was born to a French maidservant, and this was common knowlege within society at the time.
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