Most people can’t grasp that the spots in your family tree expands geometrically every generation you go back. Most people give up genealogy after great-great-great grandparents which is 64 people.
But assuming 25-year generations I had ≈500,000 living ancestors in 1492. That’s a lot of people but in practice a lot of those spots are occupied by the same people even though I come from a culture which is ultra-intolerant of cousin marriage.
But indeed any phenotypical ethnic similarity is simply a function of the degree of inbreeding within the human population.
My sister discovered our parents were probably 5th or 6th cousins, going back to early 1700s in Pennsylvania. We've blamed all our troubles on that for 3 decades.
They kept using the same few Christian names over and over, so it's difficult to be sure. I ran into the same problem looking up Billy Graham's ancestors, who were a few miles from my Graham ancestors c. 1800. The same names were there, but the generations didn't align.
I've heard that genealogy is quite an addicting hobby e.g. legions of soccer moms staying up all night browsing genealogy websites and Facebook groups. Also, it seems like ChatGPT can help a lot. The AI can decipher handwritten text, translate old genealogy documents into English etc. Plus the AI knows all the broad strokes of history, so it can give plausible explanations of why you have German ancestors but an English last name or whatever.
This suppression of thinking about lineage is not very complicated.
It is obviously rooted the great Jewish American push to bust open and take over America. (It is just a lobe of the same racial nonsense we've been pickled in for decades.) If you are pushing minoritarianism, immigrationism, anti-nationalism, you do not want people thinking about lineage, belonging, heritage and nation--or God forbid, ideas of national "ownership".
The great--and annoying--irony of late 20th century American life--is one of the most tribal, closed and separatist peoples on the planet giving these tedious finger waging lectures on "racism!" and "tolerance" and "diversity!" to one of the most open and integrative peoples.
My dad was super into genealogy and someone else in the family picked up and expanded the work. The biggest revelation I saw was that we have no cool ancestors.
He would have thought it a fun hobby for gentiles too. I swear, as your mole in the international Jew conspiracy meetings, this one isn't on us. No one has ever mentioned it. I really do think the problem is what I found--most people's families' are boring no matter how far back you go.
> He would have thought it a fun hobby for gentiles too. I swear, as your mole in the international Jew conspiracy meetings, this one isn't on us. No one has ever mentioned it. I really do think the problem is what I found--most people's families' are boring no matter how far back you go.<
Erik, I don't think the IJC is inviting you to their meetings.
To be clear, i'm not talking so much about interest in genealogy. (My mom and her sisters and some of her cousins did some work and yeah, not super-exciting mostly "successful farmer"--the median ancestor of most all white gentiles. No visible pirates.)
When I mention the Jewish angle, I'm talking more talking about ideology--broader ideas about the importance of genetics, of lineage, of heritage and "ownership" of place and nation. Which all sounds sort of "racist!" (what doesn't?) and "nativist". I fully admit that urbanization, suburbanization and IBM ("I've been moved") style mobility work to erode this and atomize us as well.
BTW Erik you mentioned on a previous thread--where I was yapping about my priority being my kids' inheritance--to not having any kids.
Sounded like you were in your 50s and been meaning to suggest to you that "there is still time". I probably wouldn't do it again at my age now--if AnotherMom kicked me to the curb--as I'm not sure I'd be in a fit state to see the kids out to college. But I've known a few guys who have done it late with great success.
One guy I knew--I brought him on as an asst. when i was scoutmaster of my son's troop--had a couple sons, had gotten divorced and in his early 50s had married a 30-something gal (pleasant gal) and had another son (a terrific scout/young man). There are girls out there--good ones who've just sucked up crappy messaging from our culture--"hitting the wall" all the time and suddenly looking hard to find a guy to build their family with.
I don't know your situation, but I can tell you, it's not too late, and if you have children it will be the most worthwhile, interesting and rewarding thing you do. And our nation needs more smart, conscientious, productive kids. And if your dad is still around? he'll appreciate seeing new buds on the family tree.
Thanks. I appreciate it. I can well believe it. I'm certain that switch would flip if I had kids. I've had to admit to myself after several years of sincere effort that I am not good at dating. I'm certain making a bad match for the sake of having some kids would be a terrible decision. I just don't have an enough choices to cycle through. Just a consequence of spending most of my earlier years morbidly obese I suppose. It could change. I'm not closed off to the idea.
Yes, in my fifties. Family history suggests I have about 20 years left. I know that is plenty of time, but I also can't stand the idea of being terrified of dying while my kids still need me.
Also, and I know this sounds like just making up scenarios to rationalize, but my personal hell would be autistic spectrum daughter comes home from junior high school wanting to know why no one wants to be her friend.
> I've had to admit to myself after several years of sincere effort that I am not good at dating...Just a consequence of spending most of my earlier years morbidly obese I suppose
I'm sure your obnoxious, argumentative personality didn't help matters
My family history, and we have been Anglo-American since the Wesleys in Savannah and the settlers Boone led to Kentucky, has always been prole or bourgeois. Lots of drama, titanic tempers and functional alcoholic polymaths. The practical effect has been estrangement and distance and no generational wealth.
The only upper class relative was a great-uncle, a truly talented artist who moved to Europe. Gay and no descendants. Another great uncle was a decorated US Navy commander who committed suicide in his late 40s with no descendants. A cousin got drunk at his party celebrating his PGA qual card and died in a single-car wreck. We've probably got another couple of generations before we go extinct. My Y-chromosomal line ends with me.
To my observation the American extended family has all but disappeared. When all my grandparents finally got put in the ground, the remaining aunts and uncles, and us, the cousins, all drifted apart. And weirdly, I I was discussing this with a bourgeois Iraqi immigrant my age and he said, "It's the same all over the world."
Modern life, ease of travel and communication leads people to leave their families for jobs and adventure? Businesses and government substitute for a lot of things we used to depend on family and community for, perhaps?
Your family sounds more interesting than mine. Boone as in Daniel Boone?
Yes, Daniel Boone. And I'd say there has been as much negative push from bad family dynamics as positive pull from market economics. My sister and I and our cousins had pretty bad upbringings. My parents and their cousins all had pleasant upbringings, the grandparents had okay upbringings, but the great-grandparents had hard lives that they refused to talk about (we are talking about 1880's-1910 America). I think we are interesting people--I've always been astounded by the pedestrian conversation levels in other families--but we have zero legacy, no status, and are prone to alcoholism and depression. I have a sibling with three children and two grandkids but they all struggle economically and some UMC cousins with kids who will probably spawn two maybe three more generations before we are finally done.
Alcoholism (the real stuff, not romanticized like in the movies) is rough. Makes one volatile and unreliable; not great for parenting. Real depression too, not great. I as that why your family went from good upbringing to poor in one generation? I have five nephews who are thriving.
Saxon royal families were very into tracing their bloodlines from Woden or Thor, but this was discouraged by Christian monks. One theory for why Anglo-Saxon England amalgamated relatively quickly is the high level of prestige attached to royal bloodlines, so that when one went extinct it seemed natural for a neighbouring king to absorb its dominions (rather than elevate a non-royal lacking divine ancestry).
For similar reason, in the Prose Edda Snorri Sturluson stole a trick from Vergil and made the Norse gods descendants of the warriors who fled Troy after that dirty horse trick.
A few years ago I decided that genealogy is a good therapy for the alienation and atomization of the modern world. Everyone comes from somewhere, and you have something very important in common with the other people in your family tree: genes. This provides real human connection.
So I started a wiki where people can enter their own relatives down to the present day and print a book from them. It's very private - you can see and enter only people who share your own blood, or those directly married to them.
Sent out about 100 books to relatives so far, and they are always happy to get them.
My genealogy site doesn't look like much until you have relatives in it:
Literally a paper book with the entire genealogy of a surname in it. That is, all the male-line descendants of the founding couple, meaning the men and women born with that surname and their immediate children, with pictures if available.
Also has a place for an introduction to the history of that family if someone cares to fill that in, and at the back, a birth date calendar, an index by first name, and a list of all descendants of the founding couple.
My dad was from a large Irish family, my surname book is about 250 pages.
So you're working downstream from one instead of up, as in Rockwell's painting.
My cousin had her wedding reception in an old house in Kinston NC, where she lived a very few years. On the wall was a 1930s Washington "pedigree" as you describe for its (white) American line c.1550 up to c.1900. Our g-g-grandmother, who was from nearby New Bern, was on one edge as George's 4th cousin, so my aunt found, framed, and gave me one. Just now, I wonder if she'd put it up in the house herself, but I think she would have said. Some people get the bug, some don't.
Right, the books are all downstream from some ancestral couple, or from one guy if he had multiple wives. My reasoning is that people feel connected by common ancestry and a common surname.
On the site itself, you can display a tree going the other way, from the individual to all of his or her known ancestors. That nice for ego, but doesn't really help to connect you to your relatives.
Some people say I should make the books show all descendants of a couple, even the many lines through daughters, which greatly outnumber the strictly paternal lines. But I think people don't identify as closely with zillions of relatives who weren't born with the same surname as they do with those obvious relations. I plan to make that full set of descendants an option in printing though. Or even a customized book "all my relatives on all sides and how they are related to me". Wouldn't be hard.
And you're right that people get the genealogy bug, and others just don't. They should though, lots of meaning in it.
The beginning of this article, where Steve mentions the interest of academcis in "family trees," reminded me of the Mathematical Genealogy Project, which has a website enabling users to trace the dissertation adviser(s) of thousands of mathematicians, contemporary and past. It's fascinating to see how many well known 20th and 21st century Europenan and American mathematicians have illustrious mathematical ancestors like Gauss and Leibniz (who is a mathematical ancestor of Gauss). For example, if you trace John von Neumann's mathematical ancestry back six generations, you land on Gauss. The same happens for Paul Erdos. The eccentric Russian Fields Medal winner, Grigori Perelman, who refused the monetary award, has Lobachesvsky (of Tom Lehrer fame) as a mathematical ancestor. I suppose the lines of lesser known mathematicians die out more frequently. They perhaps have fewer and less talented descendants.
That's totally normal. If you are math genius, chances are substantially higher, other (much younger) math geniuses will flock to you than to someone else.
It's the same way in physics, chemistry or medicine. Or learning talmud, for example,
It's not just the magic dirt of someone being a math genius and it rubs off. Other math geniuses have a radar for math geniosity - so they flock to the more established math genius.
Great bands formed in towns with live music scenes as the great hardworking musicians figured out who the others were. That's one of the benefits of being good at something--you can recognize other people who are good at it.
Similarly we are forever learning about how great actors were friends with other great actors way back early in their careers when they were both waiters.
I've noticed that about vocal and instrumental soloists by reading the program notes before a concert. They often express their deep gratitude to their instructors.
That's a great scene in Buster Scruggs, the old trapper talking about his Hunkpapa Sioux "wife." "She had no English and I was unschooled in the gibberings of the nations." As always a subtle detail from the casting of that scene: Saul Rubinek plays the french cardplayer. He also played Mr Beauchamp, the writer, in Unforgiven.
> American eugenicists propagated the extreme American bias against inbreeding. British eugenicists couldn’t because their godfather Charles Darwin married his first cousin and was also slightly inbred in his ancestry.
So Americans, who dominate the world’s thinking about race today, refuse to think about the role of endogamy in creating race. <
Steve, you seems to love these "just so" stories like this.
I certainly agree America has dominated thinking about race--and much else--since 1945. And not for the better.
And I certainly agree that America--by its very nature--is a much more "outbred" joint. (I'm a proto-typical American midwest mutt--part Irish, German, English and Scots-Irish. Strands which just all happened to end up in Iowa in the late 19th century to produce my grandparents.)
But it's not like American thinkers weren't aware of inbreeding. The old WASPy establishment, especially the New England "Boston Brahmin" families--your Adams, Cabots, Lodges, Lowells, Winthrops, etc. etc. etc.--descended from much smaller founding stock populations and were entwined together (as well as mixed with "new money") repeatedly over generations. There is probably something similar with the founding Cavalier families of the South--the Lees and such. (I'm even less aware of that world and part of neither.)
American frowned on 1st cousin marriage as backward and unhealthy--maybe even as vaguely tribal and primitive. But it isn't like they were mad outbreeders and did not value "good families" and strong lineage, much less didn't know that it existed. For example, Eleanor Roosevelt didn't have to change her name upon getting married, since she was marrying a 5th cousin.
I worked a job with Harry Lee of the law firm Steptoe and Johnson in 1987. He was as proud of his Blair lineage as he was of his Lee lineage. One of the Lee Family, an Episcopalian minister, hates the old general for the usual lefty reasons. Most lefties are mentally ill.
My g-grandmother's sister married a man with their surname, which we discovered in old letters from Miss Betty T changing to from Mrs. Betty T. Bound to be a cousin (lots of T's in the area), but how distant? We also learned from herself that grandma's freckled black former housekeeper had the same maiden name. Awkward.
The current extreme American prejudice against, say, second cousins marrying emerged from the research of American eugenicists in the first half of the 20th Century.
Victoria and Albert were first cousins. One of their many granddaughters, Victoria Melita, known as Ducky, divorced one first cousin (the Tsarina's brother) in 1901 and married another, Kyril Romanov (the Tsar's 1st cousin & 3rd in line, so it didn't go over well). Could an inclination to cousin attraction be in the blood, or was it just the restrictions on royals marrying royals?
A lot of the resistance to acknowledging racial differences is that to accept it is to also accept that not every social system or political program will produce even results or can even be successfully adopted by very different demographic groups. Both the left and right have their own versions of blank slatism, but the left is the side that believes social and political programming can iron out all differences, whereas the right tends to believe sufficient personal effort can achieve that. The former gives permission for the state to intervene in our culture and economy, whereas the latter is more benign in its potential effects.
"If you go back to ancestors alive 4,000 years ago, say, George W. Bush might indeed be descended by 1 path from n!Xao, a Bushman in the Kalahari, but he’d also be descended from Owen, a farmer in Essex, by 800,000,000 different paths. Add them all up and it’s reasonable to say that George W. Bush is a lot more British than Bushman."
That's true, but still, if n!Xao had been eaten by a lion before fathering children then George W would never have existed.
As I have matured I have gained more appreciation for my ancestors, whose efforts to survive and procreate allowed me to experience life. This understanding also saddens me to see friends and peers decide to end their bloodlines due to careers or political fads. All those generations of sacrifice and future opportunities thrown away selfishly, in my opinion.
I like the Shinto philosophy about it.
"In Shinto thinking we stand on a vertical line connecting the Sun as the source of life, the Kami (gods) and our ancestors and extending to our descendants. This is tate musubi or vertical connection. Respecting and offering gratitude to these progenitors and descendants is Keishin suso. As all life is the child of the divine nature we are connected horizontally to our families, communities and all life of our world village. This is yoko musubi or horizontal connection. We live our lives in the present moment in the center of these connections, Nakaima. Through Shinto Ceremony and practice we celebrate and give gratitude as well as seeking course corrections to live joyful and productive lives as part of Divine Nature"
Dovetailing, perhaps the key to America's crime problem is to suppress--stunt the growth--of the family trees of people who can't pickup their burger and fries without cold cocking other customers much less shooting them?
Yeah, I know, that sounds like "the discredited theory of eugenics"--Nazi stuff. But hey, maybe it would work?
The graph of the English and Irish races looks like it might be interesting, but there is no y-axis shown. All I can see is that the English race had more of something than the Irish, for most of the past century.
Ngrams tell you what percentage of the words in all books published in 1800-2022 were the target words. (I chose just books published in Britain.) The vertical axis is marked with tiny percentages. I don't find them all that meaningful because they have so many zeroes in them that I can only comprehend them relatively over time and against other words.
Arthur C. Danto wrote a wonderful appreciation of Rockwell more than 20 years ago for _The Nation_. The left used to be a lot more thoughtful and warm-hearted.
Yes, indeed it is philosophically interesting. I've read that there are mathematical proofs that nearly all human beings living today are descended from Confucius. Also Mohammed and Charlemagne. Basically, any person of sufficient antiquity and fertility is very likely to be my ancestor, with some geographic inertia moderating the probabilities, especially before recent generations. I've seen contradictory claims on this stuff - I'd love to look into it someday to understand better.
The last pure-blood Tasmanian died about 100 or 150 years ago. All of her ancestors had been cut off from Australian Aborigines since the seas rose at the end of the Ice Ages about 10,000 years ago. So she would have had no possible genealogical connection to any named historic individuals, who appear to have started emerging into written history about 5000 to 6000 years ago in the Middle East.
There might be a few pure-blooded Tierra Del Fuegans left.
Most people can’t grasp that the spots in your family tree expands geometrically every generation you go back. Most people give up genealogy after great-great-great grandparents which is 64 people.
But assuming 25-year generations I had ≈500,000 living ancestors in 1492. That’s a lot of people but in practice a lot of those spots are occupied by the same people even though I come from a culture which is ultra-intolerant of cousin marriage.
But indeed any phenotypical ethnic similarity is simply a function of the degree of inbreeding within the human population.
I did my tree and was able to fill in over 50 of the 64 slots and the majority of the 128.
I think most people give it up at the 6th or 7th generation back as it just becomes too difficult due to the scarcity of records from pre 1800.
My sister discovered our parents were probably 5th or 6th cousins, going back to early 1700s in Pennsylvania. We've blamed all our troubles on that for 3 decades.
They kept using the same few Christian names over and over, so it's difficult to be sure. I ran into the same problem looking up Billy Graham's ancestors, who were a few miles from my Graham ancestors c. 1800. The same names were there, but the generations didn't align.
How does it feel to be inbred?
This makes sense that the geometric expansion of people in ones family tree can't increase going backwards in time as the number of humans decreases.
I’d say about 3% of people can grasp and explain this concept.
I've heard that genealogy is quite an addicting hobby e.g. legions of soccer moms staying up all night browsing genealogy websites and Facebook groups. Also, it seems like ChatGPT can help a lot. The AI can decipher handwritten text, translate old genealogy documents into English etc. Plus the AI knows all the broad strokes of history, so it can give plausible explanations of why you have German ancestors but an English last name or whatever.
This suppression of thinking about lineage is not very complicated.
It is obviously rooted the great Jewish American push to bust open and take over America. (It is just a lobe of the same racial nonsense we've been pickled in for decades.) If you are pushing minoritarianism, immigrationism, anti-nationalism, you do not want people thinking about lineage, belonging, heritage and nation--or God forbid, ideas of national "ownership".
The great--and annoying--irony of late 20th century American life--is one of the most tribal, closed and separatist peoples on the planet giving these tedious finger waging lectures on "racism!" and "tolerance" and "diversity!" to one of the most open and integrative peoples.
My dad was super into genealogy and someone else in the family picked up and expanded the work. The biggest revelation I saw was that we have no cool ancestors.
He would have thought it a fun hobby for gentiles too. I swear, as your mole in the international Jew conspiracy meetings, this one isn't on us. No one has ever mentioned it. I really do think the problem is what I found--most people's families' are boring no matter how far back you go.
> He would have thought it a fun hobby for gentiles too. I swear, as your mole in the international Jew conspiracy meetings, this one isn't on us. No one has ever mentioned it. I really do think the problem is what I found--most people's families' are boring no matter how far back you go.<
Erik, I don't think the IJC is inviting you to their meetings.
To be clear, i'm not talking so much about interest in genealogy. (My mom and her sisters and some of her cousins did some work and yeah, not super-exciting mostly "successful farmer"--the median ancestor of most all white gentiles. No visible pirates.)
When I mention the Jewish angle, I'm talking more talking about ideology--broader ideas about the importance of genetics, of lineage, of heritage and "ownership" of place and nation. Which all sounds sort of "racist!" (what doesn't?) and "nativist". I fully admit that urbanization, suburbanization and IBM ("I've been moved") style mobility work to erode this and atomize us as well.
BTW Erik you mentioned on a previous thread--where I was yapping about my priority being my kids' inheritance--to not having any kids.
Sounded like you were in your 50s and been meaning to suggest to you that "there is still time". I probably wouldn't do it again at my age now--if AnotherMom kicked me to the curb--as I'm not sure I'd be in a fit state to see the kids out to college. But I've known a few guys who have done it late with great success.
One guy I knew--I brought him on as an asst. when i was scoutmaster of my son's troop--had a couple sons, had gotten divorced and in his early 50s had married a 30-something gal (pleasant gal) and had another son (a terrific scout/young man). There are girls out there--good ones who've just sucked up crappy messaging from our culture--"hitting the wall" all the time and suddenly looking hard to find a guy to build their family with.
I don't know your situation, but I can tell you, it's not too late, and if you have children it will be the most worthwhile, interesting and rewarding thing you do. And our nation needs more smart, conscientious, productive kids. And if your dad is still around? he'll appreciate seeing new buds on the family tree.
Thanks. I appreciate it. I can well believe it. I'm certain that switch would flip if I had kids. I've had to admit to myself after several years of sincere effort that I am not good at dating. I'm certain making a bad match for the sake of having some kids would be a terrible decision. I just don't have an enough choices to cycle through. Just a consequence of spending most of my earlier years morbidly obese I suppose. It could change. I'm not closed off to the idea.
Yes, in my fifties. Family history suggests I have about 20 years left. I know that is plenty of time, but I also can't stand the idea of being terrified of dying while my kids still need me.
Also, and I know this sounds like just making up scenarios to rationalize, but my personal hell would be autistic spectrum daughter comes home from junior high school wanting to know why no one wants to be her friend.
> I've had to admit to myself after several years of sincere effort that I am not good at dating...Just a consequence of spending most of my earlier years morbidly obese I suppose
I'm sure your obnoxious, argumentative personality didn't help matters
My family history, and we have been Anglo-American since the Wesleys in Savannah and the settlers Boone led to Kentucky, has always been prole or bourgeois. Lots of drama, titanic tempers and functional alcoholic polymaths. The practical effect has been estrangement and distance and no generational wealth.
The only upper class relative was a great-uncle, a truly talented artist who moved to Europe. Gay and no descendants. Another great uncle was a decorated US Navy commander who committed suicide in his late 40s with no descendants. A cousin got drunk at his party celebrating his PGA qual card and died in a single-car wreck. We've probably got another couple of generations before we go extinct. My Y-chromosomal line ends with me.
To my observation the American extended family has all but disappeared. When all my grandparents finally got put in the ground, the remaining aunts and uncles, and us, the cousins, all drifted apart. And weirdly, I I was discussing this with a bourgeois Iraqi immigrant my age and he said, "It's the same all over the world."
Modern life, ease of travel and communication leads people to leave their families for jobs and adventure? Businesses and government substitute for a lot of things we used to depend on family and community for, perhaps?
Your family sounds more interesting than mine. Boone as in Daniel Boone?
Yes, Daniel Boone. And I'd say there has been as much negative push from bad family dynamics as positive pull from market economics. My sister and I and our cousins had pretty bad upbringings. My parents and their cousins all had pleasant upbringings, the grandparents had okay upbringings, but the great-grandparents had hard lives that they refused to talk about (we are talking about 1880's-1910 America). I think we are interesting people--I've always been astounded by the pedestrian conversation levels in other families--but we have zero legacy, no status, and are prone to alcoholism and depression. I have a sibling with three children and two grandkids but they all struggle economically and some UMC cousins with kids who will probably spawn two maybe three more generations before we are finally done.
Alcoholism (the real stuff, not romanticized like in the movies) is rough. Makes one volatile and unreliable; not great for parenting. Real depression too, not great. I as that why your family went from good upbringing to poor in one generation? I have five nephews who are thriving.
Mainly just bad, clueless parenting.
Saxon royal families were very into tracing their bloodlines from Woden or Thor, but this was discouraged by Christian monks. One theory for why Anglo-Saxon England amalgamated relatively quickly is the high level of prestige attached to royal bloodlines, so that when one went extinct it seemed natural for a neighbouring king to absorb its dominions (rather than elevate a non-royal lacking divine ancestry).
For similar reason, in the Prose Edda Snorri Sturluson stole a trick from Vergil and made the Norse gods descendants of the warriors who fled Troy after that dirty horse trick.
A few years ago I decided that genealogy is a good therapy for the alienation and atomization of the modern world. Everyone comes from somewhere, and you have something very important in common with the other people in your family tree: genes. This provides real human connection.
So I started a wiki where people can enter their own relatives down to the present day and print a book from them. It's very private - you can see and enter only people who share your own blood, or those directly married to them.
Sent out about 100 books to relatives so far, and they are always happy to get them.
My genealogy site doesn't look like much until you have relatives in it:
https://webfam.net/about
Thinking I should make a demo book of some prominent family. Might do the Medicis.
What do you mean by book?
Literally a paper book with the entire genealogy of a surname in it. That is, all the male-line descendants of the founding couple, meaning the men and women born with that surname and their immediate children, with pictures if available.
Also has a place for an introduction to the history of that family if someone cares to fill that in, and at the back, a birth date calendar, an index by first name, and a list of all descendants of the founding couple.
My dad was from a large Irish family, my surname book is about 250 pages.
So you're working downstream from one instead of up, as in Rockwell's painting.
My cousin had her wedding reception in an old house in Kinston NC, where she lived a very few years. On the wall was a 1930s Washington "pedigree" as you describe for its (white) American line c.1550 up to c.1900. Our g-g-grandmother, who was from nearby New Bern, was on one edge as George's 4th cousin, so my aunt found, framed, and gave me one. Just now, I wonder if she'd put it up in the house herself, but I think she would have said. Some people get the bug, some don't.
Right, the books are all downstream from some ancestral couple, or from one guy if he had multiple wives. My reasoning is that people feel connected by common ancestry and a common surname.
On the site itself, you can display a tree going the other way, from the individual to all of his or her known ancestors. That nice for ego, but doesn't really help to connect you to your relatives.
Some people say I should make the books show all descendants of a couple, even the many lines through daughters, which greatly outnumber the strictly paternal lines. But I think people don't identify as closely with zillions of relatives who weren't born with the same surname as they do with those obvious relations. I plan to make that full set of descendants an option in printing though. Or even a customized book "all my relatives on all sides and how they are related to me". Wouldn't be hard.
And you're right that people get the genealogy bug, and others just don't. They should though, lots of meaning in it.
The beginning of this article, where Steve mentions the interest of academcis in "family trees," reminded me of the Mathematical Genealogy Project, which has a website enabling users to trace the dissertation adviser(s) of thousands of mathematicians, contemporary and past. It's fascinating to see how many well known 20th and 21st century Europenan and American mathematicians have illustrious mathematical ancestors like Gauss and Leibniz (who is a mathematical ancestor of Gauss). For example, if you trace John von Neumann's mathematical ancestry back six generations, you land on Gauss. The same happens for Paul Erdos. The eccentric Russian Fields Medal winner, Grigori Perelman, who refused the monetary award, has Lobachesvsky (of Tom Lehrer fame) as a mathematical ancestor. I suppose the lines of lesser known mathematicians die out more frequently. They perhaps have fewer and less talented descendants.
This sounds more interesting to me than my own family tree.
That's totally normal. If you are math genius, chances are substantially higher, other (much younger) math geniuses will flock to you than to someone else.
It's the same way in physics, chemistry or medicine. Or learning talmud, for example,
It's not just the magic dirt of someone being a math genius and it rubs off. Other math geniuses have a radar for math geniosity - so they flock to the more established math genius.
Great bands formed in towns with live music scenes as the great hardworking musicians figured out who the others were. That's one of the benefits of being good at something--you can recognize other people who are good at it.
Similarly we are forever learning about how great actors were friends with other great actors way back early in their careers when they were both waiters.
Classical voice instructors (and artists) trace their training lineage like that.
I've noticed that about vocal and instrumental soloists by reading the program notes before a concert. They often express their deep gratitude to their instructors.
That's a great scene in Buster Scruggs, the old trapper talking about his Hunkpapa Sioux "wife." "She had no English and I was unschooled in the gibberings of the nations." As always a subtle detail from the casting of that scene: Saul Rubinek plays the french cardplayer. He also played Mr Beauchamp, the writer, in Unforgiven.
> American eugenicists propagated the extreme American bias against inbreeding. British eugenicists couldn’t because their godfather Charles Darwin married his first cousin and was also slightly inbred in his ancestry.
So Americans, who dominate the world’s thinking about race today, refuse to think about the role of endogamy in creating race. <
Steve, you seems to love these "just so" stories like this.
I certainly agree America has dominated thinking about race--and much else--since 1945. And not for the better.
And I certainly agree that America--by its very nature--is a much more "outbred" joint. (I'm a proto-typical American midwest mutt--part Irish, German, English and Scots-Irish. Strands which just all happened to end up in Iowa in the late 19th century to produce my grandparents.)
But it's not like American thinkers weren't aware of inbreeding. The old WASPy establishment, especially the New England "Boston Brahmin" families--your Adams, Cabots, Lodges, Lowells, Winthrops, etc. etc. etc.--descended from much smaller founding stock populations and were entwined together (as well as mixed with "new money") repeatedly over generations. There is probably something similar with the founding Cavalier families of the South--the Lees and such. (I'm even less aware of that world and part of neither.)
American frowned on 1st cousin marriage as backward and unhealthy--maybe even as vaguely tribal and primitive. But it isn't like they were mad outbreeders and did not value "good families" and strong lineage, much less didn't know that it existed. For example, Eleanor Roosevelt didn't have to change her name upon getting married, since she was marrying a 5th cousin.
I worked a job with Harry Lee of the law firm Steptoe and Johnson in 1987. He was as proud of his Blair lineage as he was of his Lee lineage. One of the Lee Family, an Episcopalian minister, hates the old general for the usual lefty reasons. Most lefties are mentally ill.
My g-grandmother's sister married a man with their surname, which we discovered in old letters from Miss Betty T changing to from Mrs. Betty T. Bound to be a cousin (lots of T's in the area), but how distant? We also learned from herself that grandma's freckled black former housekeeper had the same maiden name. Awkward.
The current extreme American prejudice against, say, second cousins marrying emerged from the research of American eugenicists in the first half of the 20th Century.
Victoria and Albert were first cousins. One of their many granddaughters, Victoria Melita, known as Ducky, divorced one first cousin (the Tsarina's brother) in 1901 and married another, Kyril Romanov (the Tsar's 1st cousin & 3rd in line, so it didn't go over well). Could an inclination to cousin attraction be in the blood, or was it just the restrictions on royals marrying royals?
A lot of the resistance to acknowledging racial differences is that to accept it is to also accept that not every social system or political program will produce even results or can even be successfully adopted by very different demographic groups. Both the left and right have their own versions of blank slatism, but the left is the side that believes social and political programming can iron out all differences, whereas the right tends to believe sufficient personal effort can achieve that. The former gives permission for the state to intervene in our culture and economy, whereas the latter is more benign in its potential effects.
"If you go back to ancestors alive 4,000 years ago, say, George W. Bush might indeed be descended by 1 path from n!Xao, a Bushman in the Kalahari, but he’d also be descended from Owen, a farmer in Essex, by 800,000,000 different paths. Add them all up and it’s reasonable to say that George W. Bush is a lot more British than Bushman."
That's true, but still, if n!Xao had been eaten by a lion before fathering children then George W would never have existed.
As I have matured I have gained more appreciation for my ancestors, whose efforts to survive and procreate allowed me to experience life. This understanding also saddens me to see friends and peers decide to end their bloodlines due to careers or political fads. All those generations of sacrifice and future opportunities thrown away selfishly, in my opinion.
I like the Shinto philosophy about it.
"In Shinto thinking we stand on a vertical line connecting the Sun as the source of life, the Kami (gods) and our ancestors and extending to our descendants. This is tate musubi or vertical connection. Respecting and offering gratitude to these progenitors and descendants is Keishin suso. As all life is the child of the divine nature we are connected horizontally to our families, communities and all life of our world village. This is yoko musubi or horizontal connection. We live our lives in the present moment in the center of these connections, Nakaima. Through Shinto Ceremony and practice we celebrate and give gratitude as well as seeking course corrections to live joyful and productive lives as part of Divine Nature"
Dovetailing, perhaps the key to America's crime problem is to suppress--stunt the growth--of the family trees of people who can't pickup their burger and fries without cold cocking other customers much less shooting them?
Yeah, I know, that sounds like "the discredited theory of eugenics"--Nazi stuff. But hey, maybe it would work?
The graph of the English and Irish races looks like it might be interesting, but there is no y-axis shown. All I can see is that the English race had more of something than the Irish, for most of the past century.
What does this graph tell us?
Ngrams tell you what percentage of the words in all books published in 1800-2022 were the target words. (I chose just books published in Britain.) The vertical axis is marked with tiny percentages. I don't find them all that meaningful because they have so many zeroes in them that I can only comprehend them relatively over time and against other words.
Arthur C. Danto wrote a wonderful appreciation of Rockwell more than 20 years ago for _The Nation_. The left used to be a lot more thoughtful and warm-hearted.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/age-innocence-0/
Steve, Takimag paywalls your articles.
When the 'sign up' banner comes up, if you wait a second and then tap anywhere on screen, you can read the article.
Yes, indeed it is philosophically interesting. I've read that there are mathematical proofs that nearly all human beings living today are descended from Confucius. Also Mohammed and Charlemagne. Basically, any person of sufficient antiquity and fertility is very likely to be my ancestor, with some geographic inertia moderating the probabilities, especially before recent generations. I've seen contradictory claims on this stuff - I'd love to look into it someday to understand better.
The last pure-blood Tasmanian died about 100 or 150 years ago. All of her ancestors had been cut off from Australian Aborigines since the seas rose at the end of the Ice Ages about 10,000 years ago. So she would have had no possible genealogical connection to any named historic individuals, who appear to have started emerging into written history about 5000 to 6000 years ago in the Middle East.
There might be a few pure-blooded Tierra Del Fuegans left.
There are pure-blooded Polynesians.
The idea that we have All Common Ancestors was developed by Douglas Rohde
http://faculty.collin.edu/dkatz/Rohde-MRCA-two.pdf