![]() ![]() Due to the influence of migration, conquering invaders and colonisation in the past two thousand years, computer models have even made the provocative prediction that the most recent common ancestor of all humans on the planet alive today lived at some point between 1400 BC – during the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Queen Nefertiti – and AD 55. Likewise, most of the Asian population may be descended from the Chinese philosopher Confucius. While it is hard to prove conclusively, it has been suggested that most of today's European population must descend from him. A common example is Charlemagne, who lived from 747-814, uniting most of Europe under his rule, marrying at least ten times, and leaving 18 children. As population sizes were relatively small back then – in the year 1200, the global population was somewhere between 360 and 450 million – the chance that this extended family tree includes royalty becomes much greater.Īccording to Graham Coop, professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, if you go back even further in time, you ultimately find that your family tree becomes so vast that you are distantly related to almost everyone who has ever lived, provided they lived long enough to leave descendants.Īs a result, experts like Coop have estimated that any reasonably fertile ruler who lived around 1,000 years ago is probably the ancestor of a large swathe of the population today. Over the course of just four generations, it goes from two parents to four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and 16 great-great grandparents – numbers which then expand dramatically.įor example, if you go back 25 generations, you have more than 33 million ancestors. While this might seem surprising, it is important to realise that your family tree grows exponentially the further back you go in time. The only question is how far back through the centuries you need to search in order to find them. Perhaps surprisingly, this is a near certainty. How likely is it that you, too, might have some royal connections lurking somewhere in your ancestry? Actress Brooke Shields learned she was descended from French royalty, while actresses Hilary Duff and Uma Thurman are distantly related the British royal family. Supermodel Cindy Crawford is a distant descendant of the King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. In recent years, the popular BBC TV series Who Do You Think You Are has seen numerous public figures discover to their shock that they have distant royal connections of their own. ![]() That made it a much more powerful moment." "But I was one of the few who has actual tangible DNA in common with him. "The unique thing that really struck me was just how many people must be descended from Richard III's family," he says. As he gazed upon his ancestor's skeleton ahead of a reinternment ceremony in Leicester Cathedral in 2015, he reflected on the sheer improbability of it all. "It's not a direct line, because we were traced down his sister's female line, but basically he's a great-uncle 17 times removed."įor Ibsen, a 66-year-old carpenter and furniture-maker living in North London, it seemed like a remarkable coincidence. "We had no idea that we would be part of the process of finding Richard III's remains," says Ibsen. Hidden within his DNA were genetic sequences that came from the royal line. When the suspected remains of Richard III were discovered underneath a Leicester car park in 2012, it was a sample of Ibsen's spit that helped to confirm the long-dead king's identity. ![]() After she passed away, it was her son, Michael Ibsen, who found himself thrust into an extraordinary detective story. In 2004, she was contacted by a British historian: she had been identified as a descendant of Richard III, England's last Plantagenet king. ![]() But for all her efforts, there was one key piece of information that she missed. Using digital census records, birth certificates and marriage documents, she painstakingly traced her family's ancestry back to the 14th Century. Joy Ibsen, a retired Canadian journalist, had been an avid amateur geneaologist. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |