There are people
who spend inordinate amounts of time tracing their ancestry. I feel that anything past 100 years (five
generations) is a waste of time as the DNA inherited from any one ancestor is
so minute as to be inconsequential.
There is no
such thing as a direct line of ancestry.
Ancestry is most always followed through a particular male line, and each preceding generation (20 yrs.) is
counted exponentially:
Generation #1: 2 parents – 2 grandfathers
Gen. #2: 4 grandfathers
Gen. #3: 8 grandfathers
Gen. #4: 16
grandfathers
Gen. #5: 32 grandfathers…
The DAR
members attempt to show a direct blood line back to the American Revolution (about
240 years or 12 generations.) At that
point you have 4000 twelfth-generation-great-grandfathers. And since only half of your DNA comes from
your male line and half comes from your female line, any great… grandfather
from that era represents only one-eight-thousandth (1/8000th.) of
your DNA.
Another
interesting fact is that we share 89% of our DNA with our closest ape relative
chimpanzees, and if you are of European ancestry you probably have between 2-to-4
percent of your DNA Neanderthal.
Posted by your
cousin
the Ol’Buzzard
It seems to me that "family" linage is stronger than biological lineage.
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