Updated 2 months ago
Discover the reality behind ancestry and pedigree collapse, and why almost all Europeans have royal blood. Uncover the truth about our diverse family histories!
The further in you go in European ancestry, the deeper it gets. You will eventually start hitting a wall in the 1400s, before which literacy was limited to a few clergy and monks; consequently, records were scarce. As the numbers going generations back doubles each time, by the time you’ve hit the 1400s you’re dealing with over 32,000 ancestors, but note pedigree collapse (see below)
Compounding all this is church fires in wartime. And there were a lot of wars! Catholics and Protestants had a field day burning each other’s churches, which held the records.
Given the staggering numbers going back, when doing my family’s genealogy, which today is far, far easier than the days of yesteryear when you’d see old people in the genealogy section. Finding ancestors is gameified now. Still, I personally generally don’t fact-check too much -would take decades – unless I hit a notable person. Life is too short.
The culmination point, where the number of ancestors exceeds the total population of Europe, would theoretically happen around 900 A.D. – but this obvious question illustrates the flaws of applying simple math to reality, which is messy.
Pedigree collapse refers to the fact that there will be a lot of intermarriage of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and further cousins, so the actual number is going to be somewhat smaller, depending on the dynamism of population movement – which was pretty low until relatively recently. Still, the table above simply illustrates the effect of doubling over time.
Interestingly, Americans and other groups with high immigration are going to have a lot less pedigree collapse.
Everyone has royal blood
Note: Almost all Europeans are descended from medieval nobility and ultimately royality! It isn’t anything special!
In the 1400s, only a small percentage of Europeans, around 2-3%, were considered nobility. This means the vast majority of the population were commoners, including peasants and serfs.
Going by the simple math above, the average # of 15th century nobles in any given European’s family tree in the year 1425 A.D. is 819.2.
DNA tests have proven that over 99% of Europeans are descended from Charlemagne (748-814). Furthermore, basically, everyone alive in the ninth century who left descendants is the ancestor of every living European today!
The tiny minority are probably hyperinsular/geographically isolated populations such as Lapps, and to a lesser extent, Basques, and the like.
Finally, there’s an inherent bias – nobility/royalty are going to have FAR greater recorded than the vast majority of ancestors, who were serfs and peasantry.
So, that all said, the real fun of ancestry is not finding nobility/royalty, but finding notable and interesting individuals.
