Charlemagne

Not sure how scientific that is Jason. The Persians are the ones that headed East, not the Chinese moving West. There are still descendants of Persians in Western China today.

On another note, Ghengis Khan is the Charlemagne of the orient, even though he was mongolian, most people in China are related to him, as well as some people in Europe, maybe that is what you were thinking about?

Hey cousin Cynthia! Funny, you spell your first name the same way my mother does!

i trust most my own genealogy program, some say they are descendants to egyptians ?

have some one watched the list over his ancestors, saw the name helen of troy? ???

I did not see Helen of Troy but once saw Kings of Troy among his ancestors.

According to Geni , Charlemagne is Helen of Troy's 46th great nephew.

so tell me dear cynthia , so you mean that helen of troy was a real person? I thought she was made up totally. do you have a list maybe ?

Geni allows anyone to add profiles and put links to other profiles. On Geni.com, I have a branch that goes back to Adam, does that mean that I believe it? No.

To be able to go back as far as Geni is going, you will start losing sources and have unreliable links that's source will only be history and legend. I wish that Geni would use some kind of color coordination for sourced links, historical links, and legend links to where everyone would know what they were looking at.

According to Geni, my ~great grandfather founded Sparta. That's cool, but I doubt it could be proven...

And Asa, from what I understand, the legend of Helen of Troy is believed to have been based on a real woman. The ruins of the city of Troy were found and added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998.

ok, I see, i thought it was made up. charlemagne is a great man, was he not?

The story of the battle over Helen of Troy was at one time considered to be legend, as is Atlantis. Then archeologists found that Troy actually exists on the coast of present day Turkey. You can make up your own mind, but I believe that indicates that the people may have lived, but their lives became legend.

"Yes, we are all descended from Charlemagne.” Take a look this article that Pam Wilson brought to my attention: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/olson/2497

And I hope everone read his penultimate sentence. It's one of the most important thing to remember to do in genealogy.

Very interesting article.

I have read this article before, & not sure I buy into it..Royal /aristocratic families tended to marry others of the same station....the odd illegitimate liaison aside...those of us following certain lines, will find the same names cropping up over & over again..I would say that the majority of the peasantry, here in England, & in France, or wherever, never had any physical connection to the nobilty of the area in which they resided..It's true that down the centuries, the descendants of prominant families,..younger offspring, may have come down in the world ..It's also true that 2-3 hundred years ago, the younger sons of many aristocrats, emigrated to the New World..Many Americans today still have the records of their earlier illustrious forbears...Some ancestry is hard to track down because records were destroyed..But these fortunate Americans had theirs handed down..I know far far more Americans with Royal ancestry, than I do English..On a series of "Who do you think you Are", a TV presenter called Jeremy Paxman was taken back to the Middle Ages, & it was completely peasant stock..It's possible of course, that some lines on one side or other, were missing, & we didn't have the complete story....Also, for many centuries within Europe, most people remained within their own area, ., so the only chance for the mixing of this gene pool, would seem to be in more recent times..I would like to see more proof of this theory, before I'm ready to accept it..

I think any "research", would best be backed up by DNA testing...I think that will be my next venture!

Good points, Private User - Ultimately, though, this article is about a mathematical exercise - As the number of grandparents increases exponentially, I cannot imagine how Jeremy Paxton's lineage was definitively honed down to specific peasants from the THOUSANDS of grandparents he must have been descended from by the time his ancestry was traced back to the middle ages. (Quite apart from the fact that the TV presenters are excluding the filtering down of genes that must have occurred due to the aristocracy coupling with the maid servants or exercising 'rights' of droit du seigneur, and not recording this!!.)

That’s analysing ancestry filtering top-down. Look at it from another angle, though – from the bottom up: we are the GENETIC SURVIVORS of the past, and, as such, isn't it logically more likely that we descend from the privileged than from the impoverished - whose lives were more likely to be short and nasty?
(I think the article mentions the effects of ‘bottlenecks’ too?)

DNA is going to revolutionize genealogy - I agree. The conservative Eurocentric methods of genealogical record keeping are being shaken up and popularised by increasingly affordable access to DNA tests and ancestry tracking. Geni’s platform is positioned to ride this wave of mass archiving. (Can you hear how exciting I find it :-)

I don’t know a lot about DNA testing – it’s still pretty expensive in SA. I do recall hearing that we are no more likely to share significantly differentiated genetic traits with our 8th generation ancestors than with any wo/man in the street. Ie our 8th great grandmother is no more likely to be genetically similar to us than any other random person is.

Now, to me, this suggests that haplo-group tracking (if that’s what it’s called?) is relying on large numbers of subjects, over large periods of change – and is perhaps likely to be tracking differences from a norm to pinpoint a descent group. Excuse the vague – almost certainly incorrect musing, I’m not a statistician:-)

But I wonder if this means that it may be more ‘anonymous’ than we might hope? Ie by 11 generations back we may only be able to tell if someone comes from our ‘clan’ rather than if they’re our direct gggrandpa? Maybe I’ve got it wrong, though?

Sharon, over at genforum, a man had his DNA test done by two different companies. The second one didn't match the first one, being off by two markers. If the various testing companies can't match someone to himself, I'm kind of doubtful as to what kind of work they are doing. I've been wavering back and forth, but after hearing that, I'm putting it on the back burner again.

It's still pretty expensive here in the US also, and we'd like to have a cousin get tested for the male line, and one of us female cousins or our mothers or aunts tested for the female side. We're more interested in the haplogroups actually, since so far no male ancestors have been found in Europe for our direct line. (Several other very distant cousins from the same family have been tested here in the States.)

For some reason, the testing companies seem to make the explanations /meanings of the test results very confusing. Another gentleman wrote a pamphlet explaining what the markers/groups etc. mean. It's a free ebook; I've downloaded it already. Have to get some sleep now, but will look for the link when I'm up later today....did a search in my bookmarks and found the link; hope it comes through here: http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com/2008/03/11/new-ebook-i-have-th...

Janice,

Thanks for the link. One of the things on my list was to go back and try to find that link. I read it when it first came out and thought the author does a good job.

Geni has some DNA projects, and the curators have been working on trying to make our explanation simpler than the testing companies do:

http://www.geni.com/projects/DNA-Primer-A-portal-for-genetic-geneal...

The key is that you don't have to understand the science in order to know how to interpret and apply the results. Even so, most people want to understand at least some of it. The feedback we're getting is that we need to explain more ;) If you have any suggestions for improving our explanation, I'd love to hear from you.

There are always stories floating around about people who get different results from different companies. It does happen, but it's very rare. If there is any doubt, a reputable testing company will be willing to re-run the test. I've been tested at several different companies and always get the same results.

He is my 37th Great Grand Papa !!!

Thanks for the link, Janice. This is fascinating stuff.

GENI told me a few months ago, that Charlemagne is my first cousin and so
on..... but now he is my 31 great grandfather!! Better like this!

Hmm, 1st cousin does make you VERY VERY old, Tuula :-)

You missed the "and so on", which I assume is some "nn times removed"

Ah, Bjorn - you stickler for detail :-)

I really hope that Geni soon release the new relationship algorithm and translation rules for that, which gives us an option to replace the "nn times removed" with a more understandable description like "your 32th great grandfathers first cousin".

Sharon & Björn,

Hahaa, - a good sence of humour is a gift!!
:) Tuula Hannele

or a burden, Tuula :-) :-)

My 36th great grandfather:http://www.geni.com/path/Paul+Alexander+Westerlund+is+related+to+Ch...

Charlemagne -33rd great grandfather.

Charlemagne and Hildegard von Vinzgau are my 33rd g-grandparents. Helklo to all my cousins!