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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: greyingrey on Thursday 31 January 19 16:25 GMT (UK)
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On Radio 4 the other day, an expert in the relevant field said that all Europeans who do not have completely non-European ancestry can trace their latest common ancestor to as late as the fourteenth century & they would be from southern Germany.
So come on, get digging......
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Is that because they are very good at record keeping in Southern Germany? Or ...
Regards
Chas
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We all know the definition of an expert, don't we...........................
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Which radio programme? Is it on BBC Iplayer/BBC Sounds?
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Was this expert an American? So many of them are..... ::)
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The latest common ancestor, the result of a mathematical study
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Surely this expert was referring to continental Europe? I don't imagine every single person in the UK, or Scandinavia even, having German ancestry, however distant. I certainly don't, and I have virtually 100% English and Irish ancestry, with a dash of Scottish and Swedish thrown in.
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Latest common ancestor, 600 years ago. Germany was not a country then, it would have been the Holy Roman Empire if my memory, and maths, serves me well. Everyone is descended from Charlemagne
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Here,; https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2013/05/07/charlemagnes-dna-and-our-universal-royalty/
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Latest common ancestor, 600 years ago. Germany was not a country then, it would have been the Holy Roman Empire if my memory, and maths, serves me well. Everyone is descended from Charlemagne
That's a bit further back than 600 years! ;)
Yes, even I am descended from Charlie Magni (to use the schoolboy terminology). If the old trees can be believed of course.
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14th century and we have just entered the 21 century, so 600 to 700 years. But the original statement was the 14th century, just I placed Charlemagne a little later in history than he was, my mistake. The maths still hold good though.
nothing to do with trees, it is a case of a common ancestor, someone everyone is related to.
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I had a recollection about the blue eyed redheads being descended from one woman about 6000 years ago.
Did some checking,and found: Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080130170343.htm
I think that this is a little more scientifically provable that that about Charlemagne etc
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i think you are missing the point, it,s not so much that you are descended from Charlemagne but that all Europeans are related to a common ancestor at that time. From my earlier link;
The most recent common ancestor of every European today (except for recent immigrants to the Continent) was someone who lived in Europe in the surprisingly recent past—only about 600 years ago. In other words, all Europeans alive today have among their ancestors the same man or woman who lived around 1400. Before that date, according to Chang’s model, the number of ancestors common to all Europeans today increased, until, about a thousand years ago, a peculiar situation prevailed: 20 percent of the adult Europeans alive in 1000 would turn out to be the ancestors of no one living today (that is, they had no children or all their descendants eventually died childless); each of the remaining 80 percent would turn out to be a direct ancestor of every European living today.
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After wondering if Europeans had white skin due to the lack of strong light and therefore the lack vitamin D absorption/creation, so a trait developed to aid living in less sunnier climes and why most Caucasian Europeans are lactose tolerant compared to the mainly lactose intolerant population from the rest of the world, led me to this article:
https://theconversation.com/a-handful-of-bronze-age-men-could-have-fathered-two-thirds-of-europeans-42079
which suggests that all European men can trace their Y chromosome back to three individuals living between 3500 years and 7300 years ago.
The Yamnaya people seem to have played a big part in the evolution of Europe - Fascinating stuff!
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Charlemagne born 742 AD, died 814 AD, crowned Holy Roman Emperor 800 AD in Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle. (Just setting the dates right :) His father was called Pepin the Short and one of his sons was Pepin the Hunchback.
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Everyone is descended from Charlemagne
Unless you are Danny Dyer, of course, in which case it's Bill The Conq. ;D
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Everyone is descended from Charlemagne
Unless you are Danny Dyer, of course, in which case it's Bill The Conq. ;D
But surely Bill was also descended from Charlemagne? ;)
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Surely this expert was referring to continental Europe? I don't imagine every single person in the UK, or Scandinavia even, having German ancestry, however distant. I certainly don't, and I have virtually 100% English and Irish ancestry, with a dash of Scottish and Swedish thrown in.
What do you mean by English?
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were Germanic tribes or the Celts an Indo-european grouping of different peoples (including "Germanic peoples").
Cheers
Guy
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As far as I have traced so far, most of my ancestors were English but with some Scottish and French Huguenot thrown in. I think though most English people descend from Germanic tribes/Celts/Vikings.