Ancestry Is Nonsense

I saw this video pop up on reddit earlier today and, while I’ve been shouting for years at anyone who would listen that ancestry DNA kits are junk science, I finally have something else to back me up so I’m sharing it.

Yeah, I’m petty. Sue me.

Look, it’s no secret that I find accidents of blood a ridiculous basis for forming family bonds over. I’ve written about it before. Family is who you choose, not who you were born to. I believe that on both a philosophical level and, to an extent, a scientific one.

When it comes to inherited traits and genetic conditions, of course it matters who your parents are, and who their parents were, and who their parents’ parents were. But it only goes so far before it stops being useful.

It’s the same way with nonsense ideas like bloodlines and eugenics. Granted, any decent person knows eugenics has always been bullshit, but people still cling to the idea that who they’re related to in history actually matters. Conspiracy theorists especially love the idea of ruling elite bloodlines, but normal people just enjoy bragging about how they’re a “direct descendent” of Shakespeare or whoever.

Which is stupid.

Here’s why: We’re all related to some degree, because that’s just how biology works. Tracing your “lineage” back to an impressive historic figure might make you feel special, but chances are your neighbor or spouse is related to the same person. You might even be related to me.

I’m sorry.

Anyway, take this study, which was impressively done by a 12-year-old, that found all but one U.S. president are directly related. It’s true. The only president she couldn’t trace back to King John (yes, that King John) was Martin van Buren (probably because he was protected by sideburns magic).

Sounds like an illuminati conspiracy, doesn’t it? Forty-two of our forty-three presidents all tracing their ancestry back to the same king has to mean something, right? Bloodlines, yo!

Nope.

King John reigned around 800 years ago, which means there’s a good chance you’re related to him. Just in case you skipped your sex ed class, it always takes two parents to make a child, which means, in theory, you double your number of ancestors each generation: 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 16 great grands, 32 great greats, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc…

Of course, that model falls apart after awhile because you end up having more ancestors than were alive on the planet at a specific point in history, which tends to shatter the whole idea of continuous, distinct bloodlines. This is because, while we might like to think of genealogy as a tree or an inverted pyramid, it’s actually shaped more like a diamond.

You’re at the pointy bottom, which expands up toward the middle just like an inverted pyramid – but after a certain point, it starts to narrow again before ending in another point at the top. Why? Because the farther back you go, the more inbred your ancestors get.

If genealogy worked like an inverted pyramid, we could go back to the time of Charlemagne and find we have a potential for 281 trillion ancestors all living around 800AD, which is impossible because there weren’t that many people on the planet back then. (The current world population is just shy of 8 billion.) Instead, what you find is a lot of close cousins were busy making babies way back when, so those distinct branches of the family tree we’re all familiar with start getting less and less distinct over time. More like a family shrubbery or something. I dunno. Pick your own metaphor.

For example, let’s just look at a family tree going back to great-grandparents. In modern times, we’d expect to see 14 ancestors at that point: 2 parents, 4 grandparents, and 8 great grandparents because we tend to frown on cousin lovin’ these days. But if you go back farther to pick another person earlier in your tree and go back to his or her great-grandparents, you’ll likely find they only have 12 ancestors at the great-grandparents level.

In fact, one Anthropology professor at Rutgers has suggested it’s likely that 80% of all historical marriages were between second cousins or closer.

It’s called pedigree collapse, and it happens more and more often the farther back you go. If two first cousins along your family tree had a kid, that kid would only have six great-grandparents instead of the eight we’d expect to see in the inverted pyramid model, and that effect would only amplify itself the farther back you went.

Here’s a chart if you need some help visualizing that. (I’m a tremendous artist, I know.)

In short, the farther back you go, the more likely you are to be related to some famous historical figure as your genealogy diamond narrows. Go back far enough, say around 800 years ago, and you’ll find a whole bunch of people related to King John. Like maybe, say, 42 out of 43 U.S. presidents.

TL;DR – Ancestry and bloodlines are bullshit.

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NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

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