I have some really bad news about your family tree...

[Kurska]

Every single one of you (including me) is at some point descended from a rapist, a murderer and most likely a rapist murderer aswell. Probably many of them engaged in brutal conquests and genocides of innocent people. For example, 1 out of every 200 men alive today are directly descended from a man who killed around 40 million people (Ghenghis Khan).

In fact, if you're not familiar with the concept, we all share a single female ancestor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

So while you're not directly descended from every butcher, murderer and general jerk in history, congrats they are in your family tree, some incredibly distant cousin.

You're even made of the stuff of murders and monsters (along with great men and women), here is one of my favorite Bill Bryson quotes "Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numberous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms-up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.”"

Do with this information what you will.

[oldandhappy]

1. I think about this when I have a chance to sit at the beach and watch

the tides/waves come and go. The water can never be the same during the next tide or wave. The flow is constant, the change and the mix are constant.

[Kurska]

2. ...

[oldandhappy]

5. perfect!

[Aerows]

16. No one can

drink the same sip of wine again as when it first hit his tongue. No one can live the same life twice, for time is the ultimate chaos and benevolent dictator at once.

[Cleita]

27. Or on the other hand, every drop of water we drink has at one time

in the past been filtered through the kidneys of some creature or man first. I can't give you a source because I remember reading that in a science mag some years ago, but other than this disgusting fact that got stuck in my brain, nothing else remained.

[Arugula Latte]

52. My friend pointed out that we are all drinking "dinosaur pee."

Some friend, huh?!

[Cleita]

56. I think he's right though if the scientists who postulated this are right.

[seveneyes]

105. River of Time

Send back visions of war and decay.
Paradigms of fear in a world of dismay.
Shape the present, alter the past.
Create a new future, one that would last

[alfredo]

41. Trilobite piss.

[rug]

43. I'd hate to think I'm related to everyone when I have a chance to sit at the beach and watch.

[JimDandy]

104. Well rug,

if that's where your thoughts go at a beautiful beach, we need to get you new glasses or maybe a new companion?

[randr]

77. Being of Eastern European descent and having B-neg blood type

assures me that I have a connection to the invading forces from Central Asia. I do imagine this was a consensual contract, just a fact of life.

[uhnope]

94. I have WORSE NEWS about family trees

A friend of mine asked his brothers and sisters to take DNA tests.
The tests came back showing they all had different fathers. Some of his siblings won't talk to him anymore--they're pissed off that the guy that they've been telling their kids is their granddaddy is not really their granddaddy.
So all these trees presume that the two married folk were really the parents of the kids in the tree (and especially that the fathers were the real fathers).
Go back a few generations, and there's no way to be sure. I'd say that it's a reasonable assumption that if you include, say, ten generations, at least on of those links will involve a kid that was not really the child of the woman's husband.
Which pretty much blows this family tree/genealogy thing out of the water. Kabloom!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[alfredo]

110. The DNA tests can help figure out from where your family came.

I am interested to see if I have any Armenian/Persian blood. We have the appropriate surname for the region, but we have no evidence other than that. The trail goes cold in Prussia at around the 1620's.

[Dreamer Tatum]

3. Perhaps, but YOURS owned slaves, Kurska.

So deal with THAT.

[Kurska]

6. Unpossible

My ancestors were perfect 21st century humanist egalitarians throughout all of history who never engaged in brutal widespread practices that modern society would look down on.

I don't know about YOUR ancestors though, I am sure they were just absolutely dreadful.

[Dreamer Tatum]

7. Hey, with all these crackers OWNING slaves, someone had to BE slaves.

That was my family.

We were slaves.

[Kurska]

15. American Slavery? Mine were in Russia at the time.

I'm sure at some point we did though.

[Leith]

46. Interesting Thing I Read

Your ancestors seem to have escaped being slaves. "Slav" and "slave" are etymologically related. It seems that other civilizations kidnapped so many of their slave "stock" from eastern and northeastern Europe that they came to mean the same thing.

[Igel]

53. Mostly Southern/South-Eastern.

Not so much in the north.

Byzantium had some. Muslim Arabs were the big movers and shakers for Slavic slaves. If you want slaves and can't enslave Muslims, there you go.

[Retrograde]

19. Do serfs count?

My ancestors all come from the part of Europe that traded hands between Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary several times over the years. Serfdom was only abolished in Russia (and that includes parts of what is now Poland) in 1861 (and in large swaths of Eastern Europe, only about a generation before that), and I know they were rural, so it's likely that they were serfs. The first member of my family in the New World only arrived c. 1890, so they missed out on the American version of slavery. Going back several centuries, though, the part of the world they hailed from was the main source of slaves for the Byzantium markets, so some of them may have been involved there.

And I proudly claim Genghis Khan (or at least one of his horde) as an ancestor. No proof, since there are no surviving records of anyone in my family before c. 1800, but I find one gets a better class of ancestors if you make them up

[Boreal]

37. Something else a lot of our ancestors

probably went through - being captured or conquered and enslaved. History is mostly one long story of brutality with people bashing each other's heads in, raping, pillaging, human sacrifice and other fun stuff.

[shenmue]

12. Mine were just boring

[ashling]

40. We must be related

[bravenak]

4. I think about this from time to time.

When I feel all high and mighty.

[BlueJazz]

8. Yep, we are StarStuff.

[Jesus Malverde]

11. +1

[Katashi_itto]

100. We Are Only Stardust

[shenmue]

9. I knew it!

No wonder my grandma's sister smelled funny!

[RKP5637]

10. Individuals are generally only high, mighty and pure in their own heads, many have

a mixture of ancestral ethnic ties and inherited traits they probably would prefer not to know about.

[pipi_k]

21. I always have to laugh

when people proudly claim that they're descended from this or that "royal" person. A king. A queen. Whatever.

Like being descended (if they really are) from Royalty is some guarantee of specialness

Often, royals were even more brutish than the people they ruled over.


I have no illusions about my own ancestors. Pirates, some of them. Farmers. Soldiers. Coal miners. Philanderers and unfaithful wives. Even some orphaned or widowed ladies who were known as "Filles du Roi" and sent to Canada to marry the men who were hunters, trappers, soldiers, etc.

[RKP5637]

26. That, is a very varied ancestry!

[pipi_k]

80. It does seem pretty varied

I've done the DNA test thing and they're mostly all from Western Europe. Small part of England, Northern France, then Southern France with a whole lot of DNA coming from Spain and Portugal, and extending into Morocco and Algeria.

Not quite what I expected, but very interesting.

[RKP5637]

81. I've been thinking of doing that. I know everyone is from England and Scotland, well,

supposedly, but there was a name change. I guess ancestry.com has some type of offering for DNA testing, at least I've seen it advertised some. Maybe I'll do it, eventually. I am a bit curious.

[Cleita]

28. If my last name is a clue, mine were lowly kitchen workers, bakers

and cooks. That was all. I do know that my more recent ancestors were working class. My cousins and I were the first generation to finish high school and go to college.

[vlyons]

90. Royals and nobility were also highly inbred

not a good recipe for high IQ

[Cleita]

93. It seems Prince Charlie would be an example your belief.

However, inbreeding genetics can also enhance desirable genes if the right ones combine. James Michner posits that the brother/sister marriages of the Hawaiian Alii could make stronger, taller, more handsome and intelligent off spring, a good thing for Hawaiian royalty. It also produced defective children but those were left in the surf to drown and die, so only the best were raised. I think maybe the Egyptian Pharaohs might have practiced something similar in crude ancient eugenics although examples of less than perfect children being raised to adulthood are chronicled so maybe it was practiced sporadically.

[vlyons]

95. I was thinking of Charles II of Spain, mentally retarded and epileptic. Also disfigured.

and then there's the bleeder son on Nicholas II of Russia. Kaiser-Wilhelm had a disfigured arm and a very low IQ. Many examples in the European royal lines.

[Freddie]

107. Kaiser Wilhelm's grandparents were first cousins

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (their mothers were sisters). Who also were the ancestors of today's Royal Family. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip are third cousins, each descended from a different one of Victoria and Albert's 9 children. Good thing the royals are now allowing marriages to "commoners" like Duchess Kate.

[Dirty Socialist]

13. My Ancestors Are Mostly of Hungarian Descent

They did their share of damage.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

18. Mine were Norwegians. Vikings.

I would imagine there was a fair amount of pillaging and plundering going on.

[Hekate]

32. Thanks to all that activity, it's likely I'm a distant relative on the Irish side. Red hair, y'know

As Pete Seeger pointed out in his song "All Mixed Up."

There are times when it's useful to review our history ( i.e. Long term societal effects of the slave trade in America, what should we as a society do about it in the here and now) and times when it makes no sense (I.e. Benedict Cumberbatch, is he culpable for his ancestors in the 1700s being slavers).

[grasswire]

36. Viking ancestry here, too.

It has been particularly amusing to realize that the ancestry that I thought was nearly all British contained many Viking marauders, of what my dad would call "Scandihoovian" roots.

[PumpkinAle]

14. Oh thank God, I thought you were going to say

republicans or tea-baggers......... that would be unbearable.

[Aerows]

17. We all have a choice

That is what makes time such an interesting ally and enemy, too. You can choose every moment of every day to be a better person. You can also choose to dissect every slight made against you and live your life seeking revenge and retribution.

It is your life, make of it what you will.

[malaise]

72. Very well said

Happy New Year

[starroute]

20. The real question is whether you're still profiting from that raping and looting

I don't know of any of the descendants of Genghis Khan who are still lording it over empires in India or China. But many of the wealthiest people in this country today are the beneficiaries of family fortunes that involved the slave trade, smuggling opium into China, or dealing with the Nazis. Do we really want to say it doesn't matter how you got rich as long as the blood wasn't on your hands personally?

[Kurska]

23. I don't know what such a person is supposed to do about it.

Are they expected to give away every penny (many if not most either earned by themselves or ancestors NOT involved in those activities) to remove some sort of ancestral sin? Would you do that?

[kwassa]

24. Simply be aware of the source, and of the benefit.

It depends on the conscience of the person involved if they want to feel some responsibility about the source of their fortune.

Many don't.

[starroute]

38. That's not how it works

As the saying goes, "Behind every fortune lies a great crime." You have to believe that the ultra-rich didn't get that way through the hard work of 90% of their ancestors. They're the descendents of what Buckminster Fuller called the Great Pirates -- the people who went swashbuckling around the world, ripping off anything that wasn't tied down, and seeing the rest of us essentially as exploitable resources.

We Americans put far too much faith in hard work and equality of opportunity and all that -- but most of it is a con job. The rich got rich either by stealing it from other people or by inheriting it from those who did. And though it's unrealistic to expect to guilt-trip them into giving away their ill-gotten gains, society as a whole would be a lot better off with a really robust redistribution mechanism.

In fact, that's what the tradition of potlatches was about. The richest families were expected to give stuff away, or outright destroy it, or pay to put on the annual festival until they weren't the richest anymore. And that kept the wealth circulating in a far more healthy manner than what we have now.

[hfojvt]

59. really? And what about the rich?

Not the ultra-rich, but just the rich. They stole it from other people? Or inherited it? Really?

Even look at the ultra rich. Are all these people engaging in great crimes?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/seankilachand/2012/09/20/the-forbes-400-hall-of-fame-36-members-of-our-debut-issue-still-in-ranks/

What are the great crimes of George Lucas? Worth $100 million in 1982, 30 years later is worth $3.1 billion more? Why? Because he made Mooby dolls from materials known to be toxic?

Speaking of Mooby, Ben Affleck is now worth $75 million. What was his great crime? Was Forces of Nature really THAT bad?

Is $75 million somehow NOT "really rich"?

[starroute]

62. In a world run by billionaires, $75 million is absolutely not "really rich"

The Koch brothers spent over $100 million in the 2014 election cycle. That's more than Ben Affleck's entire net worth.

The ultra-rich are very good at using the merely rich as cover. I forget where I saw it, but there was an article a couple of weeks ago about how most of us think of being rich as something that allows you to fly first class -- not as something where you own your own jet. We think of it as being able to stay at the best resorts -- not as owning a private island.

The scale on which the ultra-rich operate is inconceivable to most of us, and they're very happy to keep it that way. They're even happy to allow the occasional Bill Gates or George Lucas to be paraded before us as self-made billionaires. But the game is ultimately not about money alone but about power, a sense of entitlement, and a complete disconnect from the lives of ordinary people. The ultra-rich are bred to be sociopaths -- and they're ultimately toxic to the fate of this planet.

[hfojvt]

91. did the Koch brothers really spent $100 million?

And do billionaires really "run the world"?

Well, I guess they pledged $60 million to defeat Obama in 2012 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/charts-map-koch-brothers-2012-spending

Money that they apparently whizzed into the wind, as Obama was not defeated.

As for billionaires ruling the world. Well, the total wealth in this country is at least $60 trillion. The top 1% has 34.5% of all wealth. The next 9% have 40% of all wealth. That's $24 trillion in wealth for the top 9% and $21 trillion for the top 1%.

The 400 richest Americans are worth a mere $2.29 trillion (accordingt to Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2014/09/29/inside-the-2014-forbes-400-facts-and-figures-about-americas-wealthiest/ )and it took $1.5 billion to make the list in 2014. They said 113 US billionaires did not make the list. Thus, there were a mere 513 billionaires in the US in 2014. Figure that the other 113 were worth less than a combined $200 billion (because we know they had less than the $1.55 billion required to make the list and 113 times 1.55 is only 175) That makes the total net worth of the billionaires $2.5 trillion.

Meaning the non-billionaires in the top 1% were worth $18 trillion against $3 trillion for the billionaires and against $24 trillion for the top 9%.

I say that if the billionaires go up against the non-billionaire rich, they get their asses kicked. Sure, Affleck cannot give $100 million to a candidate or a poloitical party, but collectively, people LIKE Affleck certainly CAN. $42 trillion in wealth for non-billionaire rich people trumps the $3 trillion in wealth for the billionaires.

Even more so because I think total wealth is really over $70 trillion and not the $60 trillion that I used.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33433.pdf

[Calista241]

97. While I agree with your point, that's a serious dance you just went through.

[hfojvt]

112. I guess I could be

the anal-retentive statistician

[NewDeal_Dem]

49. that's the point that so many posters here want to ignore. funny stuff. easier to talk about

Genghis khan than some slave-driving ancestor 4 or 5 generations ago.

almost no one can trace themselves to Genghis.

hardehar funny stuff.

[bhikkhu]

63. turns out that "almost no one" is about 30 million people

...based on a recent study http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/could-you-be-related-genghis-khan. Definitely not one of the good guys, in spite of all the romance that gets spun around power and conquest, but he did leave a pretty large genetic legacy.

[NewDeal_Dem]

64. how many of those 30 mill can trace their ancestry to genghis? now, how many can trace their

Last edited Sat Jan 3, 2015, 04:18 AM - Edit history (1)

ancestry to the civil war?

'trace their ancestry' in the sense of make a descent chart, naming all their ancestors, I mean,,,

[cherokeeprogressive]

70. Jenjis... 1/200. YOU do the math.

[starroute]

75. It isn't about tracing your ancestry -- it's about inherited money and power

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2013/01/mughal-ancestry.html

The Mughals took great pride in their ancestry. They claimed to be descended from both the 14th-century Turkic warlord Tīmūr (Tamerlane) and the even more formidable Mongol conqueror Genghis (Chingiz) Khan (d. 1227). The genealogy of the Mughals, and of other Timurids (descendants of Tīmūr) is documented in such works as Mu‘izz al-ansāb (‘Glorifier of Pedigrees’), compiled in Persian at the court of the Timurid Shāh Rukh (d. 1447) in Herat, Afghanistan.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2424410/The-Mughal-emperor-ancestor-Sultana-Begum-forced-live-slum-washes-street-struggles-feed-children.html

Her ancestors would have lived in luxurious palaces while they ruled over a vast and wealthy empire. But Sultana Begum's lifestyle is a far cry from the conditions enjoyed by the rulers of the Mughal empire. She is confined to life in a slum on the outskirts of Kolkatta (once known as Calcutta).

The 60-year-old is the great grand daughter-in-law of the last emperor of India, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and struggles to make ends meet on a basic pension, despite her royal heritage. Ever since the death of her husband Prince Mirza Bedar Bukht in 1980, Sultana has descended into a life of poverty. The Mughal heiress is forced to live in a tiny two-room hut in Howrah, a slum area of Kolkatta. She shares a kitchen with her neighbours and washes in the street using water from public taps.

Despite evidence that she is related to the 19th century royal family, Sultana goes about her daily life on a basic pension of just £60 a month. Sultana, who lives with her only unmarried daughter, Madhu Begum, said: 'We have been living, but God knows how. 'My other daughters and their husbands are poor people, they barely survive themselves so cannot help us.' . . .

In recent years her plight has been highlighted by a number of campaigners, who lobbied authorities to provide more care for India's royal descendants, many of whom were left with nothing after British rule ended the Mughal dynasty.

[LiberalEsto]

83. Why is her plight any worse than that of any of others living in poverty?

What makes the sultana special?
Everyone deserves "more care", royal or not.

[Igel]

61. We tend to have a biased data set.

Person X got money from slavery.

Person X had descendants. Lots of them.

After 7 generations, there are hundreds. And most of those alive didn't benefit from the slave-earned wealth.

Some squandered their inheritance, some invested foolishly. Depressions and bank failures. Or they were female and didn't inherit money. Or 4th sons and their lot wasn't a large inheritance.

If they managed to keep it, we assume it's because once rich, always rich. If they didn't, we forget about them.

If they inherited little or regained what they lost, we say it was education and connections that helped. If they didn't, education and connections were pointless.

The problem is we read the ends into the means and find that the present state was somehow inevitable. That most of the descendants didn't benefit says otherwise, but we ignore them--we don't try to find them and nobody's going to point them out to us--and so we can believe that somehow it's inevitable. If their ancestors benefitted at some point and they're wealthy now, there must be a direct, inevitable, causal connection between that money then and their money now. (In the case of trade with Nazis, that wasn't most of their wealth--and if it's not illegal it's not illegal. Funny trades and business dealings were made, but sometimes by contractual arrangement with subsidiaries that weren't covered by sanctions. Sometimes they were. But most people don't pay close attention to the details if somebody else says it was all illegal. We like to appeal to authority, however scant.)

This is what we do when we read about the great business acumen of some CEO or the genius of some politician. It sounds like their success was inevitable. It usually wasn't, but they're surrounded by a nimbus, and we don't see what we don't look for and aren't told about. Often they're far from dunces--but ability and drive has to meet up with good luck, random chance. Foolishness undoes any privileged beginning, as does bad luck. And the only time we humans like random chance is when we need it for emotional support. Otherwise we see patterns and spurious causality everywhere. But when it comes to denying that somebody actually was smarter, wiser, etc., than us, we're all over "dumb luck". It's protection for the ego.

We have the same blindness when it comes to all the wealth accrued in the ante-bellum South. Most Southerners kept nothing of that wealth. Between the war and carpetbaggers, recessions and depressions, most of the wealth was lost. Again, we see a few counterexamples and assume that the rare instance is the general case. We don't notice the ruined families and descendants of well-heeled "gentlemen" who died poor, and so we assume they didn't exist. We also forget about wealth accrued since then, diluting the effect of residual old wealth. We have a one-drop rule for ill-gotten gain.

Even in the case of businesses like banks that absorbed some other company that did benefit at some point, or benefited under their current operating name, most came close to hitting the wall at some point. A lot of the banks that were absorbed did so because they were on the ropes. All the "benefit", all the profit and wealth, pretty much gone. (Or we read that there was some small element of revenue that involved slavery, and blow that up into 99% of their revenue for the last 160 years.)

[CrawlingChaos]

65. + infinity

[cherokeeprogressive]

68. Opium into China? THERE'S a reparations nightmare...

[Thinkingabout]

22. All in all, the one we are responsible for is ourselves, I am not responsible for decisions of other

I look at life and I know I can not change my childhood, the last twenty years, last week or even yesterday but tomorrow morning when I get up I strive to make it the best day of my life.

[Kalidurga]

25. I have seen a my family tree

I don't know how much is accurate. A great deal of it is not accurate I suspect, being put together by both professional and amature geneologists. I trust the some of the amature geneologists more than some of the professionals (one professional came to the correct conclusion, but only because he is a flaming racist, his logic however was completely off base). In any case there are gaps where there should be none because the ancestor was supposedly very wealthy and bridges where there should be none, because the connection is impossible (ie the mother or father is younger than their child). So it's a right mess. However, I am also pretty sure that many of my ancestors engaged in a variety of nefarious deeds and profited from them. Stateside they founded states and cities and were farmers and craftsmen and many paupers are among us. I haven't disowned (in my head) my wealthy ancestors, but I can't say that I am as proud of them as my great grandfather who I have pictures of and he is always doing something outdoors.

[1monster]

29. Yah, well that great grand uncle of my sister's husband's cousin was not a criminal.

In fact, he was an entrepreneur who dealt who had a thriving business selling horses. In fact, he died suddenly at a celebration (which almost everyone in town attended) that was held in his honor. (Okay, he was hanged as a horse theif.)

[indivisibleman]

30. I am decended from my father and my mother

but I am not my father and I am not my mother. So it really doesn't bother me who is in my family tree.

[Thespian2]

31. Bryson

has a storehouse of knowledge. DNA archeologists have looked through enormous amounts of data trying to trace that original female mother of us all. And where do some of them believe the mythical garden of eden is? East Africa.

[indivisibleman]

33. I also have a relative who was a total asshole at times

but his kids and their kids are awesome.

[MisterP]

34. and just wait 'till you hear what time travelers say about Mitochondrial Eve herself

[LuvNewcastle]

35. It's silly to be proud or ashamed

of your ancestry. All that matters is who you are today and how you treat others. Why should anyone brag or apologize for things that happened before they were born? Focus on your own behavior and be good to others. The rest will take care of itself.

[Warpy]

39. I know who some of mine were

and do my best to keep it a deep, dark secret.

The things they did were officially approved of in their time but certainly not in mine.

[Ramses]

42. now that you put it that way

Its not suprising why i consider myself an asshole

[sir pball]

44. Mine weren't slave owners, we just killed Thomas a Becket.

S'truth...Hugh de Moreville if I recall correctly. The benefits of a well-researched genealogy and family bible going back to 1602. That being said I am categorically certain my American ancestors never owned slaves, we were in fact quite active Ohio abolitionists. And fought in the Revolution. And came over on the Mayflower.

Why yes, I am quite waspy, why do you ask?

[alfredo]

45. My sister gave me a prepaid DNA test for Christmas. I already know some of my

family tree. Many were musicians, so I am from a long line ne'er do wells.

Uncle Albert - Composer

[Arugula Latte]

57. Paul McCartney, is that you?

Gawd I'm old.

[alfredo]

74. It's better than not getting there.

[alfredo]

111. Better than the alternative.

[alfredo]

96. I just found that my mother's family

leased some land in Kentucky to the Lincoln family. The timeline is right, but we don't know if it was The Lincoln family.

[cyberswede]

47. ...as long as I'm not related to Benedict Cumberbatch.

[Nye Bevan]

48. I'm pretty sure I have to pay reparations to myself (nt)

[Leith]

50. I Come from Irish and German Peasant Stock

which is a good thing to be descended from.

About 10,000 years ago, one person underwent a mutation: blue eyes. They say that everyone with blue eyes is descended from that person and we're all related. Dunno if the same goes for green and hazel eyes.

[rusty fender]

51. I may be related to a spree killer, actually!

Charlie Starkweather of Nebraska. He killed about 5 people in a notorious case in the 1950s.

I apologize to all of those hurt by him.

[Hoppy]

54. I never cared to find out about my ancesters or my DNA

Its not important

[Hoppy]

55. I never cared to find out about my ancesters or my DNA

Its not important.

I'm 72 y.o. and I have so little concern about any of it that I don't even know my blood type.

[LiberalElite]

58. According to Ancestry.com

I'm mostly irish, a little british, and a teensy bit "undetermined" - that must be the Marie Antoinette part.

[1step]

60. Oak?

I knew it!

[ecstatic]

66. I just canceled a trial at ancestry.com

What a COLLOSAL waste of time. Nobody in my family seems to know anything. I guess my background will just remain a mystery.

[cherokeeprogressive]

67. The HELL you say! Kevin Bacon and I are BOTH descended from slave traders?

Fuck me to tears.

[olddots]

69. not me

I'm a robot

[vlyons]

71. What matters is not from whom you are descended, but what is in your mind today.

Yes we are all connected. Every organism on this planet is connected. And human DNA is so closely related that we are all basically cousins. I like to think that my ancestors may have rode elephants over the Alps with Hannibal's army, or sailed in Viking boats, or served beer to a few lord knights. In short, we are one body. But what really matters in determining whether you are happy or not is the thoughts that you nurture in your mind today. Do you harbor thoughts of hatred, fear, anger, greed, and envy? Or do you generate thoughts of loving kindness?

[ladyVet]

79. Exactly this.

One of my ancestors was charged with getting William Wallace (Braveheart) back to Scotland. Didn't work out so well for Wallace, but my ancestors got a really nice family crest and some castles out of it. Does that make me any better than anybody else? No, just gives me some bragging rights when I'm in a group of people descended from Napoleon.

[akbacchus_BC]

73. My foreparents are from India and Brahmins did not

volunteer for indentureship, so no, my ancestors were not body owners!

[elehhhhna]

76. our tree contains one of the first crusaders,

A pope, a roman consul in Flanders in the 400s and Charlemagne. And so does yours, probably. I can just show the documentation.

[LittleBlue]

88. That's actually pretty amazing

If you're descended from Charlemagne, you probably have loads of notable ancestors. His blood got into so many of the noble and royal houses of Europe.

Congrats, very cool

[elehhhhna]

92. it is interesting to remind the kids who their ancestors were...

Seems to make them stand a little straighter

[RebelOne]

78. The only infamous ancestor I know of was

Edward Teach (Blackbeard) on my father's side.

[cwydro]

82. I'm first generation here.

Mom and Dad came here in the 50's.

Mom is Welsh and from a long line of farming folk (poor).

Dad was English and grew up in the projects in London. Very poor also.

Pretty sure no slave ownership lurks in my background, though our family might well have been serfs.

[KentuckyWoman]

84. I'm pretty sure I have a lot of atoms formerly belonging to a hog.

All I have to do is smell cookies baking and POW .... 5 pounds heavier.

[LiberalEsto]

85. I'm a first-generation American too

My parents came over in 1949. They were born and raised in Estonia and Latvia (though my dad's parents were Estonian citizens who were temporarily living in Latvia). They fled during the war and ended up living in a displaced persons camp in Germany until they found a sponsor to help them come to America. They lost everything they had. Their ancestors were probably serfs. The serfs in Estonia were freed in the 1830s, if I recall.

It's not impossible that one or more of my ancestors could have been a serf-owning baron of Swedish or German or Russian ancestry who raped female serfs that he owned. Doubt I'll ever know, though.

[Drahthaardogs]

86. Both sides of my family come from the Head of the River Po high in the Alps

from the same valley. I often tell my parents I suspect I am likely so inbred it is not funny.

[Omnith]

87. Is there a point to this? Who cares? I sure don't.

[MineralMan]

89. For how many generations must the sins of the fathers be

visited on their offspring, I wonder? I am not in any way responsible for my ancestors. If they were miscreants and ne'er-do-wells, that's their problem, not mine.

[KingCharlemagne]

98. Can we agree that the land of the indigenous peoples was stolen and that the

lives and labor of forcibly kidnapped and transported from Africa were stolen? If we agree on at least that much, can we not they agree that much of the wealth in this country today is built on the foundations of those grand thefts? And if we agree to that last proposition, then how shall we repair or rectify those grand thefts, how shall we now make whole those who started with the deck stacked against them merely because their ancestors were victims of that theft?

[MineralMan]

99. Of course we can agree on those things. They are facts.

I don't think that was the subject of the OP's post, though. Maybe I missed that. You're talking about the injustice of societies, not individuals. Yes, the society has a responsibility to correct wrongs perpetrated on people. Societies continue and must deal with their histories. I'm speaking only of individuals.

[KingCharlemagne]

101. Ah, I got you. Totally take your point and also liked your allusion to (I think) the

Biblical verses about sins of the fathers being visited upon the sons.

I've always liked Joni Mitchell's take on it

We are stardust
We are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden

~"Woodstock"

[MineralMan]

103. Thanks for recognizing the allusion, too.

It points out the folly of simply believing that everything found in scripture is actually valid or worth applying.

[seveneyes]

102. Knot theory

It's real. Where one ends, another begins.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

106. "Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars...

...and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you."

Can someone explain this to me? When I was conceived, I became a zygote. Then I became a fetus. Then I was born as an infant. This is a growing process and I began my life with a few atoms and now I have trillions.

How did the atoms that caused me to grow come from stars?

[marions ghost]

108. Witches

ie. in Scotland. Looking back I think they were mainly herbalists and alchemists. Long line of doctors and biologists stemming from them even today...

We are all more related than we think.

[Drale]

109. My great great uncle was a cop killer

they made the movie Call Northside 777 about it with Jimmy Stewart.