ANCESTORS

1
ANCESTORS

• By
• MIKAEL ALLEN

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ANCESTORS

• Despite a shared curiosity about ancestry,
  genealogists and paleontologists operate with
  different concepts of descent.

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Genealogists

• Examine particular named individuals
• Trace particular forebears
• Many prefer to find distinguished individuals

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What is the strategic method genealogists use to
trace descent?

• Trace from only one direct lineal ancestor
• Usually male
• By doing this they neglect hundreds maybe
  thousands of other direct lineal ancestors

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PALEONTOLOGIST

• Science dealing with the life of past geologic
  periods as known from fossil remains.

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Tribes and Ethnic Communities

• To validate deeper roots of descent a parent or
  grandparents need to be acknowledged members of
  the same ethnic or tribal entity.

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Tribes and Ethnic Communities

• From then on, history, myth, and linguistic
  affinities take us back through time to a remote
  tribal or ethnic dawn.

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Tribes and Ethnic Communities

• A key assumption of ethnic or tribal descent is
  that Scots have always only mated with Scots,
  Germans with Germans and so on

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Tribes and Ethnic Communities

• A dubious assumption given their strife-ridden
  histories and the well-known propensity of
  victors to count women among the spoils of war.
• In other words, during war women may have been
  captured by enemies and then integrated into the
  enemies tribe causing a mix of the tribes.

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Imperfections

• If imperfections are ignored we will still be
  left with an outside limit for ethnic descent
  that takes us back no more than 4,000 years, or
  160 generations

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Beyond that point

• There is only one remaining recourse for those
  who crave remote ancestors
• They can claim to be descended from the founding
  ancestors of one of the divisions of our kind
  popularly know as races

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Weaknesses

• There are not really that many weaknesses to the
  chapter except Harris didnt go into depth over
  anything, it was like he was just highlighting
  some points.
• He also doesnt go into great detail about his
  findings of ancestors, he only writes about how
  people can find their ancestors through
  genealogy.

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Insightful

• Most people dont care about their heritage
  unless they can find someone in their family that
  is distinguished or a well know figure in history.

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Potential Essay Question

• Demonstrating how genealogists research claims
  of decent.