In this IMHO thread, I solicit responses about how far back people know their ancestors.
I know one line of my ancestors back to the 1500s. But surely, in the scheme of things, that’s nothing. Or is it? That’s one-quarter of the two thousand years since the birth of Christ. Does ANYONE know their anecestral line two thousand years back? It seems possible, but I’ve never heard of it.
How far back is the longest provable ancestral lineage in the world?
There was a thread just like a few months back in GD. Can’t remember the title, but if you search, you’ll probably find it. I think the answer ended up being the Imperial family of Japan or some other monarchy, which makes sense.
Did search, didn’t find anything. Maybe “Genealogy” wasn’t used in the thread, though…
Did you try “geneology”? 
The royal family of England can trace their ancestry reliably to the sixth century. There are charts at Hatfield House and other royal residences tracing the ancestry to Noah (through his fourth son, Sceaf, born on the ark [and thus not mentioned in the Bible, but the ancestor of the Anglo-Saxons, at least according to an Anglo-Saxon chronicler) and thus to Adam, but the genealogy from now back to sixth century Wessex is pretty much documented.
Sixteenth century is really good for tracing your ancestry if you’re not royalty. Before Gutenberg records are almost impossible to come by, fewer people went by surnames, etc…
You could also try “lineage”.
I know one branch of one branch of mine back to 1333, but it’s not very well verified (most of it from the 1600s back was just stuff I found on the web on other personal sites).
There’s an article in an issue of The Economist from last December about the oldest companies in the world that are still controled by the family that founded them. The two oldest are both in Japan. One is an inn founded in 718, currently run by the 46th generation of the family. The other is a construction company founded in 578.
Here is the older thread - don’t know how I missed it before…
I was reading an issue of Discover recently (although the issue itself was from last fall) which discussed a chromosomal geneaology project focused on the Y chromosome. Most chromosomes come in pairs, and you get one from each parent. However, the parent’s chromosome pairs swap genetic material, so a person’s chromosomes in pair 7, e.g., are not the same as any of the #7’s from either parent or any grandparent. However, the Y chromosome is always and only present in men and for the most part does not swap genetic material with the X chromosome, so for generation after generation a man’s male-line descendants will all have roughly the same Y chromosome.
Anyway, the scientists profiled in Discover had done a bunch of genetic sampling all over Asia and found this incredibly common genetic sequence. Its range corresponded almost exclusively with the borders of the Mongol empire, so the theory is that the sequence belonged to Genghis Kahn and some of his male relations. Kahn was all over the place and had notorious sexual appetites. When he died, his family continued administering the empire, and many of the men wold have had the same Y chronomose.
So while I can’t say that’s “reliable” in any sense of the word, I think it’s pretty cool that all these dudes all over Asia have reasonably good evidence which at least suggests that they’re descendant from either Genghis Kahn or a close relative.
–Cliffy
When I visited my (Scottish) clan’s museum, they had a chart tracing the clan’s origins back about 1,000 years to the Vikings.
Oops. I really didn’t mean to quote that back. I checked “quote message” instead of “show signature.” Sorry.
Unless there’s something wrong with logic, everybody alive today has proof that their ancestry, whether they can be individually identified or not, goes “all the way back” to wherever that may be. That’s sufficient for me.
I’ve traced my ancestry on my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s father’s side back to a trilobite named Chester* who lived in what is now En Gedi in 242,423,442 BC (though only for a month). Family lore claims that he was actually content to remain a trilobite but his wife, my gggggggggggggggg (etc) grandmother Carmen* was a social climber and kept after him until he finally climbed onto land just to get away from her. She climbed after, gave birth, and the rest is oral history.
I’m more fascinated by the fact that every atom in our body has been here for billions of years. We probably all have atoms somewhere in our body that were on the dinner table at Balthazar’s Feast.
I wonder if we tend to resemble our patrilineal line anymore over time due to the unchanging Y.
*The names Chester and Carmen are Anglicized versions of the original names, which consisted of particular antennae and tail motions.
Why would we? It’s only heritabale thru the male line, so doesn’t affect the female line. But it also has very few genes. In fact, it’s getting smaller and smaller all the time. Think about that! We don’t need another thing that keeps getting smaller…
btw, the rest of your post was pretty funny.