# Is Julius Caesar's bloodline traceable to present day? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 11, 2010, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725 "2010-06-11T00:57:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/101 "2010-08-19T16:40:34Z")
Besides, it was only natural for ol’ Genghis to keep a detailed log of his sexual encounters. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/102 "2010-08-19T17:31:50Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > Besides, it was only natural for ol’ Genghis to keep a detailed log of his sexual encounters. He no doubt stole that, along with much else, from Capt. James T. Kirk, whence _ **“Khaaaaaaan!!!”** _ 😃 “Revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold on the steppes.” --Temujin ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/103 "2010-08-19T22:15:23Z")
> [@Rusalka](#): > > #1 I read several articles on the North Sentinel Islanders with [Sentinelese - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people) as a starting point. Nothing in any of the historical accounts suggests they have ever been anything but extremely hostile to outsiders. No one has ever made contact. Extrapolate backward if you will, but it is documented that no one has interacted with the people there since records were kept, much less bred with them. As I’ve already pointed it, it’s not necessary for a group to be in direct contact with Europeans (or other outsiders), only that they be in contact with other local groups that have been in contact with outsiders. Given the maximum estimated size of the population of 500, I doubt very much that the Sentinelese could have gone indefinitely without any interchange with the other Andamanese. And the archipelago was known to Arab sources 1,200 years ago, and most likely to Malay seafarers even before that. Plenty of time for some interchange to have happened. This said, I will admit that the Andamanese in general are one of the best candidates for having a more remote ancestor in common with other populations than the one proposed. > [@](#): > > #2 Amazonian Indians: Evidence that there is not much “mixing” going on in certain tribes (as opposed to other Brazilians) as shown in the following research study. > [http://www.funpecrp.com.br/GMR/year2005/vol2-4/gmr0122\_full\_text.htm](http://www.funpecrp.com.br/GMR/year2005/vol2-4/gmr0122_full_text.htm) > > It’s titled “The mutation G298A®Ala100Thr on the coding sequence of the Duffy antigen/ > chemokine receptor gene in non-caucasian Brazilians.” > > The Amazonian Indians were included for comparison’s sake, since they were considered “unmixed”. > > Here is the salient quote, it is not the main point of the paper, but provides background, extracted from a study written in 1988: > "For the Cayapo, the estimated admixture with Caucasoids was 0.002 [number of markers (nm) = 10; number of genes examined (ng) = 8,162] and with Blacks, 0.012 (nm = 12; ng = 10,652). For the Yanomama, the admixture was 0.000 with both Caucasians and Blacks (nm = 12; ng = 52,682 and 58,794; respectively) as estimated by Salzano and Callegari-Jacques (1988). Therefore, it is possible that in essentially unmixed Amerindians the T-33C GATA box or the C265T and/or G298A mutations are absent. " > > The paper gives a little bit of background. The Cayapo are a bit less isolated than the Yanomamo were, but still with miniscule amounts of Caucasian or African admixture in the population that was measured by Salzano and Jacques in 1988. The Yanomamo, as of 1988, have zero. It is pretty unlikely, if zero markers were found in this population, that EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of the Yanomamo has a Caucasian or African ancestor as you insist. You probably are going to now say: “Oh, the Great White Ancester was there, but you can’t see him in ANY of the tribe, but EVERY LAST ONE of them was touched by him” but that assertion is just a case of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” to me. We’re not talking about whether they had a few European or African ancestors, but whether they had _any at all_. As I pointed out earlier, and which **robby** has also mentioned, it is quite possible (and even likely) that a single ancestor in a person’s pedigree from many generations back is not going to leave any detectable genetic trace. Identifiable European and African markers make up only a small part of the genome; these could easily be eliminated over many generations. Also, the Cayapo are a small group, numbering only about 7,000. Such a small population could easily lose these markers. In the time of Julius Caesar, I undoubtedly had one or more ancestors who were Roman slaves of sub-Saharan origin. But these were only a minuscule percentage of all the millions of potential ancestors I had at the time. It’s unlikely that I have any identifiable African genetic markers that descended to me from them. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/104 "2010-08-19T22:36:47Z")
So the answer is statistically yes in theory but after a while everything original gets flushed out? And there is no way to know for sure? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/105 "2010-08-19T22:44:26Z")
> [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > So the answer is statistically yes in theory but after a while everything original gets flushed out? And there is no way to know for sure? Yes. Also remember that many genes don’t vary (at least without lethal effects); and also, in the genes that do vary, many of your individual ancestors had the same version of the gene (allele). This will reduce the detectability of any particular genetic heritage from an ancestor in a descendant. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/106 "2010-08-19T23:01:12Z")
> [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > So the answer is statistically yes in theory but after a while everything original gets flushed out? And there is no way to know for sure? Which is an excellent reason to note that this isn’t very remarkable, even though it might seem that way at first blush. ---
**Author:** ![BarryB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@BarryB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BarryB)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/107 "2010-08-19T23:19:22Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > > [@aruvqan](#): > > > > Great Moghuls [who are descended from Ghengis, by the way =)] > > The Great Moghuls (the Timurid Badshahs) are descended from Timur the Lame. They also claim descent from Chinghiz Khan, but there’s no independent confirmation of that. Babur’s mother was a descendent of Chinghiz and I’ve never heard of anyone doubting this. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/108 "2010-08-20T09:00:56Z")
> [@BarryB](#): > > Babur’s mother was a descendent of Chinghiz and I’ve never heard of anyone doubting this. Being a genealogy buff, I confirmed this at Leo van de Pas’ usually reliable website, and [discovered a tidbit very relevant to the discussion of Ghenghis’ Y-chromosome](http://www.genealogics.org/descend.php?personID=I00473495&tree=LEO&displayoption=male&generations=6): Tumana Khan, agnatic ancestor of Tamerlane, was also the agnatic 3-g grandfather of Ghenghis Khan! So Tamerlane had “the Ghenghis” chromosome, even though agnatically there were distant cousins! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/109 "2010-08-20T16:46:09Z")
Which in turn means that some of the prevalence of that chromosome might be due to Tamerlane’s branch of the family, rather than Genghis’s. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/110 "2010-08-20T18:01:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Which in turn means that some of the prevalence of that chromosome might be due to Tamerlane’s branch of the family, rather than Genghis’s. Since \*\*Tamerlane \*\*is a regular poster on this board, why don’t we just get him in here to confirm! ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/111 "2010-08-20T18:16:06Z")
I don’t think that this news is a big change from previous studies, but: [‘Mitochondrial Eve’: Mother of All Humans Lived 200,000 Years Ago](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100817122405.htm) (ScienceDaily, 17 August 2010) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/112 "2010-08-20T20:05:08Z")
> [@Arnold\_Winkelried](#): > > I don’t think that this news is a big change from previous studies, but: > [‘Mitochondrial Eve’: Mother of All Humans Lived 200,000 Years Ago](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100817122405.htm) (ScienceDaily, 17 August 2010) I read a similar article a few days ago. I can’t find the article I read, but the interesting thing in that article, from my perspective, was that it stated that mtDNA Eve had to be a member of our species. I don’t see why that is so (as I noted in an earlier post). Given the small size of our population in its first 100k years of existence, it certainly seems likely, but I can’t see that mtDNA Eve couldn’t have lived 500k years ago, and been a member of a species we recognize as being pre-sapiens. Anyone have a comment? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/113 "2010-08-20T20:07:13Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > > [@aruvqan](#): > > > > In a nutshell? Pretty much. > > Actually, no, as \*\*robby \*\*already pointed out. Many people alive 2,000 years ago left no descendants alive today. But the people who did have descendants were probably related to the people who didn’t, if you go back another 2000 years. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/114 "2010-08-20T20:34:29Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > > [@John\_Mace](#): > > > > Actually, no, as \*\*robby \*\*already pointed out. Many people alive 2,000 years ago left no descendants alive today. > > But the people who did have descendants were probably related to the people who didn’t, if you go back another 2000 years. It goes without saying that if you go far enough back, every person who has ever lived is related to everyone else. Indeed, the same is true for all life on Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/115 "2010-08-20T20:37:02Z")
> [@Arnold\_Winkelried](#): > > I don’t think that this news is a big change from previous studies, but: > [‘Mitochondrial Eve’: Mother of All Humans Lived 200,000 Years Ago](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100817122405.htm) (ScienceDaily, 17 August 2010) Sorry **Arnold** , that article is no good. It makes no mention whatsoever of Mitochondrial Eve" actually being a poptart, or of her parents, Helo and Athena. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/116 "2010-08-20T20:54:54Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > > [@John\_Mace](#): > > > > Actually, no, as \*\*robby \*\*already pointed out. Many people alive 2,000 years ago left no descendants alive today. > > But the people who did have descendants were probably related to the people who didn’t, if you go back another 2000 years. Beside what \*\*robby \*\*said, it was actually a _non sequitur_. If I say: “Ostriches are Mammals, so basically what I’m saying is dogs are mammals”, it’s certainly true that dogs are mammals, but it doesn’t follow from the premise. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/117 "2010-08-20T22:20:25Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Given the small size of our population in its first 100k years of existence, it certainly seems likely, but I can’t see that mtDNA Eve couldn’t have lived 500k years ago, and been a member of a species we recognize as being pre-sapiens. > > Anyone have a comment? Well, of course in theory she could have. However, the analysis described in that article indicates she lived 200,000 years ago, which corresponds approximately with the origin of modern humans. She could only have been pre-sapiens if you disbelieve their analysis. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/118 "2010-08-20T22:29:33Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > > [@John\_Mace](#): > > > > Given the small size of our population in its first 100k years of existence, it certainly seems likely, but I can’t see that mtDNA Eve couldn’t have lived 500k years ago, and been a member of a species we recognize as being pre-sapiens. > > > > Anyone have a comment? > > Well, of course in theory she could have. However, the analysis described in that article indicates she lived 200,000 years ago, which corresponds approximately with the origin of modern humans. She could only have been pre-sapiens if you disbelieve their analysis. No, that’s not what I meant. And I found the article I was talking about [here.](http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100819/sc_livescience/ageconfirmedforevemotherofallhumans) This is the quote I don’t understand: > [@](#): > > However, this doesn’t mean she was the first modern woman, rather it indicates that only her descendants survive to the present day. > > “There is always some other female that predated mitochondrial Eve, whose DNA didn’t make it up to modernity,” said Marek Kimmel, a professor of statistics at Rice University. “So the age of the mitochondrial Eve is always less than the age of the true, first female modern human.” This says to me that it’s impossible for mtDNA Eve to be pre-sapiens. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/119 "2010-08-20T22:43:03Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > This says to me that it’s impossible for mtDNA Eve to be pre-sapiens. I think you’re reading too much into the remark. He’s mainly saying that mtDNA Eve didn’t coincide exactly with the first female sapiens, and making the assumption that the origin of sapiens was earlier. In principle, this doesn’t have to be true. In fact, there are species that share genetic variants that predate the separation of the two species. The polar bear diverged from the brown bear about 150,000 years ago. It is certainly possible that the “polar bear eve” was a brown bear and not a polar bear. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725/120 "2010-08-20T22:51:45Z")
I don’t follow. “Polar bear Eve” must have had multiple independent lines of female descent from her, right? Otherwise she wouldn’t be Eve; one of her descendants would have been. But if PBE was a brown bear, that means that those multiple lines of descent independently went through the changes that made them polar. I realize that I’m oversimplifying, here, since female-line descent is not the same thing as descent in general, but it still seems like this should hold. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-julius-caesars-bloodline-traceable-to-present-day/542725.md?page=7)