# What's the furthest back a person alive today could trace their ancestry (reliably) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 30, 2024, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850 "2024-01-30T00:45:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/1 "2024-01-30T00:45:10Z")
I’m guessing the average, non-royal, person could only go back to about the 1700s, with a lot of luck. But is there someone alive today who could verify, to a reasonable degree, a lineage back to, say, the 1500s? 1300s? ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Lovecraft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mc_lovecraft/32/16062_2.png) [@MC\_Lovecraft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Lovecraft)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/2 "2024-01-30T00:50:12Z")
It depends what you mean by tracing the lineage. If you mean being able to identify every link in the chain, I really have no idea, but every living person _can_ be traced back along the matrilinear line to a single individual ancestor, known as “[Mitochondrial Eve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve#)” who lived between 100-230 thousand years ago. There is also the counterpart, “Y-Chromosomal Adam”, for the patrilinear line. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/3 "2024-01-30T00:52:05Z")
IIRC, the Saudi royal family can trace its lineage back to Muhammed. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/4 "2024-01-30T00:57:21Z")
There have been cases on the British TV show “Who Do You Think You Are” where people have traced themselves back several hundred years. I believe this is because they have an otherwise-insignificant ancestor not so very far back, but who happens to be related to, say, the royal family. The very working-class actor Danny Dyer, for example, found out he was related to Edward III. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/5 "2024-01-30T01:15:03Z")
> [@MC\_Lovecraft](#): > > It depends what you mean by tracing the lineage. If you mean being able to identify every link in the chain, I really have no idea, but every living person _can_ be traced back along the matrilinear line to a single individual ancestor, known as “[Mitochondrial Eve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve#)” who lived between 100-230 thousand years ago. You have to go back a long way to find a common mitochondrial ancestor, because mitochondrial DNA is inherited only through the maternal line. But with genealogical ancestry (which corresponds to nuclear genomic DNA) you have two parents, so your number of ancestors doubles each generation as you look back, and you quickly get overlapping ancestry. So the most recent genealogical common ancestor of all modern humans was much more recent, probably around 2,300 years ago. And at around 5,000 years ago all modern humans have identical ancestry: everyone then alive was either the ancestor of all moderns humans or of none. References here: [Could DNA testing verify that someone was a time traveler? - #5 by Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-dna-testing-verify-that-someone-was-a-time-traveler/990736/5) (and subsequent comments in that thread) ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/6 "2024-01-30T01:18:33Z")
I think lot of people in Quebec, at least, can go back to earliest settlers in their line, as the parishes kept meticulous records that are largely intact. I know one side of my family settled in Canada as Loyalists during the American Revolution but I don’t know more. My husband’s family is documented to the nth degree. On his father’s name’s side, the first settler was known to have been born in France, came to Canada as a soldier with the Carignan -Salieres regiment and he married a _fille du roi_. The majority of the family tree, until the past couple of generations, resided in one particular region of the province. Pretty much textbook _québecois_. I think his mother’s family name goes back about as far too though I’ve never asked. The family still owns the home in which at least 5 generations have lived. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/7 "2024-01-30T01:45:04Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > I believe this is because they have an otherwise-insignificant ancestor not so very far back, but who happens to be related to, say, the royal family. @Loach recently posted that he can trace his ancestry to Edward I, which then goes back further. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/8 "2024-01-30T01:47:27Z")
How do you determine if it is “reliable”? I have family tree records for branches of my ancestry with unbroken lists of names that go back before the 1700s, but I have no way of actually testing them to see if they are accurate (or if all the claimed male ancestors are really the real male ancestors). ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/9 "2024-01-30T01:59:16Z")
> [@mnemosyne](#): > > I think lot of people in Quebec, at least, can go back to earliest settlers in their line, as the parishes kept meticulous records that are largely intact. My sister traced has us back at least as far as our 8th-great-grandmother who was born in 1620 in Quebec, and is [“believed to be the first child of European descent to be born New France.”](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/123821381/helene-) Evidently the parish records didn’t even begin until 1679. ---
**Author:** ![Raza](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raza/32/213_2.png) [@Raza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raza)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/10 "2024-01-30T02:01:55Z")
Genealogy has been a hobby of mine for over 30 years. Access to online church and government records has vastly improved the depth and accuracy of research. I can “reliably” trace back to the 1500s. Scare quotes because I’m making no firm assertion of actual biological parentage, particularly on the male line. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/11 "2024-01-30T02:06:01Z")
I can go back to the 1500s reliably in one line where there are good records, few repeated names, and a relatively small population, and (crucially) where the documents have been digitised and posted online for free. I’ll look it up when I’m at my computer, but I think it’s 13 or 14 generations. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/12 "2024-01-30T02:15:04Z")
There are descendants of Confucius who can supposedly trace their line to him, over 80 generations back: [Confucius (Descendants)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius#Descendants) ---
**Author:** ![XOldiesJock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/ec9cab/32.png) [@XOldiesJock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XOldiesJock)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/13 "2024-01-30T02:21:50Z")
With enough time and effort and the resources available today, many people of European ancestry could probably trace their family tree back to the 16th or 17th centuries. My maternal family has been traced, reliably so, to Sir Francis Drake, who lived in the 16th century. I don’t expect to circumnavigate the globe during my lifetime, however. ---
**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:** [January 30, 2024, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/14 "2024-01-30T02:24:28Z")
How about afterwards? ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/15 "2024-01-30T02:26:34Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > How do you determine if it is “reliable”? Good question. Suppose that you can trace back 15 generations, with 96 percent assurance that each link was correct. The problem is that a single mistake invalidates everything older. I can trace back my dog’s pedigree about 15 generations, but there probably is a mistake, or a deliberate omission of a crossbreed to add some desired trait. With people, the motivation is different — probably to hide adultery. ---
**Author:** ![XOldiesJock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/ec9cab/32.png) [@XOldiesJock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XOldiesJock)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/16 "2024-01-30T02:34:11Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > _How about afterwards?_ Who cares about the globe? After I’m gone, I hope to circumnavigate the universe. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/17 "2024-01-30T02:34:39Z")
I know my paternal^n ancestors back to 1640 when they immigrated to Massachusetts from England. Before that the family was connected into the English nobility and from that I can trace back to Charlemagne and further. That is not all on the paternal side. Is it all accurate? Who knows? There might be an illegitimacy in there but I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/18 "2024-01-30T04:03:20Z")
Yes, this is an account of an ancestor where the links from me to him are secure (barring adultery): _Eodem die [die 28 mensis iulii 1595] fuerunt, per dictum ill.mum Dominum, visitati et examinati omnes infrascripti presbiteri et clerici dictae terrae Montis Belli. Et fuerunt inventi prout infra adnotatur…_ _Monte Romeo, ostendit litteras quatuor ordinum, annorum 30. Habet uxorem sine filiis et sine benefitio. Scit tantum legere, nescit rudimenta fidei._ “On the same day [July 28, 1595] they had, on the order of the most illustrious Lord, visited and examined all the priests and clerics listed below of the said land of Montebello [Calabria]. And they have found [them] noted below, accordingly… “Monte Romeo, 30 years [old], showed [his] letters of the four orders [of friars]. He has a wife, [is] without children, and without a benefice. He only knows how to read; he does not know the rudiments of the faith.” Monte Romeo was thus born ca. 1565, and is my (11 × great)-grandfather, for a total of 14 generations. His children were born later: my ancestor in the next generation was born in 1610. (The married priests thing was a leftover from being Greek Orthodox; the region converted to Roman Catholicism when Monte was a boy.) ---
**Author:** ![3AxisCtrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/ecd19e/32.png) [@3AxisCtrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3AxisCtrl)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/19 "2024-01-30T04:18:04Z")
It’s said that the Emperor of Japan can trace his ancestry back 2000+ years. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2024, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850/20 "2024-01-30T04:20:58Z")
> [@gkster](#): > > There are descendants of Confucius who can supposedly trace their line to him, over 80 generations back With a stable population size, the average person has 2 children. The population of China has obviously grown, and Confucius’ descendants probably had above-average status and more children than average. But it would take only 1.3 children per descendant over 80 generations for Confucius to be an ancestor of everyone in China. So there’s a strong burden of proof to show that you are _not_ a descendant of Confucius. Not that it’s not impressive to have a historical record that allows you to trace a specific lineage for that long, of course. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-furthest-back-a-person-alive-today-could-trace-their-ancestry-reliably/996850.md?page=2)