Comment by Retric
14 days ago
It’s more meaningful than you might think because the majority of people on earth probably aren’t decedents of this guy. Especially in the 1700’s when our first presidents where born.
Essentially zero US presidents are Asian, Hispanic, etc. Pick a Native American from 30 generations ago and you don’t see this kind of family tree. It’s an expanded circle of privilege through time.
Every European is related Charlamagne.
"In 2004 mathematical modeling and computer simulations ... indicated that our most recent common ancestor probably lived no earlier than 1400 B.C.and possibly as recently as A.D. 55. "
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-mo...
2004 - 800 is a lot longer than 1778(or even 2024) - 1200.
Sure, but that's probably still just sample bias of presidents all being at least mostly anglo-saxon. Probably everyone on the British Isles is related to King John.
1 reply →
It's certainly a point, but I don't think "the US presidents are white guys" is going to win any awards for research or journalism. Even Obama, famously the first black president, has a family history of white guys.
Today most white people are descends of that guy, but go back to 1732 when George Washington was born and you’re looking at a much tighter family tree.
It's true, but knowing that Washington's great grandparents were English certainly cuts that down a fair bit.
2 replies →
It's a short history, considering Obama's mother is white. Or if you're only counting guys, his maternal grandfather is white.
There were several US presidents who had modest beginnings. I think this is more a consequence of exponential growth. 2**30 is ~1 billion ancestors, so by the pigeonhole principle and some fairly weak assumptions on mixing, you can count nearly every member of your ethnic group from that time as a distant ancestor. I think this girl landed on Plantagenet mostly because he would have a well-documented lineage compared to your average serf.
~2^30 describes the situation today, not in the 1700’s. ~2^20 would only be a million or so people at the time this country was founded.
Give it another 250 years and we’ll probably have a largely Asian president that’s also a descendant. IE: It’s an expanding circle of political elites combined with an expanding circle of descendants.
Did you mean “that’s also a descendant?”