In Europe, where lineages have been closely studied, that ancestor was someone who lived just 600 years ago.Ī 2013 study from Peter Ralph and Graham Coop built on Chang’s research, proving that all Europeans come from the same people. In 1999, the Yale statistician Joseph Chang showed that if you go back far enough – say, 32 generations, or 900 years – you’d find that everyone alive today shares a common ancestor. If you’re European – or even descended from Europeans – you’re probably related to royalty If you’re thinking of climbing your family tree in search of royal fruit, here are a few things to consider. Genealogists say that the work of identifying royal lineage – whether to establish “direct descent” (a key to inheritance and social status) or simply to satisfy curiosity – is helped and hindered by a number of factors. Throw in other factors that enlarge and complicate lineage – invasions and migrations, wars and revolutions – and you can see that humanity is indeed a web of overlapping and enmeshed networks of descent. This paradox exists because, as Rutherford writes: “Pedigrees begin to fold in on themselves a few generations back.” Meaning “you can be, and in fact are, descended from the same individual many times over”. If we went back a thousand years, each of us would have over a trillion direct ancestors, which is more than all the humans who have ever lived. The number of ancestors we have increases exponentially, not linearly - more like a meshed web than a branched family tree, says the geneticist Adam Rutherford. It “might identify that two individuals share a common ancestor within a certain number of generations, but research is still needed to identify who that common ancestor might be.”Īnd ancestral math is messy.

“DNA testing only reveals a general ethnic breakdown that changes over time, as the science becomes further refined,” says Joshua Taylor, president of the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society.

While a genetic test can tell us a lot – 23andme can even pinpoint how much Neanderthal we have in us – there’s still no single test for royal blood. As genetic testing gets faster, cheaper and more accurate, the age-old fantasy of suddenly learning you’re descended from a king or a queen – the premise of countless movies, books and daydreams – is inching closer to reality.īut we’re not there just yet. What are the odds that you have royal blood? It’s a question more and more of us are asking these days.

Royal dynasties of england