From: G6JPG-255@255soft.uk   
      
   In message , Ian   
   Goddard  writes:   
   >On 20/04/19 17:24, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:   
   >> With possible exception of people who've immigrated from Africa or   
   >>Asia  in the last generation or so we're all descended from William   
   >>the  Conqueror.   
   >   
   >This keeps coming up from time to time.  There seems to be an   
   >assumption that because we have 1024, 2048 etc ancestors in a given   
   >generation this means 1024, 2048 or whatever different people and that   
   >at some point this proliferating number of different people meets the   
   >proliferating number of descendants of William the Conqueror (or Edward   
   >III, another popular alleged ancestor).   
      
   Or the entire population of the country.   
   >   
   >The problem with this is that the assumption doesn't hold up.  A good   
   >many of the same surnames in both may parents' families crop up again   
   >and again.  What's more, although they came from villages only a few   
   >miles apart there isn't much overlap between them.  On my father's side   
   >there are better medieval records and I can find a couple of surnames   
   >going back into the late C13th; they derive from local place names.   
      
   Doesn't need _much_ overlap. Let's say 5 miles; 20 generations thus gets   
   you 100 miles, 40 gets you 200. That probably gets most of England to   
   somewhere that Bill Conk was sewing oats.   
   []   
   >This pattern seems to account for Pennine communities prior to the   
   >Industrial Revolution which finally brought in former Ag Labs.  There   
   >simply isn't the large fan out of ancestors that the William I   
   >hypothesis requires.   
      
   How can we know? Much before 15xx, records just don't exist for ordinary   
   folk; I'm not sure when surnames became common, but somewhat after   
   Bill's time, by quite a bit. And as I've said above, the fan-out doesn't   
   have to be far, given long enough.   
   >   
   >OTOH those claiming descent from this or that royal or aristocratic   
   >line usually seem to be able to count several lines of descent.  That   
   >should be a warning: William's descendants married other descendants -   
   >the fan-out of descendants wasn't a large as required.   
      
   His official/acknowledged ones might have stayed within the aristocracy,   
   perhaps. But he - and his (male, at least) descendants (fanning out to a   
   fair number) - probably impregnated more than their wives.   
   >   
   >The one DNA result which is of some significance here is the Nature   
   >paper of a few years ago.  What that showed was what I call the big red   
   >splodge where one of their groups (colour-coded red) covered most of   
   >lowland England.  The West country, the Pennines, Wales and Scotland   
   >fell into a number of much more local, distinct groups.  It seems to   
   >point to relatively free movement within the splodge but less soe   
   >elsewhere so that the William I hypothesis probably looks reasonable to   
   >the splodgians and quite ridiculous to the rest of us.   
      
   Hmm.   
   >   
   >Ian   
   John   
   --   
   J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf   
      
   Intelligence isn't complete without the full picture and the full picture is   
   all about doubt. Otherwise, you go the way of George Bush. - baroness Eliza   
   Manningham-Buller (former head of MI5), Radio Times 3-9 September 2011.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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