The 800 - Pound Gorilla In The Room: Our Genealogies Are Bogus

This is an expanded version of an older blog.

With the proliferation of DNA research being used in genealogy, this particular "gorilla" (what everyone knows is there but ignores) is the confirmation (not just speculation) that many of our male ancestors are not our biological ancestors. Estimates of the numbers vary, but the best research puts that at about 5% in modern Western societies. One person in 20.

Do the math. We have 1 father, 2 grandfathers, 4 great grandfathers, 8 great great grandfathers, and 16 great great great grandfathers. That adds up to 31 male ancestors in just five generations. Chances are excellent that one or more of those men is biologically unrelated to us. Just that many generations take me back to only the year 1800. My family file, with excellent sources, goes back to the year 400 CE. That is with the best of the best in the way of sources - excellent, careful, reputable professional genealogists.

But the best of the best can tell us only who the fathers of record were, not who the biological fathers might have been. They are lost to history for all time.

This is what I am adding - the results of a little further thought and some simple calculations:

I picked at random just one 3rd great grandfather, to see what happens to my family history if I remove him as an ancestor.

I would lose 155 additional ancestors, as well as all the descendants of them that I have incorporated into my file. I couldn't even begin to calculate how many there are, without spending days in the process.

155 ancestors plus ??????? aunts, uncles, and cousins would make a hole in my data large enough to fly an Airbus A340 through it.

Unnerving? Most assuredly so, but it would be the result of only one incidence of false paternity in my carefully constructed family history. The finding of 5% of such occurrences virtually guarantees that there are many more imbedded in our genealogy.

Implication? I see that as implying our family history, for the most part, is bogus. And we'll never know where it goes wrong, how often, or how to "fix" it.