So do you know who your cousin is?

lindsmuse

I'm sure a couple of us got to see some of the family over these last few weeks ... some longlost! I discovered that what I thought was a second cousin is really my first cousin once removed - I am so confused. Find it strange that my niece/nephew by marriage is called the same thing as my niece/nephew by bloodline ... And also how we become less and less related from generation to generation but are still related - when do we stop actually being related ... but that some clan somewhere bears your family name and therefore our whole family comes from there. But if the blood gets thinner from one generation to the next ... It feels like one of those science fiction movies where you go back to fix something thats happening now - but then 'now' can't be here! ???

Maybe that wine was a little too heady ...!

Wizard

lindsmuse wrote I'm sure a couple of us got to see some of the family over these last few weeks ... some longlost! I discovered that what I thought was a second cousin is really my first cousin once removed - I am so confused. Find it strange that my niece/nephew by marriage is called the same thing as my niece/nephew by bloodline ... And also how we become less and less related from generation to generation but are still related - when do we stop actually being related ... but that some clan somewhere bears your family name and therefore our whole family comes from there. But if the blood gets thinner from one generation to the next ... It feels like one of those science fiction movies where you go back to fix something thats happening now - but then 'now' can't be here! ???

Maybe that wine was a little too heady ...!

Family "trees" are deceptively complex.
As part of a relational modelling exercise I attempted to model a family tree.

Discovered the obvious ... it's a "tree" in 2 directions !!
... both up and down:

1) A person has children, who have children ...
So a single person has a tree of people who descend from them (going forward in time)

2) A person has 2 biological parents; each of which had 2 biological parents ...
So a single person has a tree of people from whom they are descended (going backwards in time)

so ... from an individual ... a parent tree going backwards and a child tree going forwards.
Deceptively complex.

lindsmuse

So you and your siblings and me and my siblings each come from a once off unique series of couples going back in time. But does that mean that because there were less people around when the earth was younger that we are actually family, all of us .... still confused ... I'm from the dumb end of our gene pool I'm afraid!

[deleted]

At the moment my tree only goes up, that makes it easier...but don't get me to comprehend seconds and removeds. From that point you can just call yourself by your first name I think. But I think that when you take a geographical area and consider the types of people that are drawn to it and the fact that those people will be drawn to each other most likely, you end up with very complicated trees.

singemonkey

lindsmuse wrote So you and your siblings and me and my siblings each come from a once off unique series of couples going back in time. But does that mean that because there were less people around when the earth was younger that we are actually family, all of us

Yes. That's exactly what it means. And it goes a lot further than that.

You are very closely related to your known family. Closely related to people from the same general ancestral area, related to every human on earth, distantly related to all apes - Chimps, Gorillas, Orang Utans, Gibbons - more distantly related to all primates (including lemurs, lorises and pygmy marmosets), even more distantly related to all mammals (from possums to platypi), still more distantly related to all vertabrates (from mako sharks to mambas), very distantly related to all multi-celled creatures (from mushrooms to sea anemones), and linked, by common ancestry with the first DNA molecule to replicate itself, to the teaming, swarming mass of bacteria that infest every part of our bodies and the soil on which we walk.

[deleted]

And my class in junior school thought I was nuts when I said we're related to mushrooms.

singemonkey

Viccy wrote And my class in junior school thought I was nuts when I said we're related to mushrooms.

Heh. Yeah. Geneticists now know that we're so similar to yeast as makes almost no difference at the DNA level. Different critters, same building blocks. Kind of like how few letters there are on a keyboard - but you can say anything by hitting them in different sequence.

Fingerpicker

Stoppit peeps, you're making my head spin. I feel like I'm back in a Maths class.

Bob-Dubery

Definitions vary. So do mores.

Jerry Lee Lewis was outraged with the English. They were outraged with him because his wife was his first cousin (once removed) and she was only 13 when they got married.

Fingerpicker

Let my friend Chris Smither explain it....

The song is called Origin of Species

Sean

Wizard

Yes. That's exactly what it means. And it goes a lot further than that.

You are very closely related to your known family. Closely related to people from the same general ancestral area, related to every human on earth, distantly related to all apes - Chimps, Gorillas, Orang Utans, Gibbons - more distantly related to all primates (including lemurs, lorises and pygmy marmosets), even more distantly related to all mammals (from possums to platypi), still more distantly related to all vertabrates (from mako sharks to mambas), very distantly related to all multi-celled creatures (from mushrooms to sea anemones), and linked, by common ancestry with the first DNA molecule to replicate itself, to the teaming, swarming mass of bacteria that infest every part of our bodies and the soil on which we walk.

So ... if your guitar is made out of wood ... you're related to it

lindsmuse

So my guitar could actually be my first cousin 3 millon times removed?

chris77

Hmmm... So Mikas friend might be an Ibanez... On a serious note, if this type of topic interests you, try to get a copy of The Seven Daughters of Eve by Brian Sykes. Read it a long time ago, thought it was interesting.

lindsmuse

Watched the Chris Smither clip. Great! - lovely guitarist!

Will try get that book thanks. Maybe it'll help me understand.

singemonkey

lindsmuse wrote So my guitar could actually be my first cousin 3 millon times removed?

Many more times than that. But yes. Evolutionary time-scales are not really comprehensible. We're talking billions of years here. There's one description of life on earth as if it were a day. I think in this description, all of recorded history falls into a fraction of the last second before midnight.

Jack-Flash-Jr

Sometimes starting to read a thread at the last post is... awesome ?

Bob-Dubery

I started tracing my family tree. A lot of them are still living in it.

Renesongs

LIke Bob I was told to be carefully when looking up your family tree as you may find some of your ancestors still swinging from it. ( not sure it the author of this meant by the hands or the neck) ?

singemonkey

Renesongs wrote LIke Bob I was told to be carefully when looking up your family tree as you may find some of your ancestors still swinging from it. ( not sure it the author of this meant by the hands or the neck) ?

Could be a game. Like how many generations ago was your last convicted murderer. I think about four or five on both sides of my family.