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From: "Gary Rea" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Charlemagne's DNA?
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 14:48:06 -0600
References: <001901c3e37c$a32b9c60$606660cb@Marsh>


Quite right, John, pointing up the absurdity of those who like to scoff at
claims of royal descent, for whatever reasons. The fact is, we are ALL
related, genetically, to the same relatively small pool of humans who lived
in the past, and the farther back in time you go, the more so that is the
case. The popular mystique surrounding historical figures tends to give most
people the impression that they existed in a world removed from ours and had
no descendants at all, or that, if they did, they must be someone other than
we mere mortals. The fact is, Europe's monarchs did reproduce, did have
descendants, and those descendants now number in the millions for each
monarch who had surviving offspring. In other words, the liklihood that any
of us is descended from Charlemagne is no less than our descent from any of
our medieval ancestors, whether famous historical figures or obscure peasant
farmers.

Gary Rea
Project Administrator
Rea Surname DNA Project
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alister John Marsh" <>
To: <>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2004 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: [DNA] Charlemagne's DNA?


> In calculating if any one of us might still have any significant part of
> Charlemagne's DNA, a simplistic approach might be to say that if in
> Charlemagnes day say 100,000,000 people lived in the World (or whatever
the
> number was) then in his day his genes reperesented one one hundred
millionth
> part of the world's DNA pool. If he left descendants at the same
> proportional rate as all other persons living in his day, then when the
> stage is reached where his genes are uniformly mixed in the whole World
> population, each person in the World would on average have one one hundred
> millionth part of their DNA from Charlemagne. From then on until the end
of
> human history, everybody would always have on average one one hundred
> millionth part of their DNA from Charlemagne, regardless of the population
> of the world.
>
> If most of Charlemagne's DNA was still currently in Europe and not fully
> dispursed, and if the advantage his descendants had had enabled them to
> breed a bit better than average, it might be today that on average all
> Europeans have perhaps one ten millionth part, or perhaps one millionth
part
> of their DNA from Charlemagne.
>
> I have some supposed lines from Charlemagne. If they were correct, and
not
> interupted by "non paternity events" along the way, I suspect I could show
> 1,000 separate "paper trail" lines to Charlemagne, and there is nothing
> remarkable about my family. And I only know a tiny tiny fraction of my
> lines of descent back to Charlemagne's day.
>
> John.
>
> > >After 40 generations, the chance of inheriting that specific marker
drops
> to .5^40 (.5 >raised to the 40th power, or .5 multiplied by itself 40
> times), about .0000000000009....
> >
> > Do remember that when you try to estimate how much DNA (or the chance of
> DNA) we have from a specific person like Charlemagne you have to take into
> account the "assumption" that Charlemagne is in our list of ancestors many
> many times. So maybe you should multiply the number above by 100,000 or
> some other large number.
> >
> > Andrew Bond
>
> ______________________________

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