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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2005-05 > 1116621668


From: "Tom Mall" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] William the Conqueror
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 17:07:51 -0400
References: <20050520193627.73460.qmail@web52008.mail.yahoo.com>


I'm also a Newbie and know the feeling of not only being lost but almost
stupid. I have been lurking after an enthusiastic welcome from Bonnie. After
a trip to Europe, illness and several computer crashes, I'm going to jump in
even though I don't understand everything I thought I did.

The Charlamange thread has been fun and interesting. I hope this isn't old
hat, but there was a great article written back in the '80s byAlex
Shoumatoff and published in the New Yorker Magazine.If the Newbies haven't
read it, it might help calm some nerves. It was from his book Mountain of
Names. He has some great insights and has a couple of terms that explain
some of the "Charlemagne descendants" . . . "Gunderson, who heads the
Genealogical Society's Royalty Identification Unit, has calculated that if
you kept multiplying by two the progenitors of a person born today-doubling
his parents, their parents, etc.-the person would have (based on an average
generation length of twenty-five years) something like two hundred and
eighty-one trillion forebears alive at the time of Charlemagne. Each
person's pedigree, in other words, experiences a sort of retrogressive
population explosion."

Shumatoff then explains ". . .What prevents the theoretical population
explosion from taking place is another phenomenon, which Gunderson
delightfully calls "pedigree collapse." Pedigree collapse is caused by
cousins marrying cousins-:-both intentional mating between close cousins and
random mating between distant ones who don't know that they are related."
Our pedigree becomes a dimanond rather than an ever expanding "tree"

If anyone wants to read it here is the
URl:http://www.dispatchesfromthevanishingworld.com/pastdispatches/mountain/m
ountain_1.html

It's not scientific but it explained some things way back when.

I guess I would like to thank you all and ask for tolerance when we Newbies
ask or talk about things that have been discussed before we came on the
scene.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Spencer" <>
To: <>
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 3:36 PM
Subject: Re: [DNA] William the Conqueror


> It's a no brainer!
>
> Robert Stafford <> wrote:What in the world are you
trying to say here?
>
> Bob Stafford
>
> Jon Spencer wrote:
>
> But, of course, and not surprising, we don't see many "unsubscribing" by
these naysayers, curmudgeons, wannabes, conveyors of doom, and those who
were "Johnnie come lately to the trough!"
>
>
>
> ==============================
> Search Family and Local Histories for stories about your family and the
> areas they lived. Over 85 million names added in the last 12 months.
> Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13966/rd.ashx
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail
> Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour
>
>
> ==============================
> Search Family and Local Histories for stories about your family and the
> areas they lived. Over 85 million names added in the last 12 months.
> Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13966/rd.ashx
>

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