| It's always nice to find reinforcement for
what many believe are my way-out-in-leftfield
theories. Some reinforcement from Mark Humphrys
and others was found at http://humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.html
They use the term Most Recent Common Ancestor,
abbreviated as MRCA, to refer to the search for
the couple closest to present time that each and
every one of us will reach if we could follow all
of our own ancestral pathways far enough into the
past.
There is a statement about midway through that
says “when you go far enough back, every
individual is either an ancestor of the whole
world today, or else is an ancestor of no one
alive today.” It then goes on to suggest
that “far enough back” may be 700 AD,
at least for the Western world.
This is the concept I was trying to describe
in the Gladiator Captain's Log http://www.familyforest.com/captainslog/13.html
. Each and every person portrayed at the
Coliseum, both in the stands and in the arena,
was either an ancestor of all of us, or an
ancestor of none of us.
Most of the records about most of our
ancestors have been irretrievably lost forever.
However, by looking at the patterns of genetic
migration that can be seen by connecting the
recorded history that has survived, we can gain
fascinating insights into the wondrous and
colorful ancient ancestry that was truly our own.
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