№ 519: Ethnic Cleansing Aisle 6?

Nautilus:

You’re Descended from Royalty and So Is Everybody Else

Anybody you can name from ancient history is in your family tree.

You are of royal descent, because everyone is. You are of Viking descent, because everyone is. You are of Saracen, Roman, Goth, Hun, Jewish descent, because, well, you get the idea. All Europeans are descended from exactly the same people, and not that long ago. Everyone alive in the 10th century who left descendants is the ancestor of every living European today, including Charlemagne, and his children Drogo, Pippin, and, of course, not forgetting Hugh. If you’re broadly eastern Asian, you’re almost certain to have Genghis Kahn sitting atop your tree somewhere in the same manner, as is often claimed. If you’re a human being on Earth, you almost certainly have Nefertiti, Confucius, or anyone we can actually name from ancient history in your tree, if they left children. The further back we go, the more the certainty of ancestry increases, though the knowledge of our ancestors decreases. It is simultaneously wonderful, trivial, meaningless, and fun.

Well! Goodness gracious. What are we to do?

We're all of us Christian, Muslim and Jew

and Buddhist, animist and Hindu, too,

and Chinese and French and Native American

and, in addition, we're all sub-Saharan?

The Math says genetically we are a stew?

There's no discreet “me”? There's no discrete “you”?

One single clan

causes all wobbles?

Put history down

to family squabbles?
Despite whatever 
we say or think,
we're in this together?
(Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.)

How could this be?
Math, surely you jest.
Remember the motto
on our family crest?
Whatever — FOR EV-ER! —
delenda est.

[updated 1/29/2019 10:07 am]