Common ancestor

“ And every time that a common pair of ancestors appears in any generation, the number of ancestors in that generation must be reduced by two from our original figures, or if it is only one common ancestor, by one, and as we go back that reduction will have to be doubled, quadrupled and so on. ”

“ Theoretically, all members of a clan, high and low alike, were held to be the descendants of a common ancestor, and in this way to have a real and direct claim upon [pg 030] one another. If a man was not in some degree akin to another he was no better than a beast, and might be killed like one without compunction whenever occasion arose. ”

“ But they are to be read by the light of the earlier one—placed as a lantern to the wary upon the threshold of his work in 1753—to the effect that a single, well-substantiated case of degeneration would make it conceivable that all living beings were descended from but one common ancestor. ”

“ On the contrary, modern research, as we saw it in the two preceding chapters, proves that since the very beginning of their prehistoric life men used to agglomerate into gentes, clans, or tribes, maintained by an idea of common descent and by worship of common ancestors. ”

“ § 1 THE origin of man is still very obscure. It is commonly asserted that he is “descended” from some man-like ape such as the chimpanzee, the orang-utang, or the gorilla, but that of course is as reasonable as saying that I am “descended” from some Hottentot or Esquimaux as young or younger than myself. Others, alive to this objection, say that man is descended from the common ancestor of the chimpanzee, the orang-utang, and the gorilla. Some “anthropologists” have even indulged in a speculation whether mankind may not have a double or treble origin; ”

“ Here the descendants of common ancestors, inhabiting a barren region, have to divide while yet the constituent families are near akin; and there, in a more fertile region, the group may hold together until clusters of families remotely akin are formed—clusters which, diffusing slowly, are held by a common bond that slowly weakens. ”

“ Strange as the venerable place may be it comes quite naturally into the story of our common ancestry. It seems, in some indefinite way, to be a family possession which we can regard with a personal interest and a legitimate curiosity. ”

“ In those organic individuals, of which we know that they are descended from one and the same common form of ancestors—in which, therefore, their common ancestry is empirically proved—there can be no doubt that they belong to one species, whether they differ much or little from one another, or whether they are almost alike or very unlike. ”

“ Failing father or husband, the unmarried daughters were placed under the guardianship of the nearest male members of the family. Thus the family, in the narrower sense in which we commonly use the word, as meaning descendants of a common father or grandfather, was, as it were, a single point of growth in a larger organism, the gens, which consisted of all those who shared a common ancestry. ”

“ Each of their represents a long line of ancestry, and often a particular parent may be chosen, not for anything that he is or has in himself, but because of some quality which appeared to an unusual degree in one of his ancestors — because he possesses a power which he has not used, though it is latent in his physical body because it is physically descended from that ancestor. ”

“ And then, where larger populations arise, and different stocks are locally mingled, there are formed such groups within groups as those constituting, among the Romans, the family, the house, and the tribe: common ancestry being in all cases the bond. ”

“ In short, as many ancestors as a man has, so many common stocks he has, from which collateral kinsmen may be derived. And as we are taught by holy writ, that there is one couple of ancestors belonging to us all, from whence the whole race of mankind is descended, the obvious and undeniable consequence is, that all men are in some degree related to each other. ”

“ Turning to the influence of heredity, we recognized that by it are determined all the most fundamental features of each race and type of man, and that often the individual reverts to the traits of the one or the other of his parents, or of his remote ancestors, in such manner that one trait may belong to one ancestor, another to another. ”

“ Gens, genos, Sanskrit dschanas, Gothic kuni, ancient Norse and Anglesaxon kyn, English kin, Middle High German künne, all signify lineage, descent. Gens in Latin, genos in Greek, specially designate that sex organization which boasted of common descent (from a common sire) and was united into a separate community by certain social and religious institutions, but the origin and nature of which nevertheless remained obscure to all our historians. ”

“ But although it might be allowable, in making out the descent of an individual man or any other animal, from a certain ancestor or pair of ancestors, to aid the pedigree by strong family or race resemblance, even when a link is wanting, it could only be for the purpose of establishing a pedigree, a connection of lives with lives, that such collateral evidence could be resorted to. ”

“ By going back three or four generations a man is connected with an immense number of cousins; and if the complete network of ten or fifteen generations could be worked out, it would probably show some blood bond throughout a whole nation. Thus the ancestral roots of a man's life and character have wide ramifications in the former generations of his people. The further we go back the larger is the element of ancestry common to the different individuals of the same community. The chronicler's genealogies only show us individuals as links in a set of chains. ”

“ The personal interest surrounding those who have gained eminence carries us back over each step of their careers to their childhood, their parents, and their ancestry. [6] Pride of race adds its zest, and each race has its eulogists who claim every great man whose family tree reveals even a single ancestor, male or female, near or remote, of the eulogized race. ”

“ Our experience with Americans whose grandparents immigrated into this country is, on the whole, that most social traces of their descent have disappeared, 267and that many do not even know to what nationalities their grandparents belonged. It might be expected—particularly in Western communities, where a rapid change of location is common—that this would result in a rapid mixture of the descendants of various nationalities. ”

“ More than once I have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honoured and distinguished ancestry which I could trace back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only inherited a name, but fortune and a proud family homestead; and yet I have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these, and had been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to do that for me which I should do for myself. ”

“ Where each individual draws for his hereditary traits on a wide ancestry of unstable hybrids, as all civilised men do, his chances are always those of the common lot, with some slight antecedent probability of his resembling the nearer ones among his variegated ancestry. ”

“ The ethnogonic history generally takes the form of a genealogy—every tribe or other group is derived from a mythical ancestor, who among savages is frequently a beast, or half-beast half-human, or even in some cases a rock or a stone. Familiar examples are the genealogical systems of the Australians, the Maoris of New Zealand, the Samoans, the American Indians;1446 but the conception appears to be universal. ”

“ The men visit him and subject him to all sorts of indignities, in order to impress him with the necessity of absolute obedience to the society.... They believe that the skull of the father or other ancestor, when it has been properly prepared, becomes the residence of the ancestor. ”

“ It will be noted that when we hear the specialists in anatomy and biology, their expressions on the subject of man's ancestry are, as a rule, characterized by a strong dissent from the development theory, while the belief in a development of man from an ape-like ancestor, uttered with a note of cocksureness, is found mainly among amateurs in these sciences. ”

“ As there were no historical records of such beginning, the scientific imagination of early peoples constructed the first parents in various ways, often by personifying the tribe and transferring its name to the mythical ancestor. ”

“ Articles on the Sun-Ray origin of the Pyramids and Cuneiform Character
[Image] Edinburgh Castle, From the Vennel
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. CHAPTER 1. My Ancestry Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us. The sentiment of ancestry seems to be inherent in human nature, especially in the more civilised races. At all events, we cannot help having a due regard for the history of our forefathers. Our curiosity is stimulated by their immediate or indirect influence upon ourselves. ”

“ Kind Determined by Origin.—It is inheritance in the sense of community of origin that determines whether a given living creature shall be man, beast, bird, fish, or what not. A given individual is human because his ancestors were human. In addition to this stock supply of human qualities he has certain well-marked features which we recognize as characteristics of race. That is, if he is of Anglo-Saxon or Italian or Mongolian parentage, naturally his various qualities will be Anglo-Saxon, Italian, or Mongolian. ”

“ Neither the party himself, nor the world, trouble their heads, about a man’s ancestors, until he has distinguished himself, in some degree, or fancies that he has; for, while he is nobody, they are clearly nobody’s ancestors. In Note A, upon the article Touchet, vol. ix., fol. ed., Lond., 1739, Bayle remarks—“It is very common to fall into two extremes, with regard to those, whom Providence raises greatly above their former condition: some, by fabulous genealogies, procure them ancestors of the [Pg 381] first quality; others reduce them to a rank, much below the true one.” ”

“ Ancestry a Network.—From the fact that each child has all of the ancestors of its mother as well as of its father, arises the great complications which are met with in determining the lineage of an individual. [Pg 4] A person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and thus following out pedigree it is plain to be seen that through this process of doubling in each generation, in the course of a few centuries one’s ancestry is apparently enormous. ”

“ Whatever be their nature,—whether it be true or not that in all cases they are the worship of some mythical ancestor,—they are everywhere employed to attest the sacredness of the family-relation; and therefore they acquire prominent significance and importance, whenever the continuous existence of the Family is endangered by a change in the person of its chief. ”

“ The remotest known ancestor of each compounding group, at once the most ancient father and the god of the compound group, being continuously represented in blood, as well as in power, by the eldest descendant of the eldest, it happens that this patriarch, who is head not of his own group only but also of the compound group, stands to both in a relation analogous to that in which the apotheosized ancestor stands ”

“ It looks to the grandest genealogy in the universe, the ancestry of a whole race; not a few favored individuals, but all humanity. My brethren, fellow sharers of immortality, open this family record. Trace your ancestry back to the most august parentage in the universe: One is our Father, God; One our elder brother, Jesus. We all draw lineage from the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Herein consists the value and dignity of human life. I go back to the origin of the globe. I find that for five days the creative hand of the Almighty is busy in fitting up an abode of palatial splendor. ”

“ You are speaking of parents who have long since left their native land. The ancestor need not be indignant with his descendants when they use the language of their new home, so long as they continue to act in accordance with his spirit. ”

“ When you can trace back the ancestry of any man we bring you with what you call negro characteristics, tell us who his father and grandfather were, and so on, until you reach one of your negro immigrants—when you can do this with all our inhabitants, and show us that every man with these characteristics is the descendant of one of these immigrants, and that every man with European characteristics has some of the blood of one of your European immigrants in his body, you may claim that you have given us scientific proof of your hypothesis. ”

“ Their descendants have long ago been blended into the common life of the people of America, scarcely conscious of the fact that they might have the same pride in ancestry which the descendants of the Pilgrims delight to exhibit. ”

“ If a first ancestor, apparently the channel of the title, is indicated, he must be one from whom history begins: there must be nothing before him, nothing to show that he or his line had ever been less than what he came to be. Lastly, the tribes, over which the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν rules, must be in visible or presumable connection locally with the original seat or cradle of the nation ”

“ Ancestry alone furnishes the material for the factor, and no amount of induced change can get itself registered in the organism so as to come into this charmed circle of ancestral characters which alone seem to be passed on to posterity. ”

“ Since the features of the parent tribe are handed down from one generation to another, there is nothing more natural than that we should retain the historical features of our ancestors, viz., the stamp of gravity which the events of their time impressed upon their faces. ”