The Rediscovery of Cousinhood

You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. Your ancestors double with each generation. And although this may seems very logical and correct, it actually isn’t true! In fact it’s impossible.

Take a calculator and keep doubling your ancestors every 25 years or so. Before you get back 2000 years your ancestors outnumber the total world population at that time! And remember, we’re not talking about anyone else here, just your ancestors.

Mathematicians, genealogists, and anthropologists have examined this apparent enigma and have come to one conclusion: human history is loaded with cousins marrying cousins.

DNA evidence and the human genome project have led to the cooperation between two complementary sciences: genealogy and genetics. While scientists argue about the exact degree of relationship, one fact is quite clear:

We are all cousins.

Many scientists now estimate that no person in the world—including various so-called “races”—can be no more distant than 80th cousins of one another. No exceptions. When you hear news of remote tribes being discovered, remember even they represent those more distant 80th cousins.

In the year 1265 a nephew of the emperor of China married the sister of the Byzantine emperor. Their child married into the Frankish royal family, and their child married into the Anglican royal family. This means that 700 years ago a genealogical bridge was connected across Europe and Asia through only eight people. This is just one example of the countless thousands of genealogical bridge creating interlinkage between races, nations, and countries. 

The political implications of this great kinship are quite exciting. If all of us could be made aware of our interrelatedness, the same sort of altruism that exists among close kin could prevail throughout the entire human population.

All of the people who ever lived in the past, along with everyone alive today, are cousins.

If you think about those millions of ancestors that lead precisely down through the centuries to you, you may begin to change some of your built in assumptions. Try to imagine for just a few minutes the range and kinds of people your ancestry includes; criminals, nobility, and scoundrels of every kind. Remove just one of them, and you wouldn’t exist. Give that realization a few minutes of your time.

What if all children in every country were taught we are all cousins when they were young? I think the change would be enormous. Could world wars develop if everyone had kinship feelings between ethnic groups? Wouldn’t we instead rely far more on understanding, reasoning, negotiations and real diplomacy?

Many ancient tribes developed—unbeknownst to each other—across several continents. And yet there are major similarities between all of them which provide crucial clues to our own nature. All early tribes where characterized by a strong bond we call kinship. Each member of the tribe felt a strong sense of belonging. They understood their relatedness on deep emotional levels. Early tribes also carried the verbal stories of a common ancestor, seen as the tribe’s founder from whom they all descended from. This shared belief strengthened the kinship bond.

The fact that these things are unknown produced the exact opposite effect of what was true of our ancestors who lived in those ancient tribes: most of us don’t feel any kinship feelings with people of different nationalities. As a result of this lack of knowledge we are obviously paying the consequences right now. Our own ignorance is working against the probability of our own existence ☮