Quote Originally Posted by EdinSteve View Post
And aren’t you amazed at how many have miraculously discovered their latent aristocratic roots?
There isn't any miracle involved. It's just a matter of large numbers, statistical probabilities, and people focusing on the most famous/infamous/interesting ancestors.

Let's assume that there's about 3 or 4 generations per 100 years. If I were looking at my ancestors from the 1600s, there would be approximately 10 to 14 generations. If you look 10 generations back, I should have about 1,000 ancestors (2^10 = 1,024) depending on the amount of inbreeding in my family tree. If you look 14 generations back, I should have about 16,000 ancestors (2^14 = 16,384).

It's not that miraculous to think that 1 in 1,000 (or 10,000) people might be a bit noteworthy. If I were to look back another 200 years, I would be in the 16 to 22 generation range. So I might be looking at 65,000 to 4.2 million ancestors. So at the high end, you might be exceeding the combined populations of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales. At that point, it's actually more miraculous to not be related to aristocracy.

Noteworthy ancestors:
If I'm going to talk about some of my ancestors, whom would seem more interesting ... the generations of farmers and laborers whose lives were so unremarkable that their primary life events were births, deaths, marriages, childbirths, and baptisms? Or would you be more interested in my ancestors who were hung as witches ... whom have books, movies and miniseries (both fictional and non-fictional) written about them?