Great Progenators in History.

[ParkCungHee]

It's well known that Chinghis Khan has approximately a million, billion grandchildren running around.

It's probably less well known that one in 12 Irishmen is likely the descendant of Niall of the Nine-Hostages.

Anyone else know of any similar cases of impressive fecundity throughout history?

 

[Dachs]

Pft. Most of these stories end up being like the ones about Wilt Chamberlain. Allegedly slept with tens of thousands of women, but funnily enough, nobody actually seems to have seen him with one.

 

[LightSpectra]

Anybody that reproduced prior to AD 1000 from the same continent as you, is probably related to you; unless you come from a community that has been continually isolated. Charlemagne was known to have 20 kids, of which about two-thirds survived to an age which they could reproduce. Assuredly he's an ancestor to every European, then.

 

[sydhe]

Augustus II of Saxony and Poland was supposedly the father of over 350 children. Only one of his sons, Augustus III, was legitimate. A famous illegitimate one was Marshal General Maurice de Saxe.

 

[sydhe]

If you pick someone from 2000 years age, then either just about everyone on Earth is descended from them or nobody is. Confucius would be a prime suspect.

 

[sophie]

I remember reading an article about some 90% of the English population being related to Edward III. Even less factual; just about every Welshman you'll ever meet will claim to be related either to Rhodri mawr, Llywelyn fawr or Glyn dwr. Considering that Welsh nobility usually had a crapton of kids, and all of them (bastard or not) were considered legitimate under Welsh law, it really wouldn't surprise me at all if it were true. I mean Madoc was supposed to be, what? like 1 of 26 or somesuch.

 

[bombshoo]

My grandmother used to tell me the reason for some of the Asiatic features in our family was that we were descended from the Great Khan. Later through a DNA test on another one of my relatives and some genealogy I learned I had a Kazakh great grandfather.

 

[Lord Baal]

Something like 80% of all Mormons are descended from one of two different men.

 

[SG-17]

The people who survived the Toba Catastrophe are the greatest progenitors in the history of humanity.

 

[civ2]

Adam the First and his Eve'ning Star.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Ben Franklin, son. "Father" of our country. And of a good portion of France, too.

 

[NovaKart]

That always confused me about Genghis Khan. How do people know this? If a large number of people throughout the world have some Mongol ancestry that would make sense, but Genghis Khan? Do people know for sure some of his descendants and did DNA testing on the others? Or did the testing just show that many people have Mongol ancestry and Genghis Khan makes for a better headline?

 

[Dachs]

With things like DNA testing, it's almost certainly the latter.

 

[NovaKart]

I just now read some articles about this, I don't know a lot about genetics so I don't have such a good understanding of it. From what I understand, around 8% of men in Asia have an identical Y chromosome which means that they are descended from a common ancestor and because this is distributed so broadly people assume they are descendants from Genghis Khan, also because experts think this genetic link originated some time not too far before Genghis Khan and comes from one of his ancestors. What I wonder may be a more probable explanation is that a closely related group of people, maybe a clan of Mongols spread their lineage who may or may not have included Genghis Khan.

 

[Arakhor]

Ramses the Great was alleged to have had over one hundred children. He would certainly qualify as a great progenitor if that were true!

 

[Lord Baal]

With Genghis Khan, people do know some of his descendants for sure, and DNA testing has hown around 40 million men who would be descendants either of him, or of someone he was descended from. Either way, it's undeniable that his conquests resulted in the rather large dispersal of his genes.

 

[Hornblower]

I heard on TV last night (can't recall the show) that you can't really track common DNA beyond 2000 years (ish). Apparently the millions of DNA variations over a 2000 year period actually end up wiping the DNA commonality slate clean and the DNA pool is fresh... so to speak. So even if you could extract DNA from Rameses, Confucious or a Caesar nobody living today could prove ancestry. Chingis being from more recent times would be possible but we have to find his tomb don't we?

 

[vogtmurr]

I heard on TV last night (can't recall the show) that you can't really track common DNA beyond 2000 years (ish). Apparently the millions of DNA variations over a 2000 year period actually end up wiping the DNA commonality slate clean and the DNA pool is fresh... so to speak. So even if you could extract DNA from Rameses, Confucious or a Caesar nobody living today could prove ancestry. Chingis being from more recent times would be possible but we have to find his tomb don't we?

they found Tamerlane's, who was a descendant.

 

[NovaKart]

He claimed to be a descendant but wasn't actually. I don't see how people can know for sure who his descendants were. Like I mentioned people found a common ancestor for a large number of men but it's not known for sure who it was and people just assume it's Genghis Khan. He doesn't have any known descendants.

 

[Lord Baal]

Tamerlane falsely claimed descen from Genghis. Two of his wives, however, were direct decendants of Genghis, which is why he married them: doing so strengthened his claims to leadership. Not that he really needed it.