#Consanguinity December 7

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

I had two personal projects collide with each other last week. First I am working on a Family Tree for my siblings and many cousins. The second project was to continue my 30 Day Vocabulary Challenge from November into an ongoing daily habit. That quest to improve my vocabulary had me discover CONSANGUINITY. That word is really important in understanding our relationship to our ancestors.

So what is CONSANGUINITY? Well to oversimplify it’s the relationship between family members. When I discovered that word and the concepts associated with it I had to reflect.

So the CONSANGUINITY between myself and parents is one degree. For myself and grandparents that would be 2 degrees, and for me and my great-grandparents that would be 3 degrees.

What would happen if I applied some ancestral logic to my family tree research? Assuming that each generation runs about 30 years what would the number of ancestors in my family tree going back a set number of years? Well lets look at the math which I got from a blog written by Sarah Dobby. Her post was called “How Many Ancestors Do You Have?”

Here is a look at what 270 years or 10 generations would mean for each of us according to Sarah:
Generation 1: 2 parents
Generation 2: 4 grandparents
Generation 3: 8 great grandparents
Generation 4: 16 great great grandparents
Generation 5: 32 great great great grandparents
Generation 6: 64 great great great great grandparents
Generation 7: 128 great great great great great grandparents
Generation 8: 256 great great great great great great grandparents
Generation 9: 512 great great great great great great great grandparents
Generation 10: 1024 great great great great great great great great grandparents    

If we take this out to Generation 11 (300 years) the number goes to 2046. It just keeps doubling every generation. So by the time it gets to Generation 20 each of us has over 2 Million Ancestors. That is a lot of CONSANGUINITY and also a lot of sacrifice, love, and persistence for each of us to be here.

It is kind of humbling to think of how much each of our ancestors did for us to have the opportunity to be here today. The odds of what has to happen for each of us to be born is truly miraculous.

We need to cherish the moment of today and that is a lesson CONSANGUINITY has taught me.