gathering dust

I've posted about this before  but another couple of hours following published family trees of the Royal and famous has turned up another gem. Robert the Bruce is not only my 22nd Great Grandfather  x 2, but he is also my 23rd Great Grandfather. It goes like this: Me, My Mother, Her Mother, VM Tulloch, daughter of LW Tulloch, son of LT Tulloch, son of John Tulloch, son of Ann Elizabeth Sutherland, daughter of Anderina Jamieson, daughter of Ann Tarrell Fordyce, daughter of Andrew Fordyce, son of Hugh Fordyce, son of Andrew Fordyce, son of Alexander Fordyce, son of Margaret Bruce, daughter of Elizabeth Gray, daughter of Marion Ogilvy, daughter of Helen Sinclair, daughter of Henry Sinclair, son of William Sinclair, son of Elizabeth Douglas, daughter of Margaret Stewart, daughter of  Robert III of Scotland, son of Robert II of Scotland, son of Majorie Bruce, daughter of King Robert I of Scotland (Robert the Bruce) So the point of pedigree coll...

The common ancestor is an idea with a long history, and if you have been around the internet or genealogy circles anytime since the late 1990s, the concept that westerners are all descended from Charlemagne is probably something you have come across. This concept originates in Darwinian Evolutionary theory and is pretty well supported by mathematical models, genetics (well mitrochrondial DNA), computer modelling and all kinds of other neat science-y stuff. ( Mark Humphrys  gives the most complete overview, it's pretty fascinating) As a scientific concept I totally get it. Go back far enough and everyone on the planet right now has a common ancestor - Every one (in theory) has 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 ggrandparents and so on until you have more potential ancestors than existed on the planet at that time. I was still pretty skeptical when my grandmother showed me her family tree which included Robert the Bruce. Skeptical to the point where I found copies of Rob...