William the Conqueror article from PE2.01

Since this post became the first in the forums to reach 100 views, I thought I would post the article for people who may not have seen it before

William The Conqueror

William the Conqueror was one of the most important figures in history, especially in western society. His conquest of England at the battle of Hastings in 1066 forever changed the world. He was even the progenitor of all the future monarchs of England!

Today, we read about William the Conqueror in literature and history realizing how long ago he lived and most don’t even know about the fact that nearly all of us who descend from people of Great Britain, Ireland, and Northern France are descended from him and his companions of the conquest!

You might be asking “how would anyone know that?”. The fact is that statically speaking, when someone has several children that reach adulthood and have children of their own and so on for so many generations, most of that original person’s descendants have married into all of the surrounding families after several centuries. The longer the time, the more widespread the area of descendants. Mathematical probability shows us that over 99% of all westerners are descendants of Emperor Charlemagne of France and he lived in the 700’s, so think about your chances of being related to Confucius or even one of the Pharaohs of Egypt.

Still skeptical, then look at it this way. Your family tree increases in number of individual ancestors the further back you go, but just to a point. The reason is that there were fewer people then than now. Today, there are over 6 billion people in the world and only 1 billion were around in 1900. That means that our family trees are not upside-down pyramids, but diamond-shaped. With fewer people in the world in our past, we have a greater chance of being related to the same person somewhere along the line. Therefore, the further back you go, the higher the chances of being related to your neighbor.

If you need more proof then just look at modern day genetic-genealogy research. It has shown that we are all related somewhere along the line and probably in many places throughout that line.

So the next time you see or read something about “Grandpa” William the Conqueror or another historical figure, remember that they may be part of your heritage.-PE2.01