"Family trees are not trees, but matted webs"

Years ago, I decided to treat myself to a course in the sociology of families and households.

Don't look at me like that; we all have different ideas of a good time.

Our professor asked us, as an exercise, to go home and work out how many fifteenth great-grandparents we had.  Math was never my strong suit, but I soon realised that if you double a number fifteen, sixteen, seventeen times, your calculator will run out of digits, and you will end up with a number greater than the number of people living on the earth five centuries ago.

Wow, I thought.  We may not actually be all brothers and sisters, but we really, really are all cousins.  My fascination with family history just grew.

So, this morning, I was delighted to run across this thread of rants from a genetics professor in response to an article expressing wonder that a (that's as in one, folks) descendant of the Cheddar Man could be living close by to where the remains of the 10,000-year-old man (give or take a few millennia) was found.  I haven't included the whole thread - it's easy enough to find, if you just search "Dr Adam Rutherford" on Twitter - just the bits that amused me.

 Clicking on the individual boxes will enlarge them for easier reading.

My favourite bit is when someone brings up Charlemagne.  

Never mind a genetics prof; if you want to exasperate a seasoned family researcher, just claim to be descended from Charlemagne.  (If we have any Western European blood at all, we're descended from Charlemagne.  If we have any English ancestry at all, we're descended from Edward I.)

As you can see, I'm now following this guy.