Call to Action: Adam and Eve pedigrees

[nathan...@gmail.com]

Dear Usergroup:

Dick Eastman and I have been leading a campaign to convince people that you cannot trace a pedigree back to the Biblical Adam and Eve. I don't know how widespread this myth is, but it's a plague among Americans who are just beginning to trace their family trees. Can I invite as many of you as care to, and don't be shy, please list your degrees and credentials to convince people to trust you, to comment on this blog post:

https://blog.eogn.com/2016/04/21/i-have-my-family-tree-back-to-adam-and-eve/

Let's squash this myth. Look forward to reading your comments.







Nathan W. Murphy, MA (English Local History, Univ. of Leic.), Accredited Genealogist
Senior Research Consultant | FamilySearch
Genealogist General | Baronial Order of Magna Charta
Genealogist General | Military Order of the Crusades
Genealogist General | National Society Americans of Royal Descent
Genealogist General | Order of the Crown of Charlemagne
Genealogist General | Order of the Three Crusades 1096-1192

[taf]

On Friday, April 22, 2016 at 6:24:23 AM UTC-7, nathan...@gmail.com wrote:

> Dick Eastman and I have been leading a campaign to convince people that
> you cannot trace a pedigree back to the Biblical Adam and Eve.

Good luck with that. Hope springs eternal.

> I don't know how widespread this myth is, but it's a plague among
> Americans who are just beginning to trace their family trees. Can I
> invite as many of you as care to, and don't be shy, please list your
> degrees and credentials to convince people to trust you, to comment
> on this blog post:
>
> https://blog.eogn.com/2016/04/21/i-have-my-family-tree-back-to-adam-and-eve/
>

The Gunderson quote leaves an unfortunate implication. In highlighting that one cannot document a connection from the Merovingians to Adam, on might imply that it is possible to document a connection to the Merovingians, and guesses aside, even this cannot be done.

taf

[Ian Goddard]

On 22/04/16 14:24, nathan...@gmail.com wrote:
> Dick Eastman and I have been leading a campaign to convince people that you cannot trace a pedigree back to the Biblical Adam and Eve. I don't know how widespread this myth is, but it's a plague among Americans who are just beginning to trace their family trees. Can I invite as many of you as care to, and don't be shy, please list your degrees and credentials to convince people to trust you, to comment on this blog post:

I think you're on a hiding to nothing here, mostly because you're trying
to persuade people who don't want to be persuaded. Don't be
https://xkcd.com/386/

--
Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng
at austonley org uk

[Richard Smith]

On 22/04/16 14:24, nathan...@gmail.com wrote:

> Dick Eastman and I have been leading a campaign to convince people
> that you cannot trace a pedigree back to the Biblical Adam and Eve.

Why bother? People who trace their line back to Adam and Eve will fall
into one of two categories. Either they've done it for personal
amusement, or they're creationists who believe in the literal truth of
bible. Doing the former is harmless as long as the boundary between
fact and fiction is clear (and actually beneficial if includes
discussion of where the line ceases to be credible). Those doing the
latter are sufficiently out of touch with reality that no amount of
rational argument will persuade them otherwise.

Richard

[Stewart Baldwin via]

On 4/22/2016 8:24 AM, nathanwmurphy via wrote:
> Dear Usergroup:
>
> Dick Eastman and I have been leading a campaign to convince people that you cannot trace a pedigree back to the Biblical Adam and Eve. I don't know how widespread this myth is, but it's a plague among Americans who are just beginning to trace their family trees. Can I invite as many of you as care to, and don't be shy, please list your degrees and credentials to convince people to trust you, to comment on this blog post:
>
> https://blog.eogn.com/2016/04/21/i-have-my-family-tree-back-to-adam-and-eve/
>
> Let's squash this myth. Look forward to reading your comments.

Is there a typo in the above URL? I got an error message when I tried
to access it.

Stewart Baldwin

[taf]

On Friday, April 22, 2016 at 7:42:47 AM UTC-7, Stewart Baldwin via wrote:
> On 4/22/2016 8:24 AM, nathanwmurphy via wrote:

> > https://blog.eogn.com/2016/04/21/i-have-my-family-tree-back-to-adam-and-eve/

> Is there a typo in the above URL? I got an error message when I tried
> to access it.

Worked for me.

taf

[joe...@gmail.com]

On Friday, April 22, 2016 at 9:24:23 AM UTC-4, nathan...@gmail.com wrote:
> Dick Eastman and I have been leading a campaign to convince people that you cannot trace a pedigree back to the Biblical Adam and Eve.

Speaking from America, I really suspect that 99.999% of the online trees that trace back to Adam and Eve are the result of just merging gedcoms found anywhere and grabbing any information and not caring one hoot about the quality or accuracy of the information. clicking "merge" "merge" "merge" is a heck of a lot easier than tracking down sources for every link or claim. The same is true for all the online trees that link back to Thor or Zeus. People don't believe these people existed.

That being said, if there are individuals who truly believe they have found their exact documented path to Adam and Eve (and I haven't run across one in 20 years of doing this), I doubt you'll be able to change their mind, since that requires reasoning. And anyone who believes that the story about guy named "Adam" and a women named "Eve" is based on real events does not have the capacity to reason whatsoever.

[nathan...@gmail.com]

> The Gunderson quote leaves an unfortunate implication. In highlighting that one cannot document a connection from the Merovingians to Adam, on might imply that it is possible to document a connection to the Merovingians, and guesses aside, even this cannot be done.

That's a good point, I'd love to hear you chime in on the blog post about this.

Nathan

[nathan...@gmail.com]

> I think you're on a hiding to nothing here, mostly because you're trying
> to persuade people who don't want to be persuaded. Don't be
> https://xkcd.com/386/

You've got a good point there Ian.

Nathan

[nathan...@gmail.com]

>Those doing the latter are sufficiently out of touch with reality that no amount of rational argument will persuade them otherwise.

Can't argue with that.

Nathan

[nathan...@gmail.com]

> Is there a typo in the above URL? I got an error message when I tried
> to access it.

Stewart, here is the home page if that works better: https://blog.eogn.com/ It's currently about the fifth post as you scroll down.

Dick Eastman's blog posts usually rise to the top of Google search results. So whenever someone googles "Adam and Eve family tree," etc., this will give inquiring minds food for thought.

All the best,

Nathan

[nathan...@gmail.com]

> That being said, if there are individuals who truly believe they have found their exact documented path to Adam and Eve (and I haven't run across one in 20 years of doing this) ...

That's right, when you ask for documentation, the conversation usually ends.

Nathan

[gera...@earthlink.net]

"Speaking from America, I really suspect that 99.999% of the online trees that trace back to Adam and Eve are the result of just merging gedcoms found anywhere and grabbing any information and not caring one hoot about the quality or accuracy of the information. clicking "merge" "merge" "merge" is a heck of a lot easier than tracking down sources for every link or claim."

Sadly, you're correct. There are several websites that do almost nothing but merge gedcoms, and you can't even contact the creators to ask them to correct false information. I saw one the other day with a son born before the father!

There's one of these viral gedcoms that first arose about 10 years ago, and has now spread like cancer by these means so rapidly that it is the dominant family tree for the family in question, having supplanted the legitimate, well-documented historical pedigree. I've found dozens of them now. Turns out to be a hoax, in which the original author simply invented the names of the wives and the birth and death dates (everyone's got them) and taken out real historical men and replaced them with imaginary ones. I'm going to write it up here when I can get around to it. But it's indeed alarming that these gedcom sites just merge in false information and nobody cares.

[Greg Vaut via]

Guilty of bling Gedcom merging in my youthful days. Sworn off this one a
couple of decades ago, but some of the damage is still there.

Now? Guilty of the senior citizen titillation of telling other, "You don't
believe that I'm descended from A&E? Just look at my website. It's on the
Internet so it must be true."

(and guilty of being "American")

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[nathan...@gmail.com]

The books on the Family History Library Catalog(ue) whose titles claim to trace family trees back to Adam and Eve: https://familysearch.org/search/catalog/results?count=20&query=%2Btitle%3AAdam%20%2Btitle%3Aand%20%2Btitle%3AEve

Nathan

[nathan...@gmail.com]

The idea for that query came from Margaret Stehle on eogn.com.

[Adrian via]

There is one in O'Hart's Irish Pedigrees Vol I pp 42, well from Adam o
Philip V of Spain.

If I remember correctly, it was Philip II (husband of Queen Mary Tudor) who
commissioned his ministers to work out his pedigree back to Adam.

I guess bishop Ussher, he who calculated creation to have occurred in around
4000 BC, must have used a pedigree back to Adam, as his calculations were
based partly on biblical genealogy.

I keep going back to the problem raised by Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich back
in the 17c, why are Adam and Eve always depicted with belly-buttons?

I think this thread should have been posted three weeks ago.

Adrian

-----Original Message-----
From: nathanwmurphy via
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2016 4:18 PM Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval
To: gen-me...@rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: Call to Action: Adam and Eve pedigrees

[Ian Goddard]

On 22/04/16 20:27, Adrian via wrote:
> I guess bishop Ussher, he who calculated creation to have occurred in
> around 4000 BC, must have used a pedigree back to Adam, as his
> calculations were based partly on biblical genealogy.

Rats! I only just thought of it. I wonder if anyone publicly asked
Alan Harper ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Harper_%28bishop%29 )
to comment on his predecessor's chronology. A quick Google finds nothing.

[taf]

On Friday, April 22, 2016 at 12:32:26 PM UTC-7, Adrian via wrote:

> I guess bishop Ussher, he who calculated creation to have occurred in around
> 4000 BC, must have used a pedigree back to Adam, as his calculations were
> based partly on biblical genealogy.

His work did not use modern (to him) genealogies to trace all the way back. He established a general chronological system using a numerological phasing of lunar, solar and Roman indiction cycles. He then cataloged "the continued succession of these years, as they are delivered in holy writ" to conclude that Nebuchadnezzar died 3442 after creation. He then used Chaldean chronology to date Nebuchadnezzar's death with respect to the Christian era as 562 BC. Add the two together, and you get 4004 BC.

https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ussher.htm

taf

[krothinva via]

While I am one of those who believe in the lineage listed in the Bible,

I am not crazy enough to beleive that anyone can trace their lines back

to anyone in the Bible. The only trees I eve say say they connect via

Joseph of Arithmathea <sic> Nobody has ever shown any proof for those

lines connecting to Joseph. Whilee it is neat, even lines going back

before the year 1000 or so seem iffy to me. What is the earliest

authenticated line out there?



Ken in Va





-----Original Message-----

From: Richard Smith via <gen-me...@rootsweb.com>

To: gen-medieval <gen-me...@rootsweb.com>

Sent: Fri, Apr 22, 2016 10:30 am

Subject: Re: Call to Action: Adam and Eve pedigrees

[Stewart Baldwin via]

Regarding the misleading Gunderson quote that has been pointed out ["In
my opinion it is not even possible to verify historically a connected
European pedigree earlier than the time of the Merovingian Kings (c.
a.d. 450–a.d. 752)."], the statement is still technically correct
(because of the words "the time of"). Obviously, a more generic
statement which does not mention the Merovingians (from whom no
well-documented descent is known) would have been more appropriate.

With regard to combating the "I can trace my genealogy back to Adam and
Eve" nonsense, I would suggest that a shift in emphasis to an
appropriately revised version of Gunderson's statement might be a better
approach. In fact, the Biblical part of such a "genealogy" is made
irrelevant by the fact that the period (ca. 100 - ca. 600) cannot be
bridged by anything that even remotely resembles a well-documented
genealogy. If you start your argument with a person believing in such a
genealogy by stating that Adam and Eve never existed, you are likely to
be perceived as questioning their religious beliefs, and they are then
unlikely to be receptive to any further argument. Instead, I recommend
that the argument begin by stating that any discussion of the pre-100 AD
part of the genealogy is premature until such time as the documentation
for any later generations is solidified. So, how about arguing
something like the statement:

"The is no well-documented connected pedigree from the present back to
the year 400." (or 100 or 200 if you want some breathing room)

Leaving the pre-110 period off the table in such a discussion might
avoid offending people who might otherwise be receptive.

Stewart Baldwin

[Richard Smith]

On 23/04/16 00:19, Stewart Baldwin via wrote:

> "The is no well-documented connected pedigree from the present back to
> the year 400." (or 100 or 200 if you want some breathing room)

Not my area of expertise, but aren't there Chinese (and possibly
Japanese and Korean) descents that go back beyond that with a reasonable
degree of certainty? E.g. the Confucius line.

Richard

[taf]

Not the Japanese - the earliest historical records there are from the same span Stewart gave, and these documents are rife with forgery and fudgery so they can't be trusted to report earlier generations. That makes me not want to automatically give Korean or Chinese material the benefit of the doubt either, but others view them as being fully reliable.

Anyhow, I have yet to see a line that traces Confucius to Adam and Eve, so these don't really bear on Stewart's point about the best way to address an Adam-Eve line claim.

taf

[Peter Stewart]

On Saturday, April 23, 2016 at 10:13:07 AM UTC+10, taf wrote:

> Anyhow, I have yet to see a line that traces Confucius to Adam and Eve,
> so these don't really bear on Stewart's point about the best way to
> address an Adam-Eve line claim.

If we all, including Confucius, trace in the matriline to Eve and she was made from Adam's rib, doesn't that mean that MtDNA can connect us to a forefather?

Credulity can work any-which-way you want.

Peter Stewart

[peter...@yahoo.ca]

I agree with Stewart Baldwin's suggested approach. It takes away disputing the existence or non-existence of Adam and Eve. As the saying goes you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. It makes sense that if you argue on the basis of documentary evidence it removes the emotion.

Incidentally one thing that I've been very interested to learn is how far back does documentary evidence take us with European genealogy - the late 500s. I'd be wondering about that.

Peter D. A. Warwick

[nathan...@gmail.com]

> I agree with Stewart Baldwin's suggested approach. It takes away disputing the existence or non-existence of Adam and Eve. As the saying goes you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. It makes sense that if you argue on the basis of documentary evidence it removes the emotion.

I like Stewart's approach and Peter's analogy.

Nathan

[norenxaq via]

Hello:

I did see one online sevaral years ago that gives a biblical ancestry to huangdi, the first mythical emperor and ancestor of the shang dynasty, from which confucius traditionally descended.(shang-dukes of song-kong family) the author was a fundamentalist and claimed to be emperor of china via a descent from the zhou dynasty...

note: the site did not give a complete lineage from the zhou to him

[norenxaq via]

reliability for japan and korea begins around the 3-4th century ad. as for china, shang c.1700 bc and zhou c. 1100 bc are reliable as far as the royalty and there are clans claiming descent from each. how reliable these are is an open question.

despite the length of confucius' lineage, it is typical of many in chinese culture. those in the west are impressed with it due to a lack of knowledge about clan genealogy within china

[W David Samuelsen via]

I knew Bob Gunderson personally, first through his personal secretary
who was my close cousin (she was one who gave me copies of her original
research on one line.) Since then I had been in contact personally
because of another line we shared, by marriage, too.

And through Bob, I learned a lot about proving the gateways.

The comment by Bob as quoted is timeless. He had to take down a notch
Archibald Bennett's royalty research.

Bob was one who introduced to concept of Pedigree Collapse in 1980.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Gunderson

David Samuelsen

[Richard Smith]

On 23/04/16 02:25, peter...@yahoo.ca wrote:

> Incidentally one thing that I've been very interested to learn is
> how far back does documentary evidence take us with European genealogy
> - the late 500s. I'd be wondering about that.

Earlier, if you're willing to accept the Dál Riata line back to Fergus,
who must have been born in about the mid 400s. But it stands in
isolation to the other lines in Europe. It's not a line I've spent any
time with, but it is accepted by the Henry Project which generally has a
healthy degree of scepticism.

Richard

[nathan...@gmail.com]

> The comment by Bob as quoted is timeless. He had to take down a notch
> Archibald Bennett's royalty research.

I'd be interested in hearing more about Gunderson's work on Bennett's research. Is the idea that he disproved many of the lines Bennett alleged?

Thanks,

Nathan

[Bronwen Edwards]

On Friday, April 22, 2016 at 5:13:07 PM UTC-7, taf wrote:
>
> Not the Japanese - the earliest historical records there are from the same span Stewart gave, and these documents are rife with forgery and fudgery so they can't be trusted to report earlier generations. That makes me not want to automatically give Korean or Chinese material the benefit of the doubt either, but others view them as being fully reliable.

Every dynastic system, I would guess, has "hired" someone to provide a pedigree linking them to politically & spiritually important people/gods in order to reinforce & justify their rule.

[W David Samuelsen via]

Nathan, you would have better luck if you contact Debbie Latimer, who
worked under Bob for long time until Bob's retirement, and took over.

David Samuelsen

[Matt Tompkins]

On Friday, 22 April 2016 19:32:05 UTC+1, nathan...@gmail.com wrote:
> The books on the Family History Library Catalog(ue) whose titles claim to trace family trees back to Adam and Eve: https://familysearch.org/search/catalog/results?count=20&query=%2Btitle%3AAdam%20%2Btitle%3Aand%20%2Btitle%3AEve
>
> Nathan

I'm dismayed to see that the last item on that list appears to come from New Zealand - 'Whakapapa: from Adam and Eve through the lines of Te Arawa to G. David Anderson (Hori Rawiri)'.

From the title it appears the author traces his ancestry back to Adam and Eve via the 'whakapapa' (traditional genealogy) of the Te Arawa tribe. This whakapapa derives the Te Arawas' ancestry from a god Puhaorangi, living in the mythical Maori homeland of Hawaiki six generations before their migration to NZ (date unknown - perhaps around 1200 AD):

'Ohomairangi was born from the union of the ancestor Pūhaorangi, who descended from the heavens and slept with Te Kuraimonoa. Six generations later when war ravaged the Polynesian island of Rangiātea, Ohomairangi’s descendant Tamatekapua led his people to the North Island of New Zealand in the canoe named Te Arawa.'

I wonder how the connection from Puhaorangi to Adam and Eve was managed?

Matt Tompkins

[Matt Tompkins]

On Monday, 25 April 2016 13:16:12 UTC+1, Matt Tompkins wrote:
>
> I'm dismayed to see that the last item on that list appears to come from New Zealand - 'Whakapapa: from Adam and Eve through the lines of Te Arawa to G. David Anderson (Hori Rawiri)'.
>
> From the title it appears the author traces his ancestry back to Adam and Eve via the 'whakapapa' (traditional genealogy) of the Te Arawa tribe. This whakapapa derives the Te Arawas' ancestry from a god Puhaorangi, living in the mythical Maori homeland of Hawaiki six generations before their migration to NZ (date unknown - perhaps around 1200 AD):
>
> 'Ohomairangi was born from the union of the ancestor Pūhaorangi, who descended from the heavens and slept with Te Kuraimonoa. Six generations later when war ravaged the Polynesian island of Rangiātea, Ohomairangi’s descendant Tamatekapua led his people to the North Island of New Zealand in the canoe named Te Arawa.'
>
> I wonder how the connection from Puhaorangi to Adam and Eve was managed?
>
> Matt Tompkins

A bit of googling reveals a probable answer. It seems that after the advent of Christianity, some versions of whakapapa were altered so that an ancestor called Hema was identified with Shem, son of Noah, and the traditional ancestry upwards from Hema was replaced by a Biblical ascent back from Noah to Adam and Eve.

Matt Tompkins

[PDeloriol via]

This all sounds highly feasible in the minds of men!
Peter


In a message dated 25/04/2016 15:05:19 GMT Daylight Time,

[Stewart Baldwin via]

Although I am not ready to "cut" this line, I am less confident about
the documentation of the ancestry of the Scottish kings back to Fergus
than I was at the time I wrote the Henry Project pages on them. Some
modern authors have expressed skepticism about the pedigree of Kenneth
son of Alpin (e.g., Woolf, in his recent history of the period, "From
Pictland to Alba, 789-1070"), and while I believe that this skepticism
goes too far, they make some good points. In fatc, when I wrote the
pages, I indicated that the documentation for this line in the early
eighth century was far less than ideal (see, for example, the Henry
Project page for Eochaid mac Echach). Also, Fergus himself is not
strictly historical, but can be regarded as probably reliable tradition,
and the first member of the line who can be considered as "historical"
with confidence is his grandson Gabran. For this reason and others
indicated below, I would not regard Fergus as the "winner" of the
"Longest connected well-documented genealogy contest."

In fact, the quality of genealogical documentation can vary continuously
from extremely solid (multiple independent reliable contemporary
sources, perhaps even with confirmation using DNA evidence) to just good
enough to plausible to pure guesswork to downright false, with no clear
dividing line between the various levels of confidence, and no objective
way of assigning a numerical value to the quality of documentation, for
which there can be honest differences of opinion. Thus, different
criteria for the required quality of documentation would result in
different "winners" of the contest.

Using a strict criterion, if one demands a genealogy in which every
individual in the chain appears in a well-documented historical context,
then the European "winner" would undoubtedly be the Carolingian ancestor
Arnulf, bishop of Metz (d. 640), or if you prefer, a tie between him and
Pippin the Elder (or one generation later if you demand strictly
contemporary evidence).

If this strict level of documentation is required, the only possible
competitor of which I am aware would be the Japanese imperial family,
but I don't know enough details about the documentation to say whether
or not they would qualify. From what I have read, the earliest
historically verifiable emperor of Japan was Kimmei (d. 571), but the
quality of documentation for the intervening generations between him and
the present emperor is not clear, especially in the period immediately
following Kimmei, which includes individuals who might not satisfy the
"well-documented historical context" part of this criterion. I am
inclined to believe that the quality of documentation for the early part
of the Japanese genealogy would be more comparable to the Irish case
mentioned in the next paragraph, making the Japanese line a close to the
Irish case in the less strict criterion.

To my knowledge, if one excludes lines which are due either to
deliberate fraud or gross imcompetence by a modern author, all other
claims to trace the genealogy of a currently living person to an
individual living prior to the year 500 involve either a large degree of
conjecture (e.g., the "dotted-line" pedigrees so often seen in DFA
attempts), or the use of what might be called "traditional" pedigrees.
The "connected well-documented" part of the criterion clearly excludes
the first of these, and that leaves the traditional genealogies (which
might themselves involve fraud or incompetence occurring in medieval
times). Here, it seems reasonable to use a somewhat less demanding
criterion, in which one only requires that each link be documented with
a reasonable degree of confidence, but we still run into differing
opinions about what "reasonable degree of confidence" means. In my
opinion, a long string of "generations" in a genealogy in which the
individuals are otherwise not identified in any verifiable context is
unaccepable, but a small number of generations of otherwise unidentifed
individuals is acceptable if sound arguments can be made that the
information goes back to a written source compiled not too long after
the individuals in the genealogy lived. The term "not too long" is
obviously (and necessarily) somewhat vague, but the main point is that a
simple statement that a string of names forms a reliable genealogy is
not acceptable, and some clear and convincing argument needs to be given
as to why the information should be accepted.

That being said, I have never seen any reason to believe that the
genealogy of the descendants of Confucius has an acceptable level of
documentation in the above sense. I have no doubt that there are
certain early pieces of the genealogy which mention documented
historical individuals, but the accounts that I have seen include too
many strings of a dozen-plus generations which are nothing but names,
with no apparent chronological context beyond generation-guessing, and
no corroboration from independent historical sources. If I am wrong
about this, I am willing to be convinced otherwise, but I want to see a
discussion that amounts to more than "trust me, the genealogies are
accurate."

As I have written in this newsgroup before, there is a strong case for
accepting a connected genealogy back to a number of Irish familes to
around the year 500 or perhaps a generation or two earlier, and of many
Irish families back to the seventh century. The Irish had an active
vernacular literature by the seventh century, and the amount of early
Irish genealogical material is vast, amounting to perhaps 10,000+
individuals between the years 500 and 1200. Unfortunately, much of the
material survives only in later manuscripts, and by the eighth century,
the Irish scholars were fabricating an elaborate "pseudohistory" going
back to the time of the Flood. Many figures from vague legend were
worked into the genealogies and placed in an allegedly precise
chronological framework (complete with falsified chronicles), and other
figures were invented (or in some cases duplicated) to fill in the 2000+
year gap. The result was a remarkable "history" extending for thousands
of years, the earliest part clearly fictional to all but the most
gullible, and the latest part historical, with the fictional and
historical blended in such a way that the boundary between the two is
far too often unclear. Fortunately, the falsifiers usually did not
cover their tracks that well, and careful study by scholars has revealed
much about the methods used. The most reliable of the historical
records is the annals, and it has long been recognized that the survivng
annals have a common source which existed in the early tenth century,
and was itself a compilation based on earlier annals. Careful analysis
by numerous modern scholars has revealed that the earliest contemporary
Irish annals were written in the middle of the sixth century. Such
annals were extended, interpolated, copied, recopied, combined,
recombined, etc. in numerous uncertain stages, resulting in what we have
today. Genealogies were also being compiled, extended, copied, recopied,
etc. during the same period.

When I first found these genealogies as a young enthusiast, I didn't
have the library sources to look at them in much detail, but after I got
access to more detailed material, it didn't take long for the bubble to
burst.
The early part of this "history" is a complete mess, and there are
simply too many genealogical and chronological inconsistencies to make
any reasonable sense of it, even if you assume for the sake of argument
that there is some basis to it. If one examines the chronological and
genealogical material as a whole, it holds together as a plausible whole
fairly well back to about 500 or a little earlier, shows some serious
problems by the middle of the fifth century (apparently partly due to
attempts by early Irish scholars to push back the date of St. Patrick),
and becomes an inconsistent mess by ca. 400 and earlier. This fits
quite well with the studies showing that the earliest contemporary
annals occurred ca. 550. This does not mean that these records can be
regarded as universally reliable back to ca. 500. Far from it. Later
material was sometimes interpolated into the original contemporary
framework. This is very difficult material, and each case needs to be
examined individually. Of the paternal ancestors of the famous king
Brian Boruma (d. 1014), only his father appears in the annals, and it
has long been recognized that the earlier part of his pedigree allegedly
showing his relationship to the Eoganachta has been fabricated. The
paternal ancestry of Diarmait Mac Murchada (father of Eve of Leinster)
is problematic prior to the early ninth century. However, some families
are better documented. Through her mother Mor Ua Tuathail, Eve was a
descendant of Muiredach mac Murchada (d. 760), king of Leinster, who has
one of the best documented genealogies of any individual of the early
middle ages. A genealogy of Muiredach written probably during his
lifetime names all eight of his great-grandparents and twelve of his
sixteen great-great-grandparents. Some of these individuals are
extremely obscure, but others are mentioned in the annals. Muiredach's
ancestry illustrates one of the recurring problems with early Irish
genealogies (and of similar "traditional" genealogies in general). We
can say with reasonable confidence that most of Muirdach's genealogy is
reliable back to the late sixth century, and probably for a few
generations before that, but it is seldom possible to prove the exact
generation at which it becomes mythical. It is the old "trying to
separate the wheat from the chaff" problem. While I believe that it is
highly likely that there are numerous individuals appearing in the
genealogies from the fourth (or even the third) century who actually
existed, the Irish scholars did so many cut-and-paste operations on
their depictions of the early legends that there is no way of separating
the real from the fake or the hopelessly mangled. For this early part,
even in cases where the names go back to an individual who did in fact
exist, there is no way to be sure that the pseudohistorians have put
them in their proper chronological or genealogical contexts.

Due to the fact that there are large numbers of individuals who can
document a direct male line back to early Irish kings, it is possible
that knowledge of the early Irish dynasties will improve in the future,
but I have not been impressed by the genealogical scholarship that I
have seen in some of the early papers on the subject. It is not enough
to test the y-DNA of a few individuals with a given Irish surname and
then assume that their y-DNA is that of the presumed ancestor of the
family. A good "paper trail" is required, and this is a problem for
Irish genealogies, because the slimness of records for the period
1600-1900 often makes it difficult for individuals to trace back to the
time when they might connect in to the traditional genealogies.

Some time ago, I did an ancestor table for Llywelyn ap Iorwerth of
Wales, which includes his Irish ancestors, including Muiredach mac
Murchada. It is still on the GEN-MEDIEVAL page at Rootsweb:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~medieval/llywelyn.htm
My own website includes a detailed analysis of the early medieval kings
of Osraige, whose history becomes problematic before ca. 650.
http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/Ireland/Osr/lists/Osraige.htm

As for other traditional genealogies, the Welsh genealogies are, in
general, much thinner and based on later evidence. Contemporary
annalistic writing in Wales has been clearly established only for the
late eighth century and later, making confirmation of the traditional
genealogies more difficult. The main Welsh line that would rival the
Irish lines is that of the kings of Dyfed going back to Vortipor,
mentioned by his contemporary Gildas (probably early sixth century) and
also by an apparently contemporary monument stone, but the verification
of the intervening generations is slim, although one early independent
Irish source helps (see the above Llywelyn URL). Of the Anglo-Saxon
dynasties, the only one having proven modern descendants is the West
Saxon dynasty, and their genealogy is problematic. Even if one accepted
the genealogy back to Cerdic (early sixth century), despite significant
red flags in the intervening generations, the generations prior to
Cerdic are a proven fabrication. The traditional Scandinavian
genealogies aren't even in the race. There are modern lines descended
from the dynasty of the kings of Dublin going back to the late ninth
century (with a missing generation; see the Llywelyn ancestor table),
but none of the saga genealogies can be verified even that far back.

Stewart Baldwin

[nathan...@gmail.com]

> Stewart Baldwin

Stewart, thank you for sharing your lifetime accumulation of knowledge on the subject. You've answered many questions I've had.

Best,

Nathan

[taf]

On Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 10:52:16 AM UTC-7, Stewart Baldwin via wrote:

> The traditional Scandinavian genealogies aren't even in the race.

Indeed, a lot closer than some might think. In Norway, probably no earlier than the father of St. Olaf (these genealogies appear to have been reworked to make the warlords who succeeded to Norway be descendants of Harald Fairhair); in Denmark, Gorm the Old, (his father and grandfather are named by his great-grandson, but there are aspects of the account that lean toward the legendary), and in Sweden, I don't know that I would call anything before Erik the Victorious reliable genealogy.

While we are at it, I would suggest for Iberia that the cutoff for the most stringent level of evidence with every generation solidly documented would be at Ramiro I in Asturias; Gonzalo, father of Count Fernan Gonzalez in Castile; Garcia, father of Sancho I in Pamplona; Galindo, father of Count Aznar I in Aragon; Lope, father of Raymond I of Ribagorza and Pallars; and Sunifred, father of Wifred I in Catalonia.

taf

[Peter Stewart via]

On 27/04/2016 1:02 PM, taf via wrote:
> While we are at it, I would suggest for Iberia that the cutoff for the most stringent level of evidence with every generation solidly documented would be at Ramiro I in Asturias; Gonzalo, father of Count Fernan Gonzalez in Castile; Garcia, father of Sancho I in Pamplona; Galindo, father of Count Aznar I in Aragon; Lope, father of Raymond I of Ribagorza and Pallars; and Sunifred, father of Wifred I in Catalonia.
>

What is the solid documentation that Sunifred was the father of Wifred I?

Peter Stewart

[Richard Smith]

On 26/04/16 18:52, Stewart Baldwin via wrote:

> Although I am not ready to "cut" this line, I am less confident about
> the documentation of the ancestry of the Scottish kings back to Fergus
> than I was at the time I wrote the Henry Project pages on them.

Part of my scepticism of it comes from a more general observation.
There are 18 generations from Fergus and Malcolm III, and every one of
them is claimed to be a king, either of Dál Riata or of the Scots.
Granted there were a number of intervening kings and co-kings, but 18
consecutive generations still strikes me as quite extraordinary. Are
there any other lines with such long runs of kings? The closest I can
get is the 13 generations from Hugh Capet to John "the Posthumous".
Even if the later Alpínids are male-line descendants of Fergus, I'd have
expected one or two people in the line of descent to have been fairly
obscure people who were not kings, and maybe that's the nature of
Eochaid mac Áed Find in the line.

Richard

[riemorese...@gmail.com]

An excellent post from Stewart Baldwin, outlining some of the difficulties in these early genealogies.

What is the source for this extensive genealogy of Muiredach mac Murchada (d. 760)? Is it what is contained in the Ban Sheanachas tract found in the Book of Leinster and elsewhere, or is there another source?

[Stewart Baldwin via]

On 4/26/2016 10:02 PM, taf via wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 10:52:16 AM UTC-7, Stewart Baldwin via wrote:
>
>> The traditional Scandinavian genealogies aren't even in the race.
> Indeed, a lot closer than some might think. In Norway, probably no earlier than the father of St. Olaf (these genealogies appear to have been reworked to make the warlords who succeeded to Norway be descendants of Harald Fairhair); in Denmark, Gorm the Old, (his father and grandfather are named by his great-grandson, but there are aspects of the account that lean toward the legendary), and in Sweden, I don't know that I would call anything before Erik the Victorious reliable genealogy.

There are a number of well-documented Danish kings appearing in the
contemporary Frankish sources from the late eighth to the late ninth
centuries, along with genealogical information so tantalizing that it
almost seems that if you just had one or two additional pieces of good
evidence, you could make it all fit together in a coherent way.
Unfortunately, there are no reliable sources tracing Gorm back to these
kings. The most plausible attempt to trace a line from these kings
would be through Reinhild, mother-in-law of the German king Heinrich I
(see her Henry Project page at
http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/reinh000.htm). However,
all that is known is that sources say that she was of Frisian-Danish
descent, which suggests, but does not prove, membership in that dynasty,
and even then we would not know where to place her in that vague tree.

Contemporary sources also have occasional mentions of Swedish kings in
the ninth and tenth centuries and Norwegian kings in the tenth century,
but material from the much later sagas does not begin to fit well with
contemporary sources until the late tenth century.

Stewart Baldwin

[taf]

On Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 7:32:11 AM UTC-7, Stewart Baldwin via wrote:
> On 4/26/2016 10:02 PM, taf via wrote:
> > On Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 10:52:16 AM UTC-7, Stewart Baldwin via wrote:
> >
> >> The traditional Scandinavian genealogies aren't even in the race.

> > Indeed, a lot closer than some might think. . . . in Denmark, Gorm
> > the Old,. . . .

>
> There are a number of well-documented Danish kings appearing in the
> contemporary Frankish sources from the late eighth to the late ninth
> centuries, along with genealogical information so tantalizing that it
> almost seems that if you just had one or two additional pieces of good
> evidence, you could make it all fit together in a coherent way.

Yeah, lest it was unclear, I am not denying the existence of earlier valid genealogical material in Denmark, it just can't be connected to without guessing at some level, whether that guess be that two people named Rurik are the same, or that the daughter of a viking leader was daughter of one specific viking leader.

I think it is noteworthy that Gorm the Old bore that byname. A Scandinavian scholar has argued that 'the Old' was once assigned to the founders of lineages, which would be unlikely were there a known genealogical connection with the older dynasty. (Another consequence of this is that Halfdan the Old of the Ynglingatal need not be the same Halfdan the Old of the Orkneyinga saga, they were just men named Halfdan who founded lines.)

I also made a tough call for Pamplona - the Inigo-Garcia-Fortun run of kings is fully documented, and the only reliable source to connect them to Sancho's wife is probably right, just not certainly right. As presented the link is chronologically impossible, and it has to be massaged. The question is whether it is a largely-correct account with just one error, or if there are larger structural problems that require a complete revision (as has been argued by the Canada Juste in a couple of recent papers).

Peter questioned my naming of Sunifred for Catalonia. I admit I did that off the cuff, and I knew that the previous generation had alternative reconstructions so I placed it with him. However, I have never been as familiar with the far east of the peninsula, so I wouldn't argue with stepping it forward one generation to Wifred himself.

taf

[Stewart Baldwin via]

On 4/27/2016 9:11 AM, riemoreseanachaidh via wrote:
> An excellent post from Stewart Baldwin, outlining some of the difficulties in these early genealogies.
>
> What is the source for this extensive genealogy of Muiredach mac Murchada (d. 760)? Is it what is contained in the Ban Sheanachas tract found in the Book of Leinster and elsewhere, or is there another source?

This genealogy appears in the Ban Shenchas, and also separately among
the Leinster genealogies in the Book of Leinster.

Stewart Baldwin

[Peter Stewart]

On Thursday, April 28, 2016 at 5:19:45 AM UTC+10, taf wrote:

> Peter questioned my naming of Sunifred for Catalonia. I admit I did that
> off the cuff, and I knew that the previous generation had alternative
> reconstructions so I placed it with him. However, I have never been as
> familiar with the far east of the peninsula, so I wouldn't argue with
> stepping it forward one generation to Wifred himself.

Your off-the-cuff recollection was far more accurate than mine - I was thinking (very vaguely) of the controversy over whether Sunifred was the son or son-in-law of his children's grandfather Bello, count of Carcassonne.

There is at least one charter in which Wifred occurs with his siblings naming their parents as Sunifred and Ermesinda - this was for La Grasse abbey, dated in the April or May following Charles the Bald's death in October 877, "Nos simul [in] unum donatores, id est Sesenanda, Suniefredus, Uuifredus comes, Radulfus comes, Miro comes ... propter remedium domini Suniefredi genitoris nostri vel domnae Ermesinde genitricis nostrae".

Peter Stewart

[taf]

On Thursday, April 28, 2016 at 11:59:13 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote:

>
> Your off-the-cuff recollection was far more accurate than mine - I
> was thinking (very vaguely) of the controversy over whether Sunifred
> was the son or son-in-law of his children's grandfather Bello, count
> of Carcassonne.

That is what I had in mind when I ended it at Sunifred.

> There is at least one charter in which Wifred occurs with his siblings
> naming their parents as Sunifred and Ermesinda - this was for La Grasse
> abbey, dated in the April or May following Charles the Bald's death in
> October 877, "Nos simul [in] unum donatores, id est Sesenanda,
> Suniefredus, Uuifredus comes, Radulfus comes, Miro comes ... propter
> remedium domini Suniefredi genitoris nostri vel domnae Ermesinde
> genitricis nostrae".

Thanks for the confirmation (and the documentation).

taf