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Cleopatra by John William Waterhouse, 1888, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n
Honest!<\/p>\n
Do you want to know something else?<\/p>\n
You are, too.<\/p>\n
How do I know this?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
How can this be?<\/p>\n
“Chances are, if you have a famous ancestor far enough back that finding out about them is a surprise, you share them with a small city of other people,” reveals Veronique Greenwood of Nautilis<\/i><\/a>, an online magazine featuring the most romantic of biological facts.<\/p>\n The Empress Theodora at the Colisseum by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n This epiphany stems from a 2004 study of human genetics<\/a> which showed that anyone who was living 2,000 to 3,000 years ago is either the ancestor of everyone<\/i> who is living today,<\/p>\n or no one at all.<\/p>\n Rather mind-boggling, isn’t it?<\/p>\n “It doesn\u2019t get any less weird when you look at it from the other angle,” writes Greenwood. “While you more than likely have four distinct grandparents and eight distinct great-grandparents, past a certain number of generations back, your number of ancestors stops growing exponentially, because they start being the same people.”<\/p>\n Take a minute to think about that.<\/p>\n She goes on, in fact-and-figure scientific terms, to explain that most of the people from whom we’re descended are no more genetically related to us than most strangers we pass on the street.<\/p>\n Something about that sounds a little discouraging \u2026<\/p>\n So many of us love delving into our ancestry, learning where\u2014and who\u2014we came from. Even the farthest tips of our family trees can offer us a better sense of ourselves (and give us historical context to which we can attribute our unique characters and all of their quirks).<\/p>\n But, Greenwood insists that there is a superbly heartening way to interpret this data. “We\u2019re more closely tied to our species as a whole than we might have realized,” she tells us. “We\u2019re all part of this enormous human fabric, full of fascinating tendencies and bizarre biochemistry\u2014that\u2019s a tradition to be proud of.”<\/p>\n Portrait of The sisters Cathinca and Anna Elisabeth Gl\u00fcckstad by Matthias Stoltenberg via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n Here, here!<\/p>\n Instead of focusing on our degrees of separation, I choose to see our innate connections. We share common ancestry, after all, and I believe that brings us closer together.<\/p>\n Photo by Elizabeth Ann Colette via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n Do you think Cleopatra would agree?<\/p>\n \t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How exotic \u2026 I just learned that I am a distant relative of the great Cleopatra herself. Honest! Do you want to know something else? You are, too. How do I know this? Continue reading ![\"gift_gab-cleopatra2\"](\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/gift_gab-cleopatra2.jpg\")
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