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Saw this howler on here today, but it got me thinking, just how far back in time. Can you trace your history?

  • October 12, 2024



For me, on my dad's side, my surname goes back to the Norwegian Vikings who settles in a part of the Highlands. Or on my mum's side, her maiden name has French routes and can be tracer back to the Norman conquerors. So about 1000 years for me. But what about you? Can you, just like this walloper, trace your lineage all the way back to stone age?

by DonaldTrumpIsPedo

34 comments

  3. I have an English ancestor who was killed at Bannockburn, so like 710 years by that route.

  4. I managed till about 1100 in a few family lines (usually nobility) then the paper trail breaks down. Some I couldn’t get beyond a grand parent.

  6. Im no one to boast, but I remember when i was a young lad, thinking one of the cave carvings in Kings Cave Arran looked like my auntie Mags.

  7. Family names are untraceable, it’s too far back. This guy shows what’s possible though: https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/mesolithic-skeleton-known-as-cheddar-man-shares-the-same-dna-with-english-teacher-of-history?format=amp

  8. If you have any noble ancestry you could go back to the middle ages. If you’re lucky, those nobles could be descended from someone like Charlemagne so you could trace it back further to Ansegisel (b. 602 AD).

    You could not, obviously, trace it back to the Neolithic period person by person, however genetic research could allow you to make an educated guess about who your ancestors were.

  10. There was at least two near complete population replacement events in the bronze age and iron age. So no.

  11. Professional genealogist here, so I can help – Essentially, documentary evidence for everyday folk can usually get you back to the late 1500s/early 1600s, though you do have to be lucky for both records to have survived, and for your ancestors to have been recorded in them (a lot of people weren’t part of the established church in Scotland, and there was also a lot of irregular marriage, where you would just move in with your partner and call yourself husband and wife without the ceremony, we often only find out about that through the Church punishing them and putting notes in a kind of church diary known as ‘kirk sessions’. Funnily enough, that’s the only place you’ll find Rabbie Burns’ marriage, as he did exactly this too).

    You might get lucky, and with so many ancestors as you go back through the generations (2,4,8,16 etc), you might happen upon someone aristocratic, and there could be more evidence that can take your line back further, so you MAY be able to show a connection back usually to the Norman conquest or a little before, but here’s where things get messy, and the caveats begin…

    1) Nobles needed to prove their legitimacy, they had money and they paid scholars to go away and write them a family tree to show their good graces. If this person didn’t find anything, or found something bad, they didn’t get paid, so you will find family trees from this period showing you are descended from Thor, from Julius Caesar, Venus, Alexander the Great and more. They are not considered to be very accurate, and although you can say ‘but there’s a family tree going back that far’, it’s almost guaranteed to be a convenient fabrication.

    2) Surnames only really took hold in the commonfolk in the mid 1500s (and in some places much later), but they came about in a number of ways. There are people who lived on the lands of a particular noble, who would take the surname of that noble, to show they worked for that family. You may have absolutely no genetic connection to the notable line, but are related to someone who tended their gardens, or farmed their crops.

    3) There are three kinds of DNA test for heritage. The first (the one you see everywhere and the most useful for genealogy) really only reliably shows you your ancestors for 250-300 years before the fragments of your ancestors are so small they become statistical background noise. The second and third give you your deep paternal and maternal lines, but that’s only your father’s father’s father etc, and mother’s mother’s mother. This is one line of absolutely thousands, and so that’s not really a strong basis to claim you are dyed in the wool from anywhere.

  13. On my father’s side, we can go back to 1560, but his side of the family was basically one step away from landed gentry, so fairly good and present records for those who could afford such luxuries as “being able to write their own name”. My father’s Scottish, but his lineage is English.

    On my mother’s side, my great-great grandparents. Peasants from the Russian empire. She’s Polish, but her lineage is Russian and Turkish.

    No way could I say with any confidence that my ancestors were “there since neolithic age”. Highly unlikely. People move all the time.

  14. My dad tried for a while but kept getting caught at his grandfather, who he couldn’t find records for. Turns out, his great granny was a single mum who got married to a guy shortly after great grandfather was born so he ended up with a different last name, which we didn’t find till a genealogist looked at marriage certificates. 

    So after that we could go back to the 1700s, revealing not too much brilliantly different except we’re quite possibly part Welsh in ancestry and allegedly a weak claim on the county of Carrick which I’m looking for a band of hearty men to press.

  15. My Mom is from Falkirk but since I was born in Canada I know I don’t have the privilege of walking around Scotland saying “I’m Scottish”

  16. I’m second-generation adopted, so I figure I can basically say I’m from anywhere if I have enough conviction in my voice.

  17. My uncle has traced our lineage to the 800’s in Norway.

    At that point folk start to become less real people and more mythology…

  18. I can from oral accounts of my great grandparents and great great gran go back to 1830s, maternal grandmothers side all islanders and like you same traceability with surnames. Gran was the last of mine born there though because the girls don’t inherit the crofts even if their brother is younger so I’ve cousins (well second cousins) and aunties/uncles etc still there. Maternal grandfathers side is north east Scotland and I know that my great grans own grandparents were from Sutherland from the stories she told us about them. 

    My dad’s Irish. Complete sectarian bombscare best avoided in general conversation. 

  19. I have researched my genealogy a few years ago and managed to get back to the 1500s. That was just a single person in the 1500s out of the, potentially thousands of ancestors I must have had that far back. So in terms of documentary evidence I can manage the 1500s. Going back any farther than that by documentary evidence would require your ancestor to be noble, famous or infamous to have the records kept.

  22. Going by the law of averages (or something like that)… if we say a new generation is born on average every 25 years (although was likely more like 20 back when but we’ll leave some wiggle room).

    So 1 generation back I have 2 parents

    2 generations back, 4 grandparents.

    3 generations back, 8 great grandparents

    4 generations back (so 100 years), 16 great-great grandparents.

    6 generations back, 64 great^4 grandparents.

    8 generations back, 256 great^6 grandparents.

    16 generations back (so roughly the 400 years like this person), 65,536 great^14 grandparents.

    They’ve actually got a decent chance of one of them being from any given clan at some point.

    If we go back to the times of William Wallace (just for a laugh), 700 years ago, so 28 generations ago. I’ve got 268,435,456 great^26 grandparents. There’s a pretty good fucking chance one of them might have been William Wallace haha, that’s like more than half of the estimated world population of the time.

    There must be some major holes in my math here as the numbers just get stupid if you go back any further. Or is it just loads of indirect inbreeding that I’m not accounting for?

  25. Most people don’t know anything beyond their great grandparents. Even if your family has really good records, nobody is going back further than a few hundred years.

  26. Side question for the scots : Originally from England – North east – 6% Scottish on Ancestry

    Can i wear a kilt and walk a haggis ?

    Seriously guys ?

    going to need your input here

  27. While my half my ancestors may have come from Scotland and England, I purely identify as a Kentuckian as my family has been in Kentucky for over 200 years.

  30. An archeological study done on Kibworth in Leicestershire showed several families could travel their ancestry back over 800 years…in the SAME VILLAGE!!!

  31. I’d love to do a DNA test, I’d be curious as to what might show, but sadly there doesn’t appear to be any simple option to do that without handing a sample over to commercial organisations that monetise it

    As far as I know, entirely Irish for at least the past century and more, but I can’t say that for certain. I’d love to know more

  33. I think if you use family history you can get pretty far back. My family’s name is essentially Mac(son of) a Dude who lived in the 12th century fighting off vikings. And the family seat is on an island off the west coast, where we’ve been there as far back as the written record goes.

    You could postulate that we’d probably been there a good bit of time before that too because there’s evidence of someone living there for a couple thousand years. Obviously a lot of this is speculative, and it just takes one of my great grannies shagging the proverbial milk man at any point of the last millennium to break the family line, but its a fun theory that _technically_ could be true.

    I’d guess it’s probably this kind of story that the Neolithic has heard and put too much weight in.

  34. My great granny who I never knew came from Ireland, guess I’m Irish now. Passport please

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