{"id":15599,"date":"2013-07-23T15:26:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T20:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/the-royal-baby-your-newest-cousin\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:30:15","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:30:15","slug":"the-royal-baby-your-newest-cousin","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2013\/07\/23\/the-royal-baby-your-newest-cousin\/","title":{"rendered":"The royal baby, your newest cousin?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"AFP
AFP PHOTO\/HUGO BURNAND\/CLARENCE HOUSE<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>\n\n

No wonder the world is going gaga over the birth of the newest heir to the British throne. We\u2019re all related by blood to Kate, Will and their little prince.<\/p>\n\n

He\u2019s our cousin\u2014though for most people of European descent in the United States he\u2019s our distant cousin as much as 35 times removed, give or take a few generations.<\/p>\n\n

That\u2019s because, genetically speaking, everyone in the world shares a set of common ancestors with everyone else, including members of the British Royal Family, claim researchers Peter Ralph and Graham Coop in a recent article<\/a> in the online edition of the journal PLOS Biology.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cFew of us know our family histories more than a few generations back,\u201d they wrote. \u201cIt is therefore easy to overlook the fact that we are all distant cousins, related to one another via a vast network of relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Coop and Ralph examined genetic data in a European database that contained genetic data collected from more than 2,000 individuals. They were looking for telltale similarities in gene structure that signaled these individuals shared a common ancestor.<\/p>\n\n

They didn\u2019t have to look far to see that all of Europe is one big family. \u201cOn a genealogical level, everyone in Europe traces back to nearly the same set of ancestors only a thousand years ago,\u201d said Coop, a professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, in a release<\/a> that accompanied the publication of the article.<\/p>\n\n

Of course some of us are more closely related than others to the British royal family (and most other Brits).<\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe find that a pair of Modern Europeans living in neighboring populations share around 2\u201312 genetic common ancestors from the last 1,500 years, and upwards of 100 genetic ancestors from the previous 1,000 years,\u201d Ralph and Coop wrote. \u201cThese numbers drop off exponentially with geographic distance, but since these genetic ancestors are a tiny fraction of common genealogical ancestors, individuals from opposite ends of Europe are still expected to share millions of common genealogical ancestors over the last 1,000 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

That suggests if we went back roughly 35 generations\u2014about 1,000 years\u2014all Americans of European descent would find enough common relatives to fill Wembley Stadium many times over. For everyone else, it would take many more generations before all of us found a common family member.<\/p>\n\n

So go ahead, tell your friends you\u2019re a royal (and so are they). Enjoy claiming kinship with other famous notables\u2014but don\u2019t brag too much. Not only are you related to the Windsors, the Beatles and Charlemagne, you also have Jack the Ripper, Adolph Hitler and Henry the Eighth hiding in your family tree.<\/p>\n\n

Bonus reading: For a deeper dive into this and related research, see this piece<\/a> by science writer Carl Zimmer in National Geographic\u2019s Phenomena.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No wonder the world is going gaga over the birth of the newest heir to the British throne. We\u2019re all related by blood to Kate, Will and their little prince. He\u2019s our cousin\u2014though for most people of European descent in the United States he\u2019s our distant cousin as much as 35 times removed, give or take a few generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":null,"sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"apple_news_api_pending":"1713063950","relatedPosts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0},"categories":[204],"bylines":[941],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-15599","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","category-comparison-of-generations","bylines-rich-morin","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states"],"label":"Short Read","post_parent":0,"word_count":470,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2013\/07\/23\/the-royal-baby-your-newest-cousin\/","art_direction":false,"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"The royal baby, your newest cousin?","description":"No wonder the world is going gaga over the birth of the newest heir to the British throne. 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