Progenitor

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The progenitor or ancestor refers to the often legendary founder of a family , ancestry group , clan or clan , gender , tribe or people . Family history research ( genealogy ) understands the progenitor to be the earliest historically documented ancestor from whom a family group of descendants in direct blood relationship descends ; he is at the root of a tree (or uppermost in a master list ).

In particular, noble and ruling families refer to an original progenitor as the founder and ancestor of their gender. The old Roman legal conception of the " agnates " ( Latin "added / born after") refers to an uninterrupted lineage from a progenitor, but contains exclusively male members of the line, while women are classified as only cognatic ("co-born").

The biological paternity can seldom be clearly proven (see cuckoo children ), in addition, the ancestor mostly belongs to an ancestral generation that was only passed down orally and was passed on far back . Especially in groups and companies , based on an exclusively to patrilinear Appearance refer (in the fathers line) was the common ancestor often by a subsequent origin forecast as originating legend constructed (see the biblical " patriarchs "). In contrast, families and descent groups with maternal lines ( matrilineal via mothers to daughters) refer to a common “ ancestral mother ”. Worldwide, rules of parentage are found in about 200 of the 1,300 indigenous peoples and ethnic groups recorded in the Ethnographic Atlas , while around 600 are patrilineal (via fathers to sons), including some where sons are derived from their paternal line and daughters from their maternal line.

In the mythological ideas of the Romans , the god of war Mars was considered to be the progenitor of the Roman people, from whom the Mars symbol ♂ for masculinity is derived (a shield with a spear). In addition to cities and countries, peoples also refer in their mythologies to a (often divine) progenitor, for example the Hellenistic Greeks to Hellen as their ancestor. In Indian Hinduism , Manu is considered the ancestor of all people. In the Abrahamic religions , Adam , Noah , Abraham and others are referred to as the “progenitor” in different contexts (see also the biblical fathers story ).

In archaeogenetics (archaeological heredity), a human Adam of the Y chromosome was calculated on the basis of the paternal inheritance of the male Y sex chromosome , which, as the primeval earliest progenitor , is biologically related to all men (not necessarily women) living today through the uninterrupted lineage of his descendants . This Adam lived in Africa an estimated 75,000 years ago (± 15,000).

See also

  • Archeget (mythical founder of an ancient Greek city)

Web links

Wiktionary: ancestor  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Duden editors : progenitor. Retrieved on September 29, 2018 : "Man as the founder of a tribe, a clan" . Ibid: ancestor: "progenitor of a sex".
  2. ^ J. Patrick Gray: Ethnographic Atlas Codebook. (PDF file: 2.4 MB, without page numbers) In: World Cultures. Volume 10, No. 1, 1998, pp. 86–136, here p. 104: Table 43 Descent: Major Type (one of the few evaluations of all ethnic groups recorded at that time in 1267), quote: "584  Patrilineal [...] 160  Matrilineal [... ] 52  Duolateral […] 49  Ambilineal […] 11  Quasi-lineages […] 349  bilateral […] 45 Mixed […] 17 Missing data “.
    Percentages of the 1267 ethnic groups (1998): 46.1% patrilinear (from father) - 12.6% matrilinear (from mother) - 4.1% duolateral (bilinear: different from father and mother) - 3.9% ambilinear ( optional) - 0.9% parallel (quasi-lines) - 27.6% bilateral, cognatic (Western model: origin from both parents) - 3.6% mixed - 1.6% missing data.
    The Ethnographic Atlas by George P. Murdock now contains data sets on 1,300 ethnic groups (as of 2015 in InterSciWiki ), of which often only samples were evaluated, for example in the HRAF project , a large-scale database for holistic cultural comparisons of 400 recorded peoples.
  3. Lexicon entry: Mars (mythology). In: Wissen.de . Retrieved on September 29, 2018 : "Mars [...] as the father of Romulus and Remus ancestor of the Romans" .