ancestor

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Ancestor ( s ) or female ancestor (from Old High German  -faro “traveling”) denotes a biological parent or ancestor of a living being from which it is derived in a direct line and whose blood-related descendant it is. Bisexual living beings have maternal and paternal ancestors, also summarized as ancestors . The ancestry is technically called ascendency ( Latin "ascending"), its opposite is in descending line the descent as the offspring of a living being. Figuratively whole are species called the ancestors of species from them developed have so apply dinosaurs as ancestors of birds because they warming first springs developed.

In human societies, the cultural rules of ancestry differ from biological lineages because they can include adopted and recognized legal relatives and sibling side relatives ( aunt , great-uncle ) among the ancestors of a person . In cultures with single-line ancestry rules from forefathers or foremothers , only the ancestors of one parent are of social importance ( see below ).

Ahn ( e ), female ancestor or ancestress, in the narrower sense of a deceased ancestors, one ancestors (see also ancestor worship / ancestor worship ). In the general sense, ancestors are ancestral generations that are far back , in the broadest sense all ancestors, and in the figurative sense, spiritual ancestors of an idea or tradition (forerunners). The word "Ahn" goes back to Middle High German  an (e) , Old High German  ano , except for an origin as " Lallwort in children's language for older people from the child's environment" ( Duden ); it used to be the regional name for the grandfather . The historical auxiliary science of genealogy systematically collects information about a person's ancestors ( see below ).

Ur ahn ( e ) and ancestress denote ancestors with a distance of several generations to the person concerned, or their earliest verifiable ancestor (Spitzenahn) , or a progenitor (ancestor) or an ancestral mother (ancestor) .

Cultural differences to biological ancestry

In all social groups and societies determine cultural lineage regulate whether only the pedigree line of a parent or whether the lines of both parents be counted among the ancestors of a person, and how well collateral relatives and adoptees or recognized relatives are recognized as ancestors.

The closest social construct of ancestry is the “male line”, especially in aristocratic families : With them, the lineage limits the ancestors of a person to their forefathers , who in each generation only include the legitimate sons of the respective forefather, the so-called agnates. The order of the birth of the sons can play a special role in the succession (see primogeniture , firstborn , firstborn right ). In contrast, around 160 ethnic groups and indigenous peoples limit  their ancestry to their maternal line . In contrast to these single-line rules of ancestry , the same origin of father and mother ( cognatic-bilateral ) applies in the European cultural area , as in most highly industrialized societies ; this rule is also followed by almost 30 percent of the world's 1,300 ethnic peoples. The reference to the ancestors of both lines leads to the fact that one cannot remember very many generations and the number of side relatives becomes very large; In contrast, members of a culture with pure maternal or paternal lines can name up to ten or more generations of their ancestors.

Another difference from the biological ancestry form sidelines of siblings of parents and ancestors, often together with their respective offspring are counted among the ancestors of a person; Related ancestors are, for example, uncles (brothers of the parents) and great-aunts (daughters of siblings of the great-grandparents ). However, in the oral or written tradition of ancestral generations, entire sidelines may have been withheld, for example if an ancestor was expelled from his ( large ) family due to illegitimacy or a quarrel or as a " black sheep " and subsequently - together with his descendants - was denied.

The third difference to genetic ancestors is formed by legal concepts which, through adoption or acknowledgment of paternity, enable people to be incorporated into their own ancestry who are not or were not related by blood to other ancestors.

genealogy

Five generations of the Australian Crouch family in 1912: great-great-grandmother (93), great-grandmother (64), grandfather (45), mother and baby; the great-great-grandmother had almost 200 offspring at that time

In genealogy (family history research) the ancestors known by name of a person, including the living, are shown in an " ancestor list " or " pedigree ": The parents of both parents are the four grandparents , all of their siblings are the great-uncles and aunts , their parents the eight great-grandparents , and so on in ascending order (see family and generation names ). The representation can be limited to all father and mother-side ancestors (also common in animal breeding ), or also include side lines of siblings of the parents and generations of ancestors (see also the " family tree ").

As "Spitzenahn" is either an ancestor (ancestor) or a matriarch (ancestor) referred, or the oldest ancestor detectable as early as occupied Ur ahn a person.

In modern genealogy, maternal and paternal ancestors are of equal importance. There is often an ancestor in distant sidelines who is also included in the ancestor list of another (known) person; Such a long-term relationship is called " ancestral community " (in contrast to the "community of ancestors" in ancestor worship ). Full siblings have a complete, congruent ancestral community due to their identical ancestors.

Some ancestors can be in two positions in the ancestral list at the same time, for example, cousin marriages lead to two grandparents occupying four ancestral positions for their descendants as parents of the sibling parents, and these overlaps continue backwards; this effect is called " ancestral loss ": The mathematically possible number of ancestors disappears to a smaller number of actual ancestors, resulting in a "loss of ancestors".

“ Step flags ” are the (future) spouses of ancestors of a person from whom they are not descended, for example a stepfather or a future wife of the grandfather ( step-grandmother ); there is no relationship to them, but a marriage -in-law relationship, which in more recent times also includes the registered life partners of ancestors.

literature

ANCESTOR. Volume 26, Columns 1013-1015;
AHN. Volume 1, Column 192;
URAHN. Volume 24, Columns 2359-2361.
Ancestor. Volume 4, Columns 1262-1263;
Ahn. Volume 1, column 185;
Ancestor. Volume 4, column 958.

Web links

Commons : ancestors, ancestors (ancestors)  - Images and media files
Wiktionary: ancestor  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Ahn
Wikiquote: Ancestors  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Duden editorial team: ancestor. January 2013, accessed on March 28, 2014 : "Ancestor, the [...] member of an earlier generation (of the family) [...] Origin: Middle High German vorvar , 2nd component Middle High German -var , Old High German -faro = traveler, originally = predecessor ( e.g. in office) " . Ibid: ancestor: "Related form: ancestor". Ibid: ancestor: "female form to ancestor (s)".

  2. ↑ a b Duden editorial team: Ahn. January 2013, accessed on March 28, 2014 : “Ahn, who […] meanings: 1. <usually in the plural> (elevated) ancestor; 2. (outdated, still scenic) grandfather […] Origin: Middle High German an (e) , Old High German ano , originally lallwort of the children's language for older people from the child's environment ” . Ibid: Ahne: " Noun, feminine [...] feminine form of Ahn [...] Origin: Middle High German ane , Old High German ana ". Ibid: Ahnin: " noun, feminine [...] meaning: ancestor".

  3. ↑ Duden editorial team: Urahn. January 2013, accessed on March 28, 2014 : “Ancestor, the […] oldest verifiable or very early ancestor […] synonyms for ancestor: ancestor, ancestor; (raised obsolete) ancestor; (outdated) grandfather [...] Origin: Middle High German urane , Old High German urano ” . Ibid: Urahne: " noun, masculine [...] subsidiary form of Urahn". Ibid: Urahne: “ Noun, feminine […] feminine form for Urahn […] Synonyms for Urahne: ancestor, ancestor; (raised obsolete) Ahnfrau ”.

  4. ^ A b J. Patrick Gray: Ethnographic Atlas Codebook. In: World Cultures. Volume 10, No. 1, 1998, pp. 86-136, here p. 104: Table 43 Descent: Major Type ( PDF file; 2.4 MB; without page numbers ; one of the few evaluations of all 1267 ethnic groups at that time): “ 584 Patrilineal […] 160 Matrilineal […] 349 Bilateral "(= 46.1%  patrilineal ; 12.6%  matrilineal ; 27.6%  cognatic-bilateral ). At the end of 2012, the Ethnographic Atlas by George P. Murdock recorded exactly 1,300 ethnic groups worldwide .
  5. ↑ For the example of a family with 6 living generations see Gerd Braune: Ottawa: Six generations live in a Canadian family. In: Badische Zeitung . July 19, 2013, accessed on March 28, 2014 : “Baby Ethan is the youngest member of the Steiner family in Mississauga near Toronto. It is believed to be the only family in Canada that has six generations. […] Doreen Byers, great-great-great-grandmother since the weekend, is 86 years old. [...] Apparently the world record for multi-generation families is seven generations. "
  6. ^ Karl Hauck : House and clan-bound literature of medieval aristocratic families, explained by aristocratic satires of the 11th and 12th centuries. In: Walter Lammers (Ed.) Historical thinking and the image of history in the Middle Ages. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1961, pp. 165–199, here p. 173 (first published 1954; PDF file; 1.6 MB; 36 pages at Monumenta Germaniae Historica ): “Friedrich, the new Duke, who by the special grace of God Barbarossa's ancestor, advanced ancestor of the Hohenstaufen rulers; [...] ". Note: The term Spitzenahn of the recognized German medievalist was taken up by specialist scientists and genealogists.
  7. ↑ Wiki entry: Top ancestors. In: GenWiki . January 10, 2009, accessed on March 28, 2014 : "Top ancestors are the oldest ancestors in an ancestral line for which there is no data for the parents."