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Just because we're all related doesn't mean you're invited over.
"Almost everyone reading this article has Julius Caesar as a common ancestor. Half of you can probably claim Charlemagne, as well. That's because both lived a long time ago and went about the business of forefathering con gusto. You are probably also descended from every sniveling peasant who ever managed to replicate in ancient times.
"It's not just that we have a common ancestor; by the time you go back 5,000 to 7,000 years, all our ancestors are the same."
According to Yale statistics professor Joseph T. Chang, "'No matter what languages we speak or the colour of our skin, we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze, who first domesticated horses on the steppes of the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forests of North and South America, and who labored to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu.' Our genealogy is, in a word, identical."
Richard Conniff, "The Family Tree, Pruned," from the July 2007 issue of Smithsonian.
