Login
Login

ancestor

{{pp-pc1}}

{{Short description|Person from whom another person is descended}}

{{Other uses}}

{{Redirect-multi|3|Ancestry|Forefather|Ancestress|the genealogy company|Ancestry.com|the band|Forefather (band)|the song|Ancestress (song)}}

{{pp-pc|small=yes}}

{{More citations needed|date=December 2020}}

{{human-centric|date=January 2025}}

An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder, or a forebear,{{Cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/forefather|title=Thesaurus results for FOREFATHER|website=Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary|language=en|access-date=2020-04-07|archive-date=2020-04-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200407155257/https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/forefather|url-status=live}} is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law, the person from whom an estate has been inherited."{{cite book |title=Websters New World Dictionary|publisher=The World Publishing Company|location= Cleveland and New York }}

Relationship

Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other or if they share a common ancestor. In evolutionary theory, species which share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent. However, this concept of ancestry does not apply to some bacteria and other organisms capable of horizontal gene transfer. Some research suggests that the average person has twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. This might have been due to the past prevalence of polygynous relations and female hypergamy.{{cite web|url=https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/the-missing-men-in-your-family-tree/|title=The Missing Men in Your Family Tree|first=John|last=Tierney|date=5 September 2007|website=The New York Times |access-date=5 May 2018|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180505211842/https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/the-missing-men-in-your-family-tree/ |archive-date=5 May 2018}}

Assuming that all of an individual's ancestors are otherwise unrelated to each other, that individual has 2n ancestors in the nth generation before them and a total of 2g+1 − 2 ancestors in the g generations before them. In practice, however, it is clear that most ancestors of humans (and any other species) are multiply related (see pedigree collapse). Consider n = 40: the human species is more than 40 generations old, yet the number 240, approximately 1012 or one trillion, dwarfs the number of humans who have ever lived.

Some cultures confer reverence to ancestors, both living and dead; in contrast, some more youth-oriented cultural contexts display less veneration of elders. In other cultural contexts, ancestor worship or, more accurately, ancestor veneration is when people seek providence{{Explain|reason=|date=November 2020}} from their deceased ancestors.{{Cite journal |last=Hu |first=Anning |date=2016 |title=Ancestor Worship in Contemporary China: An Empirical Investigation |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/43709965 |journal=China Review |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=169–186 |jstor=43709965 |access-date=2022-05-02 |archive-date=2022-05-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220502083053/https://www.jstor.org/stable/43709965 |url-status=live }}{{Cite journal |last=Clark |first=Kelly James |date=2005-12-01 |title=The gods of Abraham, Isaiah, and Confucius |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf02857007 |journal=Dao |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=109–136 |doi=10.1007/bf02857007 |s2cid=170986424 |issn=1540-3009|url-access=subscription }}

See also

{{Div col|colwidth=15em}}

{{div col end}}

Citations

{{Reflist}}

External links

{{Commons category|Ancestors}}

{{wiktionary|ancestor}}

{{wikiquote|Ancestors}}

  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20080818170614/http://www.census.gov/population/www/ancestry/ United States Census Bureau]

{{Family}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:Kinship and descent