Generation To Generation
By Antoine de Saint-Exupery
In a house which
becomes a home,
one hands down and another takes up
the
heritage of mind and heart,
laughter and tears, musings and deeds.
Love, like a
carefully loaded ship,
crosses the gulf between the generations.
Therefore, we do
not neglect the ceremonies
of our passage: when we wed, when we
die,
and when we are blessed with a child;
When we depart and
when we return;
When we plant and when we harvest.
Let us bring
up our children. It is not
the place of some official to hand to
them
their heritage.
If others impart to
our children our knowledge
and ideals, they will lose all of us
that is
wordless and full of wonder.
Let us build
memories in our children,
lest they drag out joyless lives,
lest
they allow treasures to be lost because
they have not been given
the keys.
We live, not by
things, but by the meanings
of things. It is needful to transmit
the passwords
from generation to generation.
I never knew a grandmother or a grandfather. My grandmothers on both sides died before I was born, and my grandfathers both had passed by the time I was a year or so old. I have no recollection of whom my grandparents really were. To me, they exist only in very brief, secondhand accounts from my parents – who, of course, are both now deceased – and in a old photo or two – voiceless likenesses on thin paper. How I wish I would have pressed Mom and Dad for more information on my kin.
Do you, like me, wonder about your ancestors? What did they believe in and enjoy doing? What did their voices sound like? How about their personalities? What would it be like just to be around them? What would they want to tell me? I have a million questions I want to know about my bloodline and my prior generations. I would love to be more connected with my ancestors on a very personal level. I treasure the little information I have.
What do we really know about who and what made us what we are? Of course, most of us are fortunate enough to have memories and experiences with our parents and perhaps our grandparents; however, nearly all of us have very weak connections with any of those who existed in our families over a generation ago.
All most of us know of the many lives in those past generations is often contained in a name and two dates – when they were born and when they died. We understand what mattered most of all was the dash between those years. But the life story is left untold.
Just think of it. All of their hopes and dreams, all of their struggles and accomplishments … all of the stories of their lives have been lost. An incredible store of knowledge is gone without simple preservation.
Everyone Is Related
Just what kind of people were our ancestors? We may take heart in knowing we're all part of a much bigger family – a family of human beings. Migration, interbreeding, isolation, and extinction of hominid branches has shaped the modern human. So, it turns out all of us are closer than we would ever think.
It is believed the number of ancestors you have doubles each generation into the past. So, there is a time in history where all lines of all family trees cross through all people alive at that time. We call this the “genetic isopoint.”Another way of phrasing it is to say, "If you were alive at the isopoint, and you have living descendants today, then you are the ancestor of everyone alive today."
When the isopoint for Europe was calculated a few years ago, the answer came out as the tenth century. Amazing, isn't it. Equally baffling, the isopoint for the whole of the world is the 14th century BCE. Everyone alive today is descended from the world population at the time of Pharaoh Rameses II, or the presumed birth of Moses.
(Adrian Liang. “Adam Rutherford on Surprises in Our Genetic Past (Like: Interbreeding!)” Amazon Book Review. October 06, 2017.)
Genealogists can only focus on one branch of a family tree at a time, making it easy to forget how many forebears each of us has. However, Scott Hershberger, 2020 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Scientific American, explains …
“Imagine counting all your ancestors as you trace your family tree back in time. In the nth generation before the present, your family tree has 2n slots: two for parents, four for grandparents, eight for great-grandparents, and so on. The number of slots grows exponentially. By the 33rd generation – about 800 to 1,000 years ago – you have more than eight billion of them. That is more than the number of people alive today, and it is certainly a much larger figure than the world population a millennium ago …
“In 2004 mathematical modeling and computer simulations by a group of statisticians led by Douglas Rohde, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicated that our most recent common ancestor probably lived no earlier than 1400 B.C. and possibly as recently as A.D. 55. In the time of Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti, someone from whom we are all descended was likely alive somewhere in the world.
“Go back a bit further, and you reach a date when our family trees share not just one ancestor in common but every ancestor in common. At this date, called the “genetic isopoint,” the family trees of any two people on the earth now, no matter how distantly related they seem, trace back to the same set of individuals.
“'If you were alive at the genetic isopoint, then you are the ancestor of either everyone alive today or no one alive today” … Humans left Africa and began dispersing throughout the world at least 120,000 years ago, but the genetic isopoint occurred much more recently – somewhere between 5300 and 2200 B.C., according to Rohde’s calculations.
(Scott Hershberger. “Humans Are All More Closely Related Than We Commonly Think.” Scientific American. October 5, 2020.)
All of this calculation shows the family tree of humanity is much more interconnected than we tend to think. All Europeans living today are related to the same set of ancestors who lived 1,000 years ago. This makes Adam Rutherford, geneticist and author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes (2017), claim “literally everyone” with European ancestry is directly descended from Charlemagne.
And because the genetic isopoint occurred so recently, Rutherford says, “in relation to race, it absolutely, categorically demolishes the idea of lineage purity.” No person has forebears from just one ethnic background or region of the world. And your genealogical connections to the entire globe mean that not too long ago your ancestors were involved in every event in world history.
Rutherford continues to explain how to argue with a racist. Ancestry and family trees show the concept of racial purity to be pure fantasy. “For humans,” Rutherford explains, “there are no purebloods, only mongrels enriched by the blood of multitudes.” So, like the rest of us, every white supremacist and racist has African, Indian, Chinese, Native American, Middle Eastern and Indigenous Australian ancestors to name but a few.
The Need To Establish “Core Identity”
Even if we're all related and many stories of our famous “ancestors” do exist, the need for understanding a line of close descent is crucial to our well being. The stories of our next of kin affect us the most when we are searching for exactly “who we are.” Our identity changes as we progress through life, but communication is the primary means of establishing our identity and fulfilling our identity needs.
“Core Identity” is the essence of who a person is. This unique identity can be described by attributes that belong to and describe an individual. Some unique characteristics (e.g. DNA signature, footprint) are immediately measurable at birth. Others change over time.
Knowing our cultural background and where we came from can help us develop a strong sense of who we really are – a “core” of identity. The way we relate to our family stories and create our own narratives about ourselves help establish our unique recognition.
Family stories directly impact how we see ourselves because they give us an idea of where we come from and how we fit into our family. Think of each family story as a single thread in a tapestry woven with beautiful, complex patterns, colors, and designs. Like the tapestry, we are a combination of the culture, history, and traditions we inherited from our own families.
Researchers at Emory University researched family dinner conversations and developed quantifiable criteria for how well families work. The study called “Do You Know” was conducted by psychologists Robyn Fivush and Marshall Duke, as well as former Emory graduate student Jennifer Bohanek. The researchers found that, “family stories provide a sense of identity through time, and help children understand who they are in the world.”
The results showed that teens with an increased level of knowledge related to family background showed “higher levels of emotional well-being, and also higher levels of identity achievement, even when controlling for general level of family functioning.”
When facing challenges, we can draw strength from stories of relatives who also struggled with similar challenges and obstacles and were then able to overcome them.
The study of genealogy tells a sad truth about generational story gathering: people usually don't become interested in genealogy until they're in their 50s and 60s, when they have more time to reflect on their family identity. The problem is that by that time, their grandparents and parents have often already passed away or are unable to recount their stories.
Robyn Fivush, Ph.D., one of the researchers behind the study “The Power of Family History in Adolescent Identity and Well-Being,” says …
“Because of this, we're losing generations of stories, and all of the benefits that come with them. Because our families are among the most important social groups we belong to and identify with, stories about our family tell us who we are in the world, and who we should be. Stories about our parents and grandparents provide models of both good and bad times, as well as models of overcoming challenges and sticking together.”
(Rachael Rifkin. “We’re Losing Generations of Family History Because We Don’t Share Our Stories. Good Housekeeping. November 13, 2019.)
I once heard someone say that learning history is forced reckoning. Many people consider such an estimation to be restricted to the study of national or global concerns; however, local and personal contexts are important because of occupations, lifestyles, customs, and religious institutions which were often specific to an area.
Each of us has a unique core identity that impacts us, our family, and even future generations of people we may never know. Knowing our family history builds resilience. In learning about our ancestors’ lives, we can see patterns of overcoming failures and surviving hard times. We can learn how to cope with our difficulties from these particular narratives of perseverance.
Through identity study, we can also develop a better understanding of everyday folks, the lifeblood of our nation. We can realize how much we are alike, and we can also better understand how our differences contribute to the extraordinary, diverse design of our national culture.
I really wish I would have gotten to know my grandparents. How much more grounded I might be. I feel these missing pieces of my life today. There is a longing forever unrealized. I'm sure their loving stories would have provided me with important lessons learned not only by them but also by their mothers and fathers. Your own ancestors may tell such meaningful stories that need to be shared with future generations. If they are living, consider closer connections and better preserving family history. And, do so now. The best time is at hand.
“I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.”
– From “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman
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