Scientists have built a family tree for 13 million people over a period of 300 years

Genealogy has been popular at all times, and it remains so now. All because many people feel satisfied when they find out that among their ancestors were celebrities, people of high ranks and titles. Some families create genealogical trees that have served as the basis for “family identity” for many years.

Actually, there are those who are just curious about who their ancestors were - no matter how rich and noble (or poor and unknown to anyone). Just interesting, and that's it. Recently, a group of scientists presented the results of their project to create a genealogical tree for 13 million people. The period of time for which the tree was built is 3 centuries.

The project itself is not a manifestation of the usual curiosity, but a desire to track the migration flows of people in Europe and the USA, as well as to understand how true the statement “all people are brothers”. Data for the tree was taken from public access, analyzed and compiled.

The task itself can not be called simple, because to bring together the data of 13 million people (and before that also get all this information) is not an easy task. In addition, tracking family ties between generations distant in time is even more difficult. Nevertheless, the scientists got down to business and firmly decided to bring it to the end.

Project results may be useful for the same medicine or genetics. After all, you can track family congenital diseases, life expectancy and more. In addition, such a "razlapisty" family tree allows you to draw certain conclusions regarding the economic, political and social trends at different times.

To get started, the project team collected data provided by the Geni.com resource team. A total of 86 million records were taken. The resource is a genealogical data uploaded by enthusiasts. They serve the resource. Each entry contains a set of specific data, including the name of the person, his relationship with other people from the database, as well as information of a different nature, including when the person was born, married, died.

The resource itself also analyzes the data as far as possible. For example, it provides data on the kinship of individual users with other users or people listed in the database. Resource algorithms are constantly working on a map of connections between individuals. Thanks to this database, scientists have received a huge sample of data, including information of 13 million people. All these people lived in the period from 1650 to 2000.


Marriages are highlighted in red, which connect different branches of the family tree

Having received all the necessary information, the scientists were able to start analyzing the migration flows of people for a specified period of time. In addition, experts began to study the life expectancy of people of different eras. By the way, an interesting fact came to light - men more often than women went on long trips. Sometimes they were so long that a person found his end in a country on the other side of the earth.

This difference in mobility, i.e. The opportunity to travel was very noticeable from 1650 to 1800. A little later, the situation began to improve somewhat and women began to travel at least men. It also turned out that the closer to our time, the more distant can be people who married and even gave birth to children. For example, in 1800, those people who lived close to each other got married. This refers to the close proximity of 19 km. A century later, this distance increased more than 5 times, reaching 100 km.

Another interesting point - before 1850, people often married or married relatives (cousins ​​and second cousins). Over time, this trend began to fade out. Scientists were also able to track the life expectancy of those people whose data were included in the report. As it turned out, our ancestors lived far less than us, which was due to a variety of reasons, from hard work to no less serious illness.

The project can be considered significant primarily because scientists were able to access the genetic databases. In the future, they can be studied even more carefully, making certain conclusions. The results of the study will be useful for many branches of science, as mentioned above.