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ABOUT GENEAPOGRAPHY.
'AR's New Approach to Creating Family Histories
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When AncestryRegister.com began accepting family histories, it discovered that genealogy - the primary discipline historically used to create them - had a serious shortcoming. That shortcoming is that traditional genealogy demands conclusive proof of every relationship before it can be included in an ancestry. Any generation that cannot be proven 'beyond a reasonable doubt' and shown to be 'unquestionably true' must be excluded - even though a majority of the evidence suggests it is a valid relationship.
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Geneapography relaxes genealogy's 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard to a more practical 'preponderance of the evidence' standard, thereby creating an exciting potential new dimension for all family histories. A dimension which mirrors that found in the social sciences and humanities (most especially history), and thus remains a rigorous discipline which is prepared to accept proposed ancestral relationships if 1) there is reasonable historical evidence to support it, and 2) the relationship cannot be disproven.
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A less obvious but equally important result of this approach, is that whenever one can significantly lengthen the number of generations in any family's ancestry, it opens a doorway into the past such that families can begin to understand the past not through some scholarly but dry history book, but via the events of the past in which their ancestors - probable as well as proven - participated. This result essentially turns the focus around. That is, instead of seeking to prove the exclusivity of personal bloodlines (a truly elitist exercise), the search for additional links suggested by historical evidence turns the exercise into one learning much of the history of the world via the lives and times of their ancestors. Several cases in point being the following (the second two strongly suggesting that one important objective of any geneapology is to find a probable link to English and/or Continental ancestors) :
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1) The Ancestry of American Immigrants. All major references dealing with the origins and ancestries of American (and other) immigrants have adopted the genealogical standard of proof, and have indeed refined it to an ever-increasing degree of reliability. So much so, in fact, that it now seems that there are nearly as many disproofs of 'proven' ancestries being found as there are new ones being authenticated. As a result, one has little expectation that Gary Boyd Roberts' list of 'Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants' will add many more early immigrant names - or that similar publications will fare much better. Unfortunately, these references has now near exhausted the number of proven immigrant ancestries likely to be found, overlooking the fact that there are a vast number of people who are unrelated to that limited number of 'proven' ancestors. They are therefore unable to reliably trace the early probable origins of any of their more distant progenitors. But if geneapography's rules of evidence were instead adopted, it is believed that numerous additional links to early 'old country' ancestors will be able to be found.
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From geneapography's viewpoint, it is a priority that all families be given the opportunity to identify one or more ancestors with links to historic and pedigreed personages of the past. For once linked, families can then begin to discover the history of the world not through some disty history book, but through the accomplishments and associations of their own ancestry. Put another way, geneapography sees the primary object of discovering one's ancestry is not in tallying up how many Kings and Queens they have in their past, but in using it as a gateway to learn about those parts of the world where their predecessors endured and sometimes shaped its history. The object of linking to royalty is thus not an end, but a means to vicariously experience history through the eyes of their progenitors. Since royalty spent far more time and effort in recording their ancestries, linking to a royal or noble line greatly increases the odds for extending one's family history backwards additional centuries and even millenia.
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2) The Origins of the English People. Standard textbooks about English History typically start with the 1066 invasion of England by William the Conqueror, Duke of the French region of Normandy. The people that William and his Norman companions conquered are typically identified as Anglo Saxons. The impression this leaves in many people's minds is that a French army invaded England and replaced the native English people. But if one traces the ancestral origins of William and his Norman companions, they were in fact fourth generation Vikings whose forefathers were bought off by Charlemagne's descendants by the grant of Normandy, in the process turning Viking pirates into farmers. As for the Anglo-Saxons, they too were somewhat earlier Viking invaders (Angle and Saxony being adjacent to Denmark, a territory controlled by the early Vikings). These Vikings also worshipped pagan gods such as Odin, and converted to Christianity much later than other European communities. So regardless of which side won the Battle of Hastings, it would still be ruled by Vikings, with the earlier native inhabitants - the Celts - being driven westward to Wales and Ireland.
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3) The Origins of the various European Communities. If one can find a link to early English, Scottish, French or Spanish royal families, one has a very good chance of finding one or more ancestral links to Charlemagne. This has typically been the 'earliest notable ancestor' that is identified in most traditional genealogies. But of course Charlemagne had an ancestry as well. Within recent decades, the new field of 'prosopography' has emerged (discussed in more detail below), and more recently a smaller field within it whose focus is to identift 'Descents from Antiquity' (abbreviated as DFA's). The emergent area of DFA's (see the Wikipedia entry for DFA HERE) has proved quite exciting, for as it turns out there are many surviving records from Rome, Egypt, Greece, Spain (both Moorish and Christian) and many other early European governments that permit one to approximate if not prove the manner in which the civilizations and their leaders intermarried. So, for instance, Charlemagne's lines appear to derive in part from earlier Roman lines that had settled in Gaul and Spain, and those lines from earlier Egyptian and Middle Eastern lines that include such notable historical figures as numerous Roman Ceasars, Byzantine Emperors, Herod of Judea and Alexander the Great. While many merit additional study before acceptance, once one enters the realm of DFA's, one beguns to understand that history is not something dull from times past, but something in which various of one's ancestors took a hand in shaping.
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Genealogy's standards are similar to the criminal court system, where 'proof beyond a reasonable doubt' is required to merit conviction. 'Probably' related doesn't merit inclusion in a genealogical pedigree, just as 'probably' guilty doesn't merit a conviction in criminal court cases. Which standard is admirably appropriate for determining the order of succession for royalty or a title of nobility, but devasting for families who are more interested in tracing not just their provable history, but whatever earlier probable ancestry can be reasonably deciphered from the available evidence.
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History's standards have evolved differently, since very often there is no proof 'beyond a reasonable doubt' about many important events, causes, dates and participants. Recognizing that scholars and the public alike much prefer insight into what 'probably' happened instead of silence, many historians employ a more flexible but still demanding approach akin to the legal burden of proof standard in civil (rather than criminal) court cases. That is, they use the more flexible 'preponderance of the evidence' standard in cases where the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' test cannot be met. As noted in Wikipedia's Burden of proof entry, the 'preponderance of the evidence' test is met "if the proposition is more likely to be true than not true. Effectively, the standard is satisfied if there is greater than 50 percent chance that the proposition is true."
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Anyone who has worked on a family history will recognize the barrier that genealogy's 'standard of proof' creates when trying to trace a family. The further back in time, the less the information due to the loss or lack of public records or census data, fewer local histories, a lesser degree of interest in any record keeping (due to lack of education, cost, little appreciation for history, etc.). If one is fortunate to trace back to medieval times (i.e. before 1500) the lack of records becomes near impossible for everyone but royalty and nobility, while before the year 1000, most records disappear for even them. So even though there may be a reasonable likelihood of an ancestral link based on family notes or naming patterns, near neighbors, partial histories or other clues, the lack of legal 'proof' is almost always fatal if one relies solely on genealogy's standards to trace one's roots.
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After careful review, AncestryRegister.com concluded that the genealogical standard of proof is inappropriate for most family histories for two reasons. When asked, most people are less concerned with possessing absolute proof than with having at least a glimpse of their roots. The other, is that the field of genealogy has not adapted to the times. That is, genealogy is instead largely tied to its role many centuries past, when providing absolute proof of ancestry was its primary role. That is, genealogy's pedigrees were the determinant of lines of royal succession, they identified the 'rightful' heirs and successors to royal titles, and were at times used to exclude people from certain restricted circles of society. In more recent centuries, many 'exclusive' societies have adopted those same rigorous standards in determining eligibility for membership - and what better way to assure exclusivity than by rejecting applicants who failed genealogy's rigid standards. Which is not to say there is anything wrong in using rigorous standards, but only that much valid history can be arbitrarily overlooked when the focus is only on absolutely proveable history.
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The times and the needs of family historians are also now incredibly different. A case in point is the Mormon Church's incredibly huge online database - to which so many family researchers now turn in searching for their roots. Unfortunately, that so often relied upon database frequently fails genealogical standards of proof. That is, a search of their IGI database will identify a great many undocumented and even disproven relationships. Yet the IGI is viewed by most people as a reliable source of genealogical relationships. The more recent advent of the internet, and of websites like ancestry.com, has further revealed the need for new standards of evidence and disclosure which can meet the expanded needs of today's explorers of their own - and others - past. There are few ways that modern family historians can distinguish between relationships that are considered proven, what the evidence suggests are probable albeit not proven, and those that lack any meaningful evidence.
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The essential key to a new approach to credible family histories, is to find a way to retain the strength and power of the existing discipline of genealogy and its well-honed and accepted standards, before attempting to supplement it. Recognizing this, a new discipline with a new set of related but expanded standards was developed.
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The new discipline is called 'Geneapography', its name a combination of two existing disciplines upon which it heavily relies. 'Genea' is a clear reference to the field of Genealogy whose work product it encompasses. The last portion gives recognition to the related new discipline of 'prosopography'. As noted in its Wikipadia entry, Prosopography was introduced by Lawrence Stone in 1971, and its best known proponent is Katherine Keats-Rohan (her 2 volume 1999 publication, 'Domesday People', is a landmark in the field). As defined by Keats Rohan, "Prosopography is about what the analysis of the sum of data about many individuals can tell us about the different types of connexion between them". The entry notes that the field is an increasingly important one in historical research, and that "the concept is easily inflated." Geneapography - herein defined as "the study of families and their ancestries using analysis of the sum of data about those families and individuals who shared common social institutions and geography, in order to identify and validate family relationships and associations beyond those recognized by traditional genealogy" - is one such inflation.
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Another admired practitioner of prosopography is French historian and genealogist Christian Settipani, whose publications have been directed toward identifying plausible 'Descents from Antiquity' - lines of descents that extend backwards 2000 years to the great Egyptian, Greek, Roman and other royal families. While no proven lines of descent exist (since most historical records from the period have been destroyed by wars, fires or disintegration of the materials used), Settipani and others have proposed some highly plausible lines using, in large part, the methods of prosopography.
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The essential bridge between Genealogy and Geneapography is the use of 'Quality of Evidence' qualifiers. The presence of a qualifier distingishes a geneapographical entry from one which would be considered 'proven' using genealogical standards. More specifically, geneapography holds:
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When creating a family ancestry, it is acceptable to include persons and relationships that do not meet genealogical standards of proof IF it can foster a understanding of a family's probable history and ancestry, and PROVIDED that each such entry satisfies the following :
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1) the preponderance of the evidence can justify the entry;
2) that evidence is made available for review in a footnote or elsewhere; and
3) the entry is appropriately identified as meeting one of Geneapology's 'Categories for Inclusion'.
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Lest there be any confusion between such ancestries and those which rely solely on genealogical standards, ancestries which include one or more Geneapographical labels should always identified as a 'Geneapography' rather than a Genealogy.
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The fields of genealogy and prosopography are distinctly separate disciplines, distinguished by the quality of evidence they require. The most rigorous of the two is genealogy, whose most important early application was to create pedigrees using strict 'Rules of Evidence' that met the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' test. Such pedigrees documented not only one's ancestors, but more importantly determined the right to inherit property, a title or a throne. Practitioners of prosopography - as found in the work of people like Christian Settipani - cannot and do not expect that their efforts will be accepted as extensions of genealogy pedigrees for the same purposes. Instead, they largely seek to explain and document relationships that preceed those that are determinable using genealogy's tools.
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The emergence of prosopography has thereby introduced an entirely new and valid line of inquiry for all family histories. That is, the work of Keats-Rohan, Settipani and others have added a new 'preponderance of the evidence' form of scholarship to genealogy's 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard. Given that the question of "Who were our ancestors, and where did they come from?" is surely one of the most fundamental for any family, answering it should surely utilize all of the currently available research tools to gain as much well reasoned insight as possible.
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Accordingly, AncestryRegister.com and most of its authors have adopted geapography's integrated set of categories, related descriptive labels and descriptions for use with its family histories. Those categories, labels and descriptions are further described HERE.
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