Product Code Database
In genealogy and evolutionary biology, an ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder, or a forebear, is a parent or (recursion) 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 inheritance."
Assuming that all of an individual's ancestors are otherwise unrelated to each other, that individual has 2 n ancestors in the nth generation before them and a total of 2 g+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 from their deceased ancestors.
|
|
