Progenitor

 ( Kinship And Descent ) 

In genealogy, a progenitor (rarer: primogenitor; or Ahnherr) is the founder (sometimes one that is legendary) of a family, Kinship, gens, clan, tribe, Nobility, or ethnic group.. Ebenda: Ahnherr: "Stammvater eines Geschlechts". Genealogy (commonly known as family history) understands a progenitor to be the earliest recorded ancestor of a consanguineous family group of descendants.

Progenitors are sometimes used to describe the status of a genealogical research project, or in order to compare the availability of genealogical data in different times and places. Often, progenitors are implied to be patrilineality. If a patrilineal dynasty is considered, each such dynasty has exactly one progenitor.

Nobility and Dynasty often look back to an ancestor who is seen as the founder and progenitor of their house (i.e. family line). Even the old Roman law of (Latin for "descendants") was based on the idea of the unbroken family line of a progenitor, but only includes male members of the family, whilst the women were referred to as "cognatic".

It is rarely possible to confirm biological parenthood in the case of ancient family lines (see bastardy). In addition, the progenitor is often a distant ancestor, only known as a result of oral tradition. Where people groups and communities rely solely on a patrilinear family line, their common ancestor often became the subject of a legend surrounding the origin of the family. By contrast, families and peoples with a matrilinear history trace themselves back to an original female progenitrix. Matrilinear rules of descent are found in about 200 of the 1300 known indigenous peoples and worldwide, whilst around 600 have patrilineal rules of descent (from father to son).J. Patrick Gray: Ethnographic Atlas Codebook. In: World Cultures. Vol. 10, No. 1, 1998, pp. 86-136, here p. 104: Table 43 Descent: Major Type (one of the few assessments of all 1,267 ethnic groups; pdf file; 2.4 MB; without page nos. ): "584 Patrilineal … 52 Duolateral … 160 Matrilineal … 45 Mixed". The Ethnographic Atlas by George P. Murdock contains data sets of 1,300 ethnic groups (as at December 2012 at InterSciWiki ), of which often only samples were assessed.

In the Mythology of the Roman Empire the god of war, Mars, was viewed as the progenitor of the Romans;. which is why the Mars symbol (♂, a shield and spear), is used to refer to the masculinity. Besides cities and countries, ethnic groups may also have a progenitor (often a god) in their mythologies, for example, the Hellenistic Greeks look back to Hellen as their progenitor. In Indian Hinduism Manu is the progenitor of all mankind. In the Abrahamic religions, Adam, Noah, Abraham and others are described as progenitors (see also Biblical patriarchy).

In archaeogenetics (archaeological genetics), a human Y-chromosomal Adam has been named as the most recent common ancestor from whom all currently living people are descended patrilinearly. This Adam lived in Africa at a time variously estimated from 60,000 to 338,000 years ago. And Mitochondrial Eve, the most recent common ancestor in the matrilineal line, is estimated to have lived from 100,000 to 230,000 years ago. (There being no suggestion that these, “Eve” and “Adam”, lived at nearby times or places. And there were many other common ancestors in other lines of descent.)

• Protoplast, progenitors of mankind in a creation story
• Ancestor
• Ahnentafel
• Legendary progenitor
• Progenitor cell