NOVEMBER 5 2016 http://www.listener.co.nz 15
GETTY IMAGES/LISTENER ILLUSTRATION“YOU ARE OF ROYAL DESCENT ...”
In his new book, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, Adam Rutherford relates the tale of Yale University statisti-
cian Joseph Chang, who built a mathematical model to determine how recently the people of Europe would have had
a common ancestor – he found it was 600 years ago. Then Chang expanded that into a study beyond Europe, conclud-
ing that the most recent common ancestor of every one alive on Earth today died just 3600 years ago.
In his academic paper, Chang said, “Our indings suggest a remarkable proposition: no matter the languages we
speak or the colour of our skin, we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze, who irst domesti-
cated horses on the steppes of the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forests of North and South America, and
who laboured to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu.”
As Rutherford puts it: “You are of royal descent, because everyone is. You are of Viking descent, because everyone is.
You are of Saracen, Roman, Goth, Hun, Jewish descent because, well, you get the idea.”