Ancestry.com Genealogy Fills A Deep Need

by erin on February 9, 2011

Before modern data bases, there was usually an enthusiast in each family who painstakingly researched old letters and postcards and came up with a unique version of a family’s connection to royalty. Nowadays, Ancestry.com genealogy will assist in drawing up neatly presented, informative and neatly printed genealogies. They may interestingly show where the family came from and where other members of the family have drifted to on the planet.

Every normal person has an interest in where he comes from. This may account for the natural affinity between grandparents and grandchildren. Children who have been given up for adoption at birth usually have a burning desire to discover their biological parents at some point in their lives. The instinct to search for family information seems to be linked to the human quest for knowledge.

The distinction between ancestry and genealogy is quite nice. The former word refers in Europe to the lineage of ‘well born’ people. In Africa the word might have more spiritual connotations. The root word, ‘gene’ gives genealogy a more biological slant. It refers to the study of descendents of an individual or group.

The research and publication of family histories has been revolutionized by computer technology. Data once stored in rooms full of cabinets holding card catalogues can now be replaced by a computer chip. The data can be managed through searches that enable correlations and conclusions that might have taken months or years to complete in the days before computers.

The ways in which data can now be managed have transformed many long held beliefs. The notion that an Australian convict was guilty of something has been transformed into the belief that he was innocent and the man who sent him there guilty. So Australians now count themselves among the aristocracy of Australians if they can trace a convict in their family tree. The descendants of European aristocrats may look askance at some of their ancestors exposed now as dubious characters at best.

Anthropological discoveries may turn up some interesting facts about the distant past. However, computer assisted data bases may also unearth relevant information about the more recent history pertaining to things that affect the individual intimately.

Deep in our genetic make up there appears to be an instinct to question how we come to be here, spinning in space on the planet Earth. We may wonder where our ancestors were when the Roman mobs cheered for blood or the French aristocrats stood before the guillotine. For each person there is an unanswered burning question about who he actually is.

There is often an abiding question, too, of where other members of the family come from. Human beings seem to move in circles, with like attracting like. So it may be fascinating to know how two people who met as strangers in the colonies may have originated some generations back in the same village in Europe. Some light may be thrown by Ancestry.com genealogy on the cues that were there behind the conscious.

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