I heard a program on CBC radio (Canadian equivalent of BBC) in the last year or so. That talked about an interesting statistic which was coming up through modern DNA research. What researchers were finding when doing DNA testing of modern people was that roughly 8% of us are sired by someone other than the fellow we regard as our father. I thought the really interesting part of this was apparently this percentage is pretty constant around the globe, across cultural and religious barriers.

On one hand the story made me smile as it points to the commonality of mankind in all our strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand as someone who has spent some time researching my own genealogy I wonder if I am wasting my time?

Assuming past generations shared the same passions, weakness and foibles as the current one, by the time you factor an 8% error rate into each generation when you go back a couple of centuries and perhaps 8-10 generations we really have no idea who our biological ancestors are.

We may be socially and culturally descended from those we uncover through genealogy but there is no guarantee we are biologically.