Talk:Descent from antiquity

Hilde, spurious ancestress of legendary Ivarr Vidfami

copied following:

(Jared Linn Olar wrote) Subject: Re: gateway descents from Kings of Vandals, via Kings of Burgundy, via Volsungs of Allemania, Cambresis, & Denmark Date: 18 Jun 2004 10:05:37 -0700 References:

david hughes wrote: > gateway descents from Kings of Vandals, via Kings of Burgundy, via > Volsungs of Allemania, Cambresis, & Denmark > ------------------------------------------------------------- > 10. Hilderic, Vandal-King 523-530 deposed, d533 > issue: > a. Gormund, Byzantine Governor of North Africa 534-543, father of > Hilde, wife of Valdar "The Dane" > b. Hilde, wife of Frode VII, King of Denmark

"Gormund" is mentioned in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain" as a king of Germans in Africa who led an invasion of Ireland and Britain during the reign of a Briton king named Careticus (Ceretic) in the latter half of the 500s A.D. Careticus supposedly was successful in beating back with terrible invasion, though historical records don't mention anything of it. I believe Geoffrey got the story of Gormund from someone -- I don't think it was original with Geofrrey, but I don't know where he might have heard it. In any event, I'm aware of no reason to believe Gormund ever existed, let alone that he was a son of Hilderic, King of the Vandals.

As for Hilde, daughter of Hilderic, I've seen that spurious filiation several times. It's based on a medieval Icelandic legendary pedigree of Ivar Vidfadmi, a legendary conquering king of Scania, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Northumbria who, again, may not have existed. The pedigree first appears, I believe, in certain manuscripts of the Hervarar Saga ok Heithreks Konungs. Ivar was supposedly descended from a princess named Hild, daughter of Heidrik (Heithrekr) Ulfham, King of Reidgothaland, traditionally identified as Jutland and/or Mecklenburg. However, I've not yet found any early texts that identify Hild's husband as Frode -- Hervarar Saga says she married a Danish king named Valdar, but other Old Icelandic sources show Valdar as an apparent descendant, not husband, of Hild.

Since the area of Heidrik's kingdom was associated with both the German Vandals and the Slavic Wends, and since some later writers came up with a false theory that the Vandals and the Wends were the same people, someone came up with the idea that Heidrik Ulfham was a legendary memory of the historical Vandal king Hilderic, and thus invented a descent from the Vandal kings through the legendary kings of Denmark and Sweden. However, there is simply no proof that Heidrik Ulfham was Hilderic -- the names might seem similar, but just as the Frankish royal name Hilderic is found in Old Icelandic texts as Hjalprekr, so we should expect a Vandal king named Hilderic to be mentioned in Old Icelandic texts as Hjaldrekr, or something like that, not Heithrekr. Again, the legends of Heidrik Ulfham never associate him with Africa, only with Northern Europe -- yet it was well known throughout Europe, even Scandinavia, that the Vandals had migrated to North Africa. One would expect some trace of that in the legends of Heidrek Ulfham if it were true that he was based on the historical Hilderic the Vandal.

At your service,

Jared L. Olar

Jared has given an extremely clear accont of why this socalled "Danish route" is not eligible for mention here, unless you wish to start a section on "widely repeated but delusional descents". Didn't the words "spurious filiation" ring any kind of a bell?? --Chris Bennett 02:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Bibliography

"Much of the published work on this topic is as fantastical as any medieval genealogy and is to be avoided, or used with great caution."

This is unencyclopedic and blatantly POV (in self-contradiction regarding my recent edit summary). An encyclopedia article should simply report that relevant, yet dubious, works are unreliable for serious scholarship, rather than admonish readers from referring to them and dismiss them as "fantastical". My version, "Much of the published work on this topic is widely regarded as no more reliable than medieval genealogical records," unlike the above one, is something one might actually read in an encyclopedia. --Jugbo 20:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted to the original version pending resolution of this issue. Please leave it alone until we conclude this discussion.

The main problem with your edit is not the wording, it's your proposal to reposition it. In essence, the original notice is a consumer alert. It was made specifically with respect to Stuart's work, and was deliberately intended to distinguish it from the other works in the bibliography as a book to be avoided. By moving the statement to the beginning you have lumped the entire bibliography under the notice. This is flatly wrong, the cited works are not at all equivalent in their scholarship.

Let me explain why the notice is where it is. This field is very popular with amateur researchers seeking to push their ancestry back as far as it will go. Many of them take anything they read at face value if it appears to allow them to add another generation or 50 to their database. In the amateur genealogical community, Stuart's book is by far the most widely known and used source claiming to provide DFA-type descents. That makes it not only relevant to the article but also very difficult to leave out of the bibliography. But it is also an exceptionally bad piece of pseudo-scholarship. If you took a moment to compare it to, say, Settipani's Nos ancetres de l'antiquite, or Wagner's essay, which are the two items cited that are closest in comparable scope, you would see immediately that that statement is not POV, it's an objective assessment of academic quality.

Normally, bibliographic references are implicit recommendations that the cited sources have material allowing you to learn more about the article in question. In the case of Stuart's book, the only ethical recommendation is to avoid this work like the plague. There is no way to do that except by making an explicit statement to that effect.

As to editorial philosophy, there is a difference between an informed assessment and POV. The first is giving guidance, the second is promoting a particular view point. Because many genealogical researchers come to this topic through an interest in their own family trees rather than historical standards of research, and because the field is full of bad literature, it's entirely appropriate that the bibliography in this article should be explicit in giving guidance.

As to wording, I wouldn't have any problem with something like: "Much of the published work on this topic is no more reliable than medieval genealogies, and should be used cautiously. A well-known example is:" (Not "medieval genealogical records" as you suggest. Those are wills, charters etc -- source documents which, if they are contemporary, are about as reliable as you can get.) While, in the spirit of guidance, I would prefer "Useful material" in introducing the discussion lists, I also don't have a problem with "Additional material" if it really matters to you.

Hope that clarifies the objectives. --Chris Bennett 22:17, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I didn't understand that the notice regarded only Stuart's book. It struck me as biased and unencyclopedic, so judging by it's quality I assumed it was carelessly injected by a petulant hardass, and attempted to improve the section by re-wording it and moving it to the top. My primary problem was the stuffy tone of the warning, and so I tried to make it more encyclopedic.

"As to wording, I wouldn't have any problem with something like: "Much of the published work on this topic is no more reliable than medieval genealogies, and should be used cautiously. A well-known example is:"

Good, then. That's much better. --Jugbo 20:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Citations

Some anonymous user has repeatedly added an "unreferenced" tag to this article despite the fact that it contains nearly 20 sources in the References section. When he first did this I reverted and pointed out that the article was in fact referenced. When he did it again, I assumed that it was because he was unaware that citations do not have to be inline, so I reverted this, pointing out that WP:CIT does not require citations to be inline:

Any style or system is acceptable on Wikipedia so long as articles are internally consistent. You should follow the style already established in an article, if it has one

and

Articles can be supported with references in two ways: the provision of general references ("References") – books or other sources that support a significant amount of the material in the article – and inline citations ("Notes").

Clearly, this article has an established style of providing general references, and there are plenty of them, and they support a significant amount of the material in the article.

On his next pass our driveby shooter noted that WP:CIT requires inline citations for featured articles, and proceeded to pepper the article with "fact" tags on every sentence, even including the definitional sentences at the start of the article.

Now, when I pointed out WP:CIT, I also told this person that if he wanted inline citations he should stop whining and start adding them. I meant it. If someone wants to beef this article up to be a featured article, more power to them. I also have no objection if they want to change the established style of the article, though I don't think it's necessary myself. But I do expect them to do the work. It's damn rude to demand a change to the format of an article which conforms to WP guidelines just because you don't like the current format, when you clearly have no intention of contributing anything yourself.

So, to the driveby tagger, if you want to improve this article stop whining and get to work. The referencing is certainly not perfect, you could tag sections which do need references added, or, better, start adding them. If you really want to change the style to inline citations, start adding inline citations. I suggest you proceed by reviewing the material that is available online and linking it to the statements that you think need to be cited inline. Who knows, you might even get interested in the topic.

But if you're just going to vandalise the article, you're wasting everybody's time, including your own.

--Chris Bennett (talk) 15:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Citations

Per Wikipedia Policies:

INLINE CITATIONS ("Notes"), are MANDATED by the featured article criteria and (to a lesser extent) the good article criteria.

Opinions, data and statistics, and statements based on someone's scientific work should be cited and attributed to their authors IN THE TEXT.

INLINE CITATIONS are references WITHIN THE TEXT that provide source information for specific statements. They are appropriate for supporting statements of fact and are needed for statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged.

All citation techniques REQUIRE detailed full citations to be provided for each source used. Footnotes are usually placed at the end of a sentence or paragraph. If a particular claim in an article lacks citation and is doubtful, consider placing after the sentence or removing it.

Passages open to interpretation should be precisely cited or avoided. Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves. Material that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in peer-reviewed sources, and reviewed and judged acceptable scholarship by the academic journals. Citing sources and avoiding original research are inextricably linked: to demonstrate that you are not presenting original research, you must cite reliable sources that provide information directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented. No original research (NOR) is one of three content policies. The others are neutral point of view (NPOV) and verifiability (V). Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. Information in an article must be verifiable in the references cited.

The purpose of citing your sources is:

   * To ensure that the content of articles can be checked by any reader or editor.
   * To show that your edit is not original research and to reduce editorial disputes.
   * To avoid claims of plagiarism and copying.
   * To help users find additional information on the topic.
   * To ensure that material about living persons complies with biography policy.
   * To improve the credibility of Wikipedia.

As to Chris Bennett who remarked "driveby shooter", "driveby tagger", "whining", "vandalise the article"; more Wikipedia Policy - Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Chris Bennett is "damn rude". Also, he is trying to keep a bad article while I am trying to improve this article according to standards! Don't attack others because you were to lazy to properly reference this article.

DON'T ALTER EXISTING TALK

In case you hadn't noticed, this is not a featured article. Noone has expressed any interest in making it one. If you wish to do so, by all means bring it up to that standaard. But don;t demand that someone else do it for you.

As they are. Random example:

The possibility of establishing a DFA as a result of serious genealogical research was raised in a pair of influential essays, by the Albany Herald, Dr. Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, and the late Garter King of Arms, Sir Anthony Wagner.

And the references include:

I. Moncreiffe of that Ilk & D. Pottinger, Blood Royal, (Nelson, London, 1956).

A. R. Wagner, Bridges to Antiquity in Pedigree and Progress: Essays in the Genealogical Interpretation of History (Phillimore, London, 1975)

I know what they are. You haven't cited any statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged. please do so, but when you do so, give your groubds for challenging the statement.

I agree the references are not perfect. But they are a very far cry from justified the tags you are adding to this article.

And if you have REASON to doubt a statement in the artucle, go ahead, AND PRODUCE YOUR REASON .

The key statements in WP:CIT are the ones I quoted. INLINE CITATIONS ARE NOT REQUIRED AND A REFERENCE LIST IS A PERFECTLY ADEQUATE TECHNIQUE.

No, I'm not trying to keep a bad article. But I have no patience for an anonymous idiot who slaps tags on the article which are completely unjustified on their face, and who makes no attempt at producing a justification. Even now you are just spewing selected passdages of WP:CIT without showing that iit relates to this articlew.

AS far as I am concerned I don;t have the time or the interest to devote my life to WP. I do have an interest in this topic, and I put together some basic facts about it, TOGETHER WITH A PERFECTLY GOOD REFERENCE LIST. If someone wbabts to take it further I'm all for that. But to claim the article has no citations or referebces is simply untrue, and its unproductive.

If you want to improve this article, work through it -- show what needs to be improved and start working on improvements.

If you can;t make a positive contribution, don;t make any.--Chris Bennett (talk) 00:54, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, here is my bottom line on this.

1) You thoughtlessly slapped an unreferenced tag on this article. That is a general comdemnation of the level of sourcing in the article. It was entirely unjustified, because, while the article is not perfectly referenced, it is amply referenced, and substantial portions of it are fully supported by the references given.

2) It is clear that what you want to see is inline citations. That's fine, but it doesn't remotely justify putting the unreferenced tag on this article. As I have demonstrated, WP:CIT recognizes and allows the referencing style used, and exhorts editors to stick with the established rerefencing style of an article. It only requires inline citations in some circumstances, none of you have demonstrated to apply.

3) In defence of your action you have made the ludicrous argument that it was justified because featured articles require inline citations. You have also quoted great swathes of text on how inline quotations are used. None of this has any relevance, unless and until you demonstrate that it does. Yet you have made no effort to demonstrate anything about the content of this article which shows any necessity for adopting inline citations, let alone that the article justifies the tag(s) you have put on it. In fact you have not shown any knowledge of or interest in anything that this article says.

4) Had you bothered to search out those points of the article that are not supported by the references, and added a tag to those individual items, that would have been a somewhat positive contribution. It would also have demonstrated that you have some understanding of what this article is about, which ought to be the minimum requirement for editing it.

You object to my using strong language to describe your actions. Yes, I wasn't diplomatic. Sorry, but you earned it, by behaving badly from the beginning. As I said, I have a low tolerance of certain types of idiocy, and vandalism is the lowest form. Knee-jerk tagging is more sophisticated than most vandalism, but it's still vandalism, because it defaces the article with unwarranted accusations. It doesn't help that you are an anonymous IP user. In my WP experience, the great majority of such users are that way because they do not wish accept any responsibility for their action. You certainly aren't demonstrating that you are an exception. If I had my way, WP would only allow such users to edit articles in exceptional circumstances such as avoiding political censorship.

When you start acting constructively I will be only too happy to recognize it. But if you carry on as you have been, I will have to start getting admins involved, at least to protect this article against IP users. But be aware that they also have the ability to block your IP address. --Chris Bennett (talk) 19:33, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with bennett?

Per Wikipedia Policy -

   * Be polite
   * Assume good faith
   * No personal attacks
   * Be welcoming

bennett is failing at all above since the start.

I have acted to improve this article for Wikipedia. This page does in fact need citations and better sourcing. This is NOT vandalism. Also, there is nothing wrong with using an IP address. Stop threatening users, bennett. Bring in admins; they may need to spank your wrong behavior and help make a better article despite you. 88.84.137.165 (talk) 05:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

First off, I am responding after your talk in deference to your rather unorthodox opinion that inline response is alteration of talk. However, in order to establish context for my response, I am going to reproduce your text in italics to introduce each response.

If you want to see true alteration of talk, look at the effects of your taking my inline commentary and clumping it together, which I have left alone. No doubt you would claim that you have changed nothing because the words are the same. In fact, by taking it out of the inline context, it now no longer makes any sense.

Now, as to your first comments here:

Per Wikipedia Policy -

   * Be polite
   * Assume good faith
   * No personal attacks
   * Be welcoming

bennett is failing at all above since the start.

In fact, I was perfectly polite when I reverted your initial tag, even though it already raised a question of how well you understood what you were doing. I assumed, per policy, that you were acting in good faith, and had simply not read through to the end of the article. I responded with suggestion that you read the article through to the end, where you would see that in fact the article is amply sourced.

Your response to that suggestion proved that you were not acting in good faith. Instead of attempting to justify your tag, you made it clear that you had an axe to grind about inserting inline citations. This response clearly showed that my initial suspicions were justified -- and that the assumption of good faith was baseless.

I agree that the phrase "anonymous idiot" was a personal attack and I do apologise for that. However, the phrases you have explicitly objected to, like "stop whining" and "driveby shooter", are not personal attacks. They are criticisms of your actions, colourfully expressed perhaps, but still impersonal. If you are unable to distinguish between an attack on your person and a criticism of your actions, I'm sorry, but that is not something I need to apologize for.

These descriptions were and still are accurate. I note that you have yet to make any case for your tags, and that your only response has been to up the ante: peppering the article with more of them, an action that fully qualifies as vandalism. This only reinforces my belief that you don't actually have a case to make, you just don't like being crossed.

Moving on to your next comments:

I have acted to improve this article for Wikipedia. This page does in fact need citations and better sourcing.

So you say. I disagree, and I think that the nearly 20 references given, all of which are clearly related to various sections of the article, are, prima facie, more than adequate grounds for disagreement. You haven't tried to show that that is wrong.

If you want to pursue this, what you need to do is to justify your claim.

Let me be clear: Justification is not about whether there is a reference for this or that statement -- it's about your characterization of the article, as a whole, being inadequately sourced and needing inline citation. Demonstrate, with concrete analysis of the article:

1) On sourcing: Show, with concrete analysis, that a significant plurality of the statements in the article are not supported by the cited sources. Not just a few statements -- I agree that some people have added material that they should have added references for. To justify the tag you need to show that large parts of the article are unsourced.

2) On inline citation: Show, with concrete analysis, that a significant plurality of the statements in the article require inline citations. Arguments like "featured articles require them" are obviously irrelevant and specious -- unless you personally plan to submit this as a featured article.

What bugs me is that you have yet to produce a single concrete criticism of the article. You just make sweeping and unsubstantiated statements like "This page does in fact need citations and better sourcing."

This is NOT vandalism.

It is, when it is clearly contradicted by the reference list in the article. It is, when you tag every single sentence in the article. It is, when you pile on as many tags as you can find at the head of the article. And it is when you make no attempt whatsoever to substantiate any of these claims.

Also, there is nothing wrong with using an IP address. Stop threatening users, bennett. Bring in admins; they may need to spank your wrong behavior and help make a better article despite you.

It's called carrot and stick. The stick is to bring in admins, and I don't propose to do that unless and until it is really clear that there is no alternative. I'm not there yet, I'm still trying to work with you, though I have yet to see any reason to believe that that is possible.

The carrot is that you can resolve this by being constructive. If you really believe what you say, then you should be able to demonstrate with evidence how the contents of the article justify your tag. Or, better, since I genuinely think you are over the line, you could adjust your criticism to something that we can agree is justifiable, like identifying, on a reasoned and reasonable basis, individual statements that are unrelated to the sources given, or where you can show, with evidence, that there really is controversy requiring an inline citation -- so that we can then agree on individual statements where tagging may be appropriate.

I'm reverting your article-wide tags again. WP Procedure at this point is to try to resolve the dispute on the talk page -- and to leave the article alone until agreement is reached. The ball is in your court.

--Chris Bennett (talk) 18:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Bulgarian link

Ripsimia is specified as the daughter of Ashot II in the Medieval Lands database, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/BULGARIA.htm#_Toc137439348. However, no authority is given for this parentage. Is it just a plausible guess? DonStone01 (talk) 03:14, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Ripsimia's parentage is not given by Fine in The Early Medieval Balkans (1983/1991), which Medieval Lands cites for most of its data on the Cometopuli dynasty. It is not given by Mladjov (Fine's student) in the several charts that include Ripsimia in his 2003 article "Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile." Ditto for Mladjov's chart "The Descent of H.M. Simeon II from the Medieval Rulers of Bulgaria" at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~imladjov/SIMEONII.doc. Toumanoff in Les dynasties de la Caucasie chrétiennne (1990) doesn't give any children for Ashot II. So far as I know, Settipani has not suggested this Ripsimia-AshotII connection, and Adontz says that Ripsimia is an Armenian, not that she is an Armenian princess. DonStone01 (talk) 00:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The Medieval Lands database's treatment of Bulgaria has been updated, adding a review of literature relating to Ripsimia: http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/BULGARIA.htm#_Toc200330537. She is now given as daughter of "---". Accordingly, I have removed the short paragraph about the possible Bulgarian link, since it assumes that she is the daughter of Ashot II. DonStone01 (talk) 00:59, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Right to Edit including adding Tags

We have a person who continues an edit-war by reverting positive page changes. He started the reversions despite the fact that Wikipedia Policy is:

"Fix or point out problems" "Wikipedia is free content that anyone may edit." "Be bold in editing, moving, and modifying articles." "Recognize that articles can be changed by anyone and no individual controls any specific article; therefore, any writing you contribute can be mercilessly edited and redistributed at will by the community."

The proper procedure is to "leave the article alone" with my appropriate contributions. I or others do not have to justify edits to any user; nor, do I have to submit evidence for my edits to anyone.

Unfortunatly, this user has a prior history of attacking others by name-calling (little caesar, troll, etc.), threatening blocks, and such. Perhaps he will learn how to behave and leave the article alone so we can move on with improved citations. 88.84.137.165 (talk) 21:00, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

For the sake of argument, let's postulate that I am an arsehole and you are a saint.

That is not a justification for tagging the article as unreferenced.

For the fifth time, please discuss why you think the contents of the article justify your tags.

WP is not a free-for-all. You cannot just edit articles on a whim and expect that edit to be unchallenged. You are supposed to be able to justify edits based on their correctness, neutrality and relevance when they are challenged. For example, I have provided exactly this type of justification when reverting your edits. Here they are again:

* the article has a long reference list,
* the referenced items are clearly related to significant portions of the article
* this is a citation style which is explicitly endorsed by WP:CIT.

Those are concrete reasons, based on the actual content of the article, and they fully justify returning the article to its previous state.

By contrast, you continue to try to impose your tags while completely ignoring or obfuscating these points, and without making any attempt to justify your own edits. I should be pleased by this?

There is nothing positive about your edits. In all their forms, they have been completely over the top, in that they are inaccurately and unfairly reflective of the actual state of the pre-existing content.

I have, repeatedly, shown you a path to making edits on this point that are fair and balanced: tag the individual statements that justify them, with an explanation as to why in each case.

You might consider the possibility, however distasteful you may find it, that I actually know what I am talking about.

--Chris Bennett (talk) 01:00, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Warned on policy violations

Refer to User talk:Chris Bennett Users do not have to justify edits to Chris Bennett Users do not have to submit evidence to Chris Bennett User:Chris Bennett violates policy on removing tags. 88.84.137.165 (talk) 06:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Let me see if I get this straight:

You are entitled to make whatever edits you like and I cannot ask you to justify them, no matter how much at variance they appear to be with the facts.

I, on the other hand, am not allowed to make edits that revert yours, even though I have provided more than ample justification for doing so, justification you have not attempted to rebut.

If I warn you that your continued insistence on insertng junk tags into this article may eventually lead to admin action, that is "threatening", even though I make it clear I am not taking any such action at this time, and even if I also, repeatedly, suggest other ways to resolve this dispute.

On the other hand, your direct threats to block me, made without making any attempt to find any other solution except blind obedience to your will, are, presumably, reasonable and justified.

Forgve me if I see something wrong with this picture.

I'm undoing your tags again, since I, unlike you, am perfectly happy to explain to anyone who cares to listen why they should be reverted: they are factually wrong, and they deface the article.

I suggest you take a three day time out, go for a walk on the beach, play with your dog or whatever you have to do to calm down, look at this rationally, and see if you can actually come up with a reasoned justification for your edit -- and whether you still care. If you still want to pursue it at that time, then maybe we can discuss it reasonably.

--Chris Bennett (talk) 16:39, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The article has been semi-protected due to edit-warring by various IP editors. Though I agree that repeatedly adding the tags was disruptive, I note that one of them - the one about the article lacking inline citations - was accurate; this article doesn't actually offer inline citations. Not a major deal, certainly, but there is a valid concern there. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 18:39, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Good point, but you beat me to posting (see my note below). Personally I think they're always good idea to prevent these type of challenges, but then again the impression I had from the tags was 'throw it against the wall and see what sticks'. Best, EyeSerene^talk 18:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Article protected

I have protected this article for one week. I strongly urge all editors concerned to discuss changes here on the talk page before edit-warring over tags and the like - skirting around the three-revert rule and making disruptive edits will result in blocks. I would also recommend the IP editor(s) read our policies on original research, verifiability, and neutrality before they tag or remove content. While the article is lacking in inline citations, Wikipedia does not require these where references are given at the end of the article (although some processes, such as Good article review and Featured article review do). EyeSerene^talk 18:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Crappy Article Protected from Any Improvement by Chris Bennett

Campaign to drive away productive contributors: act in spite of policies and guidelines such as Wikipedia:Civility,Wikipedia:No personal attacks, Wikipedia:Ownership of articles, engage in sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry, etc. on a low level that might not exhaust the general community's patience, but that operates toward an end of exhausting the patience of productive rules-abiding editors on certain articles.

I am driven away. No one else was contributing anything. Now this weak article will never be noticed for improvement. Good job of keeping Wikipedia articles in low regard, Chris Bennett!

Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not considered vandalism.

Unless the anal-retentive Chris Bennett freaks out on the trivial adding of a single, justified tag! He'll revert everyone away forever!

If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, consider tagging a sentence by adding the template, a section with

, or the article with

or

.

Do not follow Wikipedia policy; instead, revert that recommended added tag from the onset! It's Chris Bennett, damn it, he's got kangaroos loose in the top paddock!

The claim is not that the article is uncited, but that it could be improved by using Wikipedia's tags to associate references with their respective sections of text.

Odd, Chris "wanker" Bennett and certain admins haven't read the policies WP:V, WP:OR, etc.?

I think inline citations are very important, otherwise it cannot be said on which source every sentence or paragraph is based on. If one is not publishing original research, why shouldn't one be able to make inline citations throughout the text? In my view the template is good (and I use it a lot) because it does promote using inline citations (many of the times I used this template the main article author added inline citation as a result).

Should've listen to WikiTruth! Sorry for even visiting wikipedia...

(Chris Bennett will mark this all up) --

Jesus Christ, GROW UP!!!

All I asked you to do was to JUSTIFY your damn tags.

I warned you you were going about things the wrong way and I tried to tell you what the right way was: explain and justify, and be constructive in your edits. That's not driving you away, that's trying to get you to act as a responsible editor. You chose to push the envelope on this by persistently refusing to do any of it.

It should tell you something about your methods that without any intervention from me the admins you asked to block me came to the same conclusion I did.

--Chris Bennett (talk) 23:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Well I had decided to remove the above comments on the grounds that it was pointless to pursue this any further. However, he who thinks that interlinear response is unpardonable alteration of his talk has denied me the right to remove my own comments.

So be it then. They shall stand. --Chris Bennett (talk) 14:53, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion August 2008

I removed the proposed deletion tag, posted 16th August 2008 by anonymous user 65.78.186.234 for the given reason:

Article cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources, including neologisms and original theories and conclusions. Article subject fails to meet the relevant notability guideline. All attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed.

The article needs inline references. Nonetheless, it is an interesting article which contains specific detail for which references can be sought. If a user believes specific parts of this article are original research it would be useful to challenge those specific parts. I will remove the tag to prevent the deletion of this useful and interesting article. - Crosbiesmith (talk) 13:01, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Doria's Iberian route, as far as I know, remains unpublished and has yet to face critical review, let alone acceptance. Further, its characterization of him as having "found strong persuasive documentary evidence", seems to represent unverified opinion (not shared by me, but that is just as irrelevant). Its inclusion is hard to defend by Wikipedia standards. Likewise, while I do not have all of the references handy, I don't see in the list of references anything that would contain the Coimbra descent.

I agree it would be reasonable to tone down that phrase on NPOV grounds -- why don't you do so? I also agree that it's a pity that whoever added that material didn't include references for it. But the reference list does include a link to the GEN-MED archives and a quick search on key words such as Coimbra or Maia throws up a lot of material which could be added directly, or as a citation by someone who is concerned to do so. --Chris Bennett (talk) 19:57, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I have further concerns over the page as a whole. I am not sure Wikipedia is philosophically suited to this type of material. Based on WP:V, something that is broadly published has a certain standing even if it appears patently ridiculous to one well versed, while a well reasoned and factually correct refutation (or even a well reasoned and factually correct synthesis), if unpublished, has no such standing. This is the difference between factuality and verifiability, Wikipedia's policy being the latter. On the flip side, there is a cadre of truly scholarly 'experts' who feel that most of the western work on DFAs is rife with wishful thinking, names-the-same fallacies and errant assumptions about onomastics. A single page that tries to harmonize this spectrum of opinion while composed under the WP standards of WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR seems likely to be a disservice to accuracy if it can even avoid being trainwreck. 134.121.42.207 (talk) 02:32, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that the content is unverifiable. The article has, I think, a very strong message to the effect that claimed DFA lines have no proof (to the extent that proof is even attempted), and that the results of research to date has been to flesh out reasonable conjectures. In other words, the verifiable material -- and the content of the article -- is not any actual DFA, it's the state of research into DFAs. And that material is (mostly) verifiable through the cited reference list.

To put it another way, why is this article any less suitable for WP than, say, SETI? At least we can be sure that we are all descended from people living in antiquity, the only question is how.

Now, I think it is a legitimate question as to what counts as "published", particularly with regard to material only available on the web. But WP is rife with citations to web-only material. I don't know if Doria has ever published his ideas on paper, but they are available in considerable detail on the web. --Chris Bennett (talk) 19:57, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Verifiability, particularly Reliable Sources and Self-published Sources sections, which address this specific issue. In short, published by third-parties, preferably peer-reviewed, not web pages, blogs or forum posts. A comparison with actual WP pages will show that it is the rare page that actually meets it, but that is the verifiability standard dictated by official policy. (And likewise we both know some material published by third parties that is not fit to wipe with.) The main differences with SETI is that it gets a lot of press, and therefor what few changes occur in methods are usually 'verifiable' through that media coverage. With DFAs, this is rapid changing, and gets very little attention outside of the field, with an independent survey of the type needed appearing rather infrequently (the last of which I am aware, that of Bierbrier in Foundations, took a rather negative view of most of the field), and further, much of the truly off-the-wall stuff is considered below refutation, and hence its contradiction is never 'verifiable'. (Oh, and last I knew, and this was several years ago, Mr. Doria had prepared a draft and shared it with a few people, but had not further pursued publication.) 75.93.168.190 (talk) 21:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC) {same human as posted previously from 134.121.42.207}

So... what exactly are you (whoever you are) proposing to do here? There is some individual (who I assume is not you, based upon relative abilities to engage in rational dialog) who is campaigning to delete the whole article, supposedly on the basis of unverifiability. Do you agree with this? In which case the case needs to stand on rather more than the paragraph on Doria's proposals. It needs at least to take the whole existing reference list into account -- most of which is published outside the web.

Or are you proposing to delete just the paragraph on Doria's proposals because they are only accessible in web-based sources? That might be justifiable based on a narrow reading of WP policy, but we agree that that policy is hardly applied uniformly. It seems a little unfair to be harsh about it in this particular case, especially when there is an alternative of linking to Doria's postings where he lays out his arguments in detail.

Or are you proposing to delete the whole article because the topic doesn't get "media coverage"??? Forgive me, but that's a pretty bizarre argument. WP is riddled with articles about topics that "get very little attention outside of the field". I agree that independent surveys of DFA appear infrequently but they do appear (e.g. Nat Taylor's review article cited in the reference list), and I don't see that it is very relevant whether such surveys take a positive or a negative view of DFA research. WP includes articles on theories that are completely lunatic, like Intelligent Design, or Fomenkoism; and so it should -- and not just because those theories get more publicity than DFA. (Incidentally, I haven't seen the Bierbrier article, I'd be interested in a copy if you could send it to me or give me a citation. It sounds like it should be added to the reference list.)

IMO the existence of the article is perfectly justified. The question posed by DFA is a legitimate, and neutral, historical and genealogical question ("Is it possible to trace descents from antiquity?"). People who have tried to answer this question have recognised it as a field of research. There is published work, some of it rather voluminous and detailed, that consciously addresses specific hypotheses related to that question. Whether some reviewers believe the question is unanswerable, or that it does not need research because it is obviously to be answered in the negative, or that all the research which has been done is poor and misguided (as much if it undoubtedly is), is neither here nor there. --Chris Bennett (talk) 23:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

All I was intending (not proposing) to do was 1) as per Crosbiesmith, "If a user believes specific parts of this article are original research it would be useful to challenge those specific parts" and 2) raise concerns about how WP rules and standards might actually enable the quacks and truly clueless to hijack the page in order to give support for some of the third-party-published yet clearly dead wrong proposed DfAs: for example, Ribagorza/Banu Qasi/Muhammad - published by one of the Augustan rags, but based on a names-the-same chronological impossibility that has never received public refutation outside of sgm (which for WP purposes doesn't count). Following the NPOV and V rules, this line is verifiable (which WP uses as proxy for fact), when it is false. This is one of the reasons I remain ambivalent about the whole WP experiment. Consensus among experts (which approximates 'truth') is not to be arrived at by producing consensus among non-expert editors restricted to published sources. The democratization of knowledge originally meant bringing it to the masses, not using the masses as its source, but that is what WP is looking like more and more, and one can only revert the William the Conqueror page so many times to remove "He was a poopyhead" before you begin to doubt the utility of this 'democratization of knowledge' philosophy. Anyhow, this is not the place for that discussion. As to who I am, well, I am not the other guy, but for reasons I will not go into, I must leave you guessing. 134.121.42.207 (talk) 19:42, 2 September 2008 (UTC) {again, same human}

OK, thanks for the clarification. I fully agree with your concerns on (2), but I don't think the answer is to tear the house down. See my user page.

As to who is the human: I do have guesses.... and I would still like a cite to the Bierbrier article! --Chris Bennett (talk) 20:29, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

AfD notice

AfD notice removed again; please complete the full nomination process correctly if you wish to nominate this article for deletion. Instructions are here; simply adding an AfD notice to the top of the article does not complete the nomination process. Thanks, EyeSerene^talk 07:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I note that the IP user who placed this notice has virtually the same address as one of the addresses used by the individual who insisted on slapping lots of "unreferenced" /"unverifiable" etc tags on this page a few weeks ago, without making any attempt to justify them. I assume this is the same person. I again encourage this individual to stop making ex cathedra judgements and to engage in proper discussion and debate. For an example of a (potentially) productive approach to concerns of this type see the previous topic on this page. --Chris Bennett (talk) 18:17, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Katoch Clan

Not a word about the Katoch clan, the oldest royal family of the world ! Maybe an interesting genealogical route toward the East... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.192.53.65 (talk) 13:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Add it if you think it should be there. But from the article here on them, the claim for their DFA seems to be based on a newspaper account in fractured English about a talk given by a Mongolian diplomat, not a scientist, and not a published written work. Furthermore he acknowledges his views are not mainstream and talks about dinosaurs in Mongolia as if that was somehow relevant, suggesting that either the reporter's account is inaccurate (certainly possible) or the diplomat is either an ignoramus or a kook (also quite possible). So unless you come with a better source, I'd be careful of the wording.

Whose descent

This article doesn't specify whose descent we are talking about. Obviously most of these antique figures will have some living descendents, but I assume we're here talking specifically about them having living descendents among the European, or more specifically British, aristocratic families. It would be good for the article to state this clearly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.245.172.250 (talk) 05:50, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't say whose descent we are talking about because it isn't talking about any specific modern person or group of people. Why do you assume that it is? The article makes clear that it has a European bias because that is where most of the work has been done, but it also talks about Muslim, Indian, Chinese and Japanese descents. --69.241.124.150 22:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC) (Chris Bennett from another PC)

Then why doesn't it mention places/families outside of Old Europe? I really find the dates and names highly specific to a fairly recent set of immigrants to Europe. THis is an interesting topic. But I agree, if it's really about the "royal families" of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Japan, China, India - etc., that needs to be clearer.LeValley 02:24, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

It IS clear. There are 3 possible explanations for the eurocentric bias you note: -More credible information relevant to the topic has been found in Europe than elsewhere. -More people who know about European genealogy have seen fit to contribute. Since this is the ENGLISH wikipedia that wouldn't be surprising. -There is an ethnocentric or racist bigot reverting changes. That is also quite possible. A study of the reversion history might shed light on the question. I made a significant improvement to the Jewish section that was reverted with excuses that made no sense. I wondered if antisemitism (wrong word I know, but give me a better one) might be the reason, or alternately if the reverter as a less-than-normally-bright person who somehow figured the changes as "antisemitic", which is absurd, but people are often stupid, so who knows?

WTF?

This article has serious issues, and I think it should be recycled. While the lead section sounds encyclopaedic and suitably nuanced and qualified, the rest basically reads like an essay. The near-total lack of inline citations makes one suspect WP:OR. The essay's thesis is itself really bizarre (and quite inappropriate for an encyclopaedia), for two reasons. First, it seems to be a guide for people who want to concoct a spurious genealogy, terminating in some arbitrarily chosen era, and are trying to find the least implausible way of doing so. (Oh, you could try the Bagratids. Doesn't work? Well, maybe try Charlemagne.) This is surely not what serious genealogists do. Secondly, all of us are descended from people who lived in antiquity. Heck, all of us are descended from people who lived in the Stone Age. Otherwise we wouldn't be here. So the idea that "descent" from antiquity is some elusive Holy Grail of genealogical research seems misplaced. At a minimum, we're dealing here with a misnomer. Q·L·1968 ☿ 21:39, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I am a "serious genealogist," of about 50 years' experience, as well as a (non-professorial) historian and certified archivist. I've been following the whole DFA debate for a good many years and this article actually is one of the best descriptions of the issues and problems that I have seen. It's balanced, it includes a good relevant bibliography, and it's actually very well written. --Michael K Smith^Talk 13:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it's pretty bad. The definitions section is typical. Have dome some minor clean up but needs a gut rehab. The whole damn definition section should probably be a couple of sentences even after it was redacted for its bible belt understanding of western history to a global perspective. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 00:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Declaration of interest: I wrote the "definitions" section several years ago, and it looks like it has hardly been changed since then.

Would you care to explain and justify your description of "its bible belt understanding of western history to a global perspective"? The point of an extended discussion was to show why the terms "descent" and "antiquity" are culturally loaded, and that any researcher needs to take cultural context into account -- what's to object to in that? Your own comments about the Confucian descent illustrate clearly why this discussion is necessary -- see below.

As for the pejorative "bible belt understanding", well I see no reference to the bible in that section and intended none. FYI my only contact with the bible belt has been the occasional business meeting in places like Atlanta and Memphis. I was raised in a thoroughly secular household and I personally hold secular values. --Chris Bennett (talk) 15:34, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I removed for example descent from Adam and Eve. The reference wasn't personal. I see you've had a long involvement with the article, haven't assessed yet. Secular is good if it means thoroughly reason based. In that case there shouldn't be any difficulty is coming to an understanding that the first and primary meaning of descent here is biological descent, an actual physical ancestral relationship. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 20:55, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand the connection you saw between that Xref and the "definitions" section; I'll stipulate that you were engaging in rhetorical excess. I agree that that Xref should have gone. I didn't remove it because I don't bother to react to every single change that I disagree with on the articles I monitor. (Incidentally, I don't agree with your removal of the Xref to the article on a descent from Charlemagne to the Mughals. It's a very poorly written article, but it is relevant, and the descent itself is fairly solid -- Bierbrier knows what he is talking about. OTOH the Xref to the article on Portugal between 711 and 1112 should go IMO, since it doesn't add anything to the statements of Doria's suggested proto-Portuguese links to the Mamikonians and the Idrisids.)

Whatever. The point at issue at here is your opinion that the "first and primary meaning of descent here is biological descent". Of course this applies if you are looking to use genealogy to support biological applications like detection of genetic defects -- but that is not the case with DFA. And the Western cultural tradition is biological descent, by and large, so the issue rarely arises there. It becomes significant when dealing with genealogies in non-Western cultures which do not use strictly biological notions of descent: should the genealogist impose that definition on the data regardless, or should he or she work within the culture-specific definition? I wrote that "the researcher [must] decide whether to adopt a biological or a cultural notion of descent", and I still hold that view -- deliberately not endorsing either option. You regard only the biological descent as valid, and that's fine -- but that doesn't mean that the discussion of cultural variation should be deleted from the article.

Even Western tradition is not totally biological. The concept that paternity is established by the husband's acceptance of paternity, widespread in European law, is not inherently genetic. A famous case in point: Alfonso XII, great grandfather of the current king of Spain. Any genealogy will show his father as Francis Duke of Cadiz, who accepted paternity, yet it was widely suggested at the time, and with reason, that there were several other biological candidates. (Incidentally, the article Francis, Duke of Cádiz discusses some of the difficulties in establishing or refuting his paternity via DNA techniques.) --Chris Bennett (talk) 22:50, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Verification of Confucian Descent

The paragraph on a possible DFA from Confucius includes the following sentence: "The claim is quite true, the family tree can be proved every generation, and it is likely that some of the descent involves links by adoption." The claim that this descent "can be proved for every generation" implies that there is contemporary documentation, or records that reliably transcribe such documentation, going all the way back to Confucius.

As I understand it the family has been honoured continuously since the beginning of the Han dynasty, so I do not find it hard to believe that there are accurate records since those times. Given the prominence of the family, and the award of noble titles to the heads of the family, I can also believe that the descent is well-supported in the dynastic histories, even in troubled times. This alone would be enough to give the family the oldest documented descent in the world. But has anyone gone to the trouble of verifying that such support exists?

I do wonder about the earliest generations, from Confucius to the start of the Han dynasty: what is the documentation for generations who lived before the burning of the books by the First Emperor? The Burton Watson translation of the Records of the Grand Historian, II:356 n. 8, mentions a certain Kong Jia as "the 8th-generation descendant of Confucius". But how did Sima Qian know that? Do we actually have any records that predate him? --Chris Bennett (talk) 01:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Repeated this query in Talk:Family tree of Confucius in the main line of descent which is a more appropriate place for it. --Chris Bennett (talk) 22:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I've also partially addressed this. The present Kung family's descent from its ancestor is not "proven", it's socially well established. There's an important difference which the refusal of the family to submit to genomic analysis I think makes quite clear. In fact the combination of historical forensics and genomic analysis for such a task probably aren't in place so established should probably be used in place of proven until it is. It might turn out to be forensically impossible to establish descent from a single individual more than a certain number of generations, even when genetic material from that ancestor is available. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 00:37, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

You are missing the larger point here: a genomic analysis would at best be marginally relevant to validating the Kung descent. The objective of a DFA -- the subject of the article -- is to establish "a well-researched, generation-by-generation descent of living persons from people living in antiquity." That's about validating the socially well-accepted (not established) descent, not about proving its biological accuracy (which is the point of the "Definitions" section you are objecting to). A genomic analysis might show that members of the clan shared a common male ancestor N generation back, but it could not validate that descent generation by generation. Even if it did not that would not necessarily invalidate the claimed descent, because it is perfectly acceptable in China for "ancestors" to be by adoption. Unless it was claimed that all adoptions were within the clan, a break in the biological male line shown by genomic analysis would prove nothing at all about about the validity of the Kung descent.

I am proposing to remove the phrase you added about genetic evidence in the introduction because DFA is not about genetics, it's about genealogy. It's probably worth adding a sentence or two (in the "Definitions" section of course) to address this distinction more explicitly. --Chris Bennett (talk) 15:47, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Good, yes, I think you make the difference in thought very clear. To me genetics (biological accuracy) is the matter of fact of genealogy and shared descent from a specific individual is the specific matter of fact in question. The difference between the biological matter of fact and the other thing(s) falls into a number of disciplines but the physical facticity stands over and against all of them on its own as the essential thing which is the subject of the article, i.e. actual descent from some individual who lived 75-100 generations ago or more. I reject the idea that descent by adoption is what is meant by DFA, it's an extension of the concept and essentially a negation of it. An adultery, fraud, or adoption all have the same effect of a breach in a line of biological descent. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 19:27, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Exactly, all sorts of things can cause an accepted genealogical ancestry to diverge from a biological one. I fully understand the desire for an absolutely accurate biological ancestry, but the only way to get that is by DNA analysis of each individual in a claimed descent line, and that data is very rarely available. A genealogist, and especially one interested in remote ancestry, must work with a lower standard of proof. This is done by evaluating documentation, preferably contemporary, and that documentation reflects the beliefs and prejudices of the writer, which may not be shared by (or even known to) the researcher. The end result is only as good as Rumsfeld's infamous unknown unknowns, but that doesn't mean the exercise should be abandoned. It just means that there is no absolute guarantee of biological accuracy, and you either accept that going in or you don't bother trying.

Example: A number of years ago I saw an inscription in Ostia which described the emperor Septimius Severus as son of Marcus Aurelius son of Antoninus Pius son of Hadrian son of Trajan son of Nerva (it may have stopped at Trajan, I forget exactly). Factually true -- once one understands that every single filiation is by adoption (and Severus' adoption by Marcus was even posthumous). In this case we know from other sources what happened biologically (or rather, what was generally believed to have happened biologically at the time). However, if these sources didn't exist then this inscription would be understood, not just as contemporary evidence of Severus' ancestry (which it is), but as a biological filiation.

Just so with the Kung line: if no source mentions that a filiation is by adoption, and no explicit statement of a biological filiation, then there is no way to know whether it is by adoption or biological. As I understand it, both types of filiation are regarded as equally valid. A genealogical evaluation of whether the Kung line is a valid Chinese DFA would have to be done on the up-front understanding that the descent is conditioned by this concept, and any genomic testing supporting such an evaluation must also understand that what is being evaluated is a Chinese concept of descent, not a biological one. --Chris Bennett (talk) 21:45, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

It's false that every member of the current Kung family would need to be sampled. Statistical methods will be more than sufficient on a relatively small but appropriately chosen sample of such a large set. The difficult thing is establishing the characteristics of the ancestor's genome that should be in the descendents. But just basic sampling and analysis could tell if there was in fact common descent from a single ancestor, whether or not the one in question, or if the group had roughly the same variation as a random set of the same size of arbitrarily selected Han Chinese. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 03:06, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Exactly so. You could test a claim that there is a common biological ancestor in the patrilineal line, and estimate how far back, but that's the limit. You cannot verify the claimed DFA -- i.e. the claimed generation-by-generation descent -- because you do not have access to the DNA of each individual in the claimed descent line. [Which is what I said you would need. Where did you get the idea that I thought that "every member of the current Kung family would need to be sampled"?] Genetics and genealogy are related, but they are not the same, and this article is about genealogy, not genetics. --Chris Bennett (talk) 16:46, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

From your saying above "the only way to get that is by DNA analysis of each individual in a claimed descent line, and that data is very rarely available". 72.228.189.184 (talk) 16:11, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

In genealogy, but apparently not in genetics, a "claimed descent line" is a set of claimed ancestors in a direct line. That is, each member of the line is parent (or child, depending which end you start from) of the next person in the line -- e.g. father, grandfather, great-grand-father etc. These are the people who it would be necessary to obtain DNA samples from if you wished to confirm that descent line using genetic techniques, and only these people. Obviously, most of these individuals, indeed almost all of them, are not current members of the family. Almost all of them are dead; in the case of the Kung descent, most of them have been dead for a very long time. While current members of the family may all claim descent from the same common ancestor (e.g. Confucius), the claimed descent lines involved will usually differ between members -- that is, there will be more than one claimed descent line. Only DNA from those current members who claim to be from the descent line under test would have any relevance to verifying that line. The others can all be ignored. I hope this clarifies the term for you. --Chris Bennett (talk) 23:24, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Article name

On 27 May, 99801155KC9TV renamed this article to be Descent from antiquity (genealogical concept). The editorial note attached to the move simply says "disambiguation".

This move is about as necessary as renaming Solar system Solar system (astronomical concept), or God God (theological concept). There is no ambiguity -- the term is not used except in a genealogical context. For readers unfamiliar with the term, the first paragraph, for all its faults, makes it very clear this is a genealogical topic:

Descent from Antiquity (DFA) is the project of establishing a well-researched, generation-by-generation descent of living persons from people living in antiquity. It is an ultimate challenge in prosopography and genealogy.

Accordingly I have restored the article to its original title. If 99801155KC9TV or anyone else still feels that the change is necessary, please discuss it here first.

Since 99801155KC9TV didn't elaborate the claim of ambiguity, I can only guess, but I guess that (s)he made the move based on the discussion above about using genetic techniques to verify a descent line. To the extent that that discussion affects the article, it relates to the content of the article, not the classification of the topic under discussion. I.e. it might be desirable to add some words to the discussion of notions of "descent", but that's all. Personally I don't think it is necessary but in view of that discussion and this move I will draft something. --Chris Bennett (talk) 23:53, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

• Seconded. --Ghirla^-трёп- 08:30, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Prinke

About "Dr. Rafal T. Prinke, a well-known Polish genealogist". Is this person a reliable mainstream source, or are they fringe? I had a quick look around and found stuff like this, this, and this. So, should any of Prinke's genealogical claims be taken at face value? bobrayner (talk) 20:29, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Interesting links. Still, an interest in fringe subjects like the occult, hermetic symbolism or astrology is not inherently a disqualification as a reliable genealogist, any more than expertise in computer science. I can't really help you on an overall assessment, but I did discuss his Kata theory with him on GEN-MEDIEVAL, and I have read an English version of his article on Kata, many years ago, and as I recall it struck me as being reasonable, for what that's worth. It turns out I still have a copy I could email you if you wish. I also have been given a copy of a genealogical book of his, it's in Polish (which is probably why I was given it, the donor doesn't read Polish either), so I can't really assess it, but it does look like a professional genealogy. --Chris Bennett (talk) 21:56, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Merovingians

Bobrayner reverted my attempt to restore a statement that a Carolingian/Merovingian link cannot be proven, with the comment "If it's not possible to make that link, why add it to the article? Don't just add a bunch of unsupportable claims just to bridge a couple of other separate claims. That's the whole problem with this article."

In response:

1) There is an enormous difference between "not possible" (= provably impossible) and "not proven" (= maybe, maybe not, but here is the evidence: you decide). None of the lines described in the article are proven lines. They are proposed lines -- that's the whole reason why DfA is a research activity. The proposals are (or should be) grounded in documentary evidence, but there are still reasons why they are only proposed and not proven. In this case, given that there was well over a century of close interaction between the two families it is hardly unreasonable to suppose that a link existed. The proposals that exist are plausible, and not unsupportable. They are supported by charters and the like, but include currently unverifiable assumptions, such as that two people named X in two contemporary documents are the same person, or that two people who own the same property with similar names are likely to be closely related.

2) Why add it to the article? Because it explains how one could possibly trace an ancestry from Charlemagne to the Gallo Roman aristocracy. Without it there is no reason at all to discuss Gallo-Roman aristocracy in a DfA context. Why did you keep them? By your logic you should have removed both. Indeed why even mention Charlemagne once you have concluded that it will never be possible to trace his ancestry to antiquity? As things currently stand they must all be retained, because they are all segments of a proposed DfA: you can't eliminate one and pretend you still have a DfA proposal.

3) The whole problem with the critics of this article is that they seem to think it is about asserting that some ancestry is a proven DfA. It isn't. It's about exposing what the proposals are and why they are only proposals, which means, among other things, that you don't stop with the first problem you find: the goal is antiquity. So you go over the whole proposal, from soup to nuts, and identify all the problem areas, because all of them need to be resolved favourably in order to prove a particular DfA proposal. Until a problem is resolved you can't know whether the outcome will be favourable or not. Undoubtedly this is not being said clearly enough. But I also have the clear impression that many people object to this article simply because they don't like the concept. --Chris Bennett (talk) 22:27, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Jewish descent

Bobrayner removed the statement of a proposed decent from the Exilarchs via the counts of Septimania, stating "if Kelley's claim is known to have been based on a false reading, why are we repeating it?"

On Zuckermann's specific claim, one reason to keep it is to illustrate that DfA research is not just a pile of wishful thinking but that there is serious critical research that goes into it: it is actually possible to disprove a DfA proposal, and this has been done. Another reason is that the Zuckermann proposal got a fair amount of publicity in genealogy netlist circles, and it is useful to have a clear statement in a well-known site that the claim has been disproved.

I think you also threw out the baby with the bath water. If I recall the Jewish Encyclopedia correctly, Babylonian exilarchs existed in Baghdad at least until the sack by Hulagu in 1258, and there is a modern Syrian Jewish family which claims an Exilarch descent. Yes, I know, I should add this (properly sourced and cited) to the article; still, I think a note that a Davidic descent via the exilarchs is a possible DfA is worth retaining. --Chris Bennett (talk) 22:38, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

PS: (a) An Exilarch descent itself would be a DFA, even without the Davidic part, which is actually unverifiable. (b) Why remove what you removed but leave in the statement about the Solomonid descent, which the article clearly states is unverifiable? Your criteria for including or excluding particular proposals is inconsistent. --Chris Bennett (talk) 02:09, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I made 2 edits of this section a day or 2 ago. I see they have both been reverted. My additions and the previous version reverted to can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Descent_from_antiquity&diff=674816675&oldid=674803095 If I understand that page correctly the reversion is being justified with the expression "unreliable source". That is utter nonsense. The earlier version of the business about the Cohens, etc, which is what was reverted to, gives no source whatever. But as it stands, that sentence is vague, easily misunderstood, and clearly extratopical. Strictly speaking it should probably simply be deleted since it has no bearing on "descent from antiquity" within the meaning of that phrase as used in this article. Obviously we are ALL descended from ancient ancestors - this article is about lines of descent that can be traced through SPECIFIC named individuals with no missing links. It doesn't mean merely providing evidence that some individual descended from some other specific individual that lived in the ancient past, without demonstrating the SPECIFIC path of descent, with all links identified as individuals. But rather than delete it (and I agree it is interesting and SOMEWHAT related), I clarified it, indicating both the nature of the evidence and stating exactly what it is evidence of, which is NOT DFA. It is absurd to pretend that a vague and misleading statement doesn't need to be referenced but a clarification of it can't be allowed without going to the trouble of looking up the sources the original author of the statement didn't bother with. Ten minutes with Medline can probably find the paper expounding the genetic evidence that the cohanim (not all of which are named Cohen) are descended in an unbroken patrilineal-only line from a common ancestor who lived at about the right time to be the biblical Aaron that it is SUPPOSED to be, but frankly I'm not getting paid to. If you don't want any information here that isn't footnoted, fine, but apply that dictum consistently - don't waive the requirement for the original statement just because it is vague, extratopical, and misleading.

On the other item, I cited a book published in 2004, "The Lurie Legacy", which I believe does make specific claims that are totally on topic. I also indicated sensible reasons for skepticism about the claims. Possibly whoever reverted it thought it was just too fruitcake to be worthy of plugging, even with a caveat. If whoever reverted it would state their reasons plainly I might even agree, but it deserves more that a casual dismissal. And whether the book is worthy of notice or not my STATEMENT, regarding the assertions made in a moderately well known book, is certainly NOT unsourced or unreliably sourced. I gave the title, the year of publication, the author's name, and some biographical info. Even if the book is a pack of lies, my statement is still true, and not unsourced. Nor did I present the author's claims as facts, but specifically indicated reasons for skepticism. Aknowledging the existence of a widely accepted claim is not the same as endorsing it. And unlike the business about the cohanim, the authors claims ARE on topic. It might be argued the book is insufficiently notable. I am open to argument to that effect. Personally I suspect the guy is a credulous fruitcake, but he is a fruitcake with a substantial following apparently, and perhaps deserves notice AND rebuttal if only for that reason. I think whoever reverted my changes should justify his actions.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.96.210.230 (talk) 04:41, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

UPDATE: That was nearly 2 months ago and the person who reverted my amplification of the Jewish section never offered a word of justification. Clearly the statement "Membership of a number of lineages who bear the names "Cohen" and "Kahn" could well signify descent from the ancient tribe of Levi." is extratopical and if the lawyer who reverted to this doesn't understand that he needs to read the article more carefully, and if he still can't understand it, he needs to stick to editing articles in his field of expertise and maybe in his native language. What I offered the first time included information (the Lurie hypothesis) that was clearly within the scope of the topic as defined and was clearly referenced. I added material to the claim about the Cohanim being descended from the biblical Aaron that at least made it clear exactly what was being claimed. I don't have much motivation to defend Lurie although those ideas clearly ARE on topic. But if someone wants to take it out, I'm not going to engage in an edit war. But this claim about the Cohanim, since it has NO BEARING on DFA as here defined, doesn't really belong here. And if it IS to be included it needs to be clearly stated so people can see exactly what is being claimed. Left vague, given the context, it implies a falsehood. No Jewish person is claiming a traceable generation-by-generation, with no links un-named, path of descent from contemporary cohanim to Aaron. Nor is anyone claiming that there is any reasonable possibility of tracing such a lineage. Better not to have a Jewish section if any material relevant to the topic of the article is redacted from it, the only material in it is misleading, and any attempt to render it less so is going to be reverted.

I can't help but wonder what the motivations were in reverting this section after I improved it. As I pointed out above, the claimed reason is nonsensical. Is this anti-semitism or just ignorance?

Definitions section

Bobrayner deleted the entire definitions section as OR.

I thought someone might make this accusation when I stated in the AfD discussion that I couldn't find a discussion that related these issues to DfA. I did think I might at least be given the courtesy of an opportunity to discuss the matter, but no, the section was instantly vaporised, without even an invitation to talk about it. Yet I'm supposed to be the DfA hardass!

I was very careful to include and even to stress the words "in relation to the issues discussed in that section" in the AfD discussion. These issues are certainly not OR, and they are related to DfA. It is verifiably true that:

• Terms of relationship such as "uncle" or "cousin" may change radically in meaning over time.
• Adoptions may not be distinguished from biological births in the available documents
• Births result from undetected adulteries [Jared Diamond cites a study in Brooklyn which claimed a rate of 10%!]
• Leo VI's mother, Eudokia Ingerina, was married to the future Basil I while still mistress of Michael III at the time of his birth.
• Genetic testing techniques are of limited utility in verifying a particular genealogical descent
• Genetic testing of the Kohanim did support the claim of male-line descent from a common male ancestor
• Antiquity in Europe is widely supposed to end in 476
• Antiquity is also thought of as "classical" antiquity
• There are Irish and Welsh descents considered reliable to the 5th century
• European concepts of historical antiquity do not apply to non-European societies

The point made in the section, based on these facts, is that DfA research must take such issues into account when deciding whether a given proposed descent is a "descent from antiquity". Yes I haven't seen this stated explicitly in a third-party source, but is this really original research? It seems to me that, once you have laid out the verifiable (or, in the case at least of the last bullet, self-evident) facts, it is just a statement of the obvious. --Chris Bennett (talk) 23:02, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, what you describe above is obviously WP:OR, you have taken a collection of verifiable facts and used them in a way that isn't found in a reliable source. Your comment at the AfD, "I am not aware of a single source that clearly defines the term in relation to the issues discussed in that section, which is why I wrote it", shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the original research policy. Have you done anything similar in other sections? --92.4.177.142 (talk) 15:08, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

You know, you're absolutely right. I continually need to be reminded that WP editors are required to be parrots, and that the slightest sign of an ability to think is not to be tolerated if any other editor dislikes what you have written for any reason at all. Silly me, I still suffer from the delusion that there is value to possessing knowledge of a subject sufficient to allow exercise of critical judgement, and expecting others to do the same, as is required of article authors in traditional encyclopedias. I even hold the heretical belief that imparting that knowledge is more important in an encyclopedia than strict conformance to some overly-bureaucratic and widely-abused citation policy. But no doubt if I hang around WP long enough I'll be cured of these insanities. Forget I mentioned it -- after all, why would any reader of this article need or want to understand that there are subtleties in the meaning of the phrase anyway? They might start thinking about the topic, and we can't have that.

As to your question: No. --Chris Bennett (talk) 21:05, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me that the article is substantially improved by the definitions section and if this goes against normal interpretations of WP policies, perhaps we should join in dicussions about how to improve the policies. It should be obvious to everyone that improving WP as a resource should be our primary goal. Mellsworthy (talk) 20:47, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Varia

[New heading since this discussion is wandering away from the original topic.]

I'm also not sure you should have inserted your own primary research into the article, "Chris Bennett proposed a conjecture...", per this edit of yours. Is the Journal of Ancient and Mediæval Studies peer reviewed? I cannot find any mention of a peer review process on its website. Nor am I seeing any scholarly cites of it on Google Scholar. --92.4.177.142 (talk) 22:12, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

The subject is relevant to DFA, and AFAIK my paper is the only article that has ever been written on it. WP does allow one to refer to one's own work (for now, anyway; no doubt that will change) provided it is of an acceptable standard. The paper is heavily based on "reliable sources", such as the work of the Assyriologist Grant Frame. As the WP article notes, I make no bones about it being only informed speculation, which is OK since DFA is currently all about formulating plausible conjectures. I also stand on my track record: I have had many articles published on ancient genealogical and chronological topics in well-known peer-reviewed journals, including co-authored and invited pieces. My conscience is clear that the mention of a possible Babylonian descent, and the reference to the article making the case for it, are completely appropriate for a WP article.

Now, JAMS is not a peer-reviewed journal (as far as I know) and the quality of their articles is highly variable. IMO many are absolute rubbish. It is also not on the normal scholarly circuit. That, and academic disinterest in the topic, is why you won't find cites to this piece in Google Scholar. [Another JAMS piece I wrote, an extended review of David Rohl's theories, is cited in academic literature, but that's because it was republished on the web.]

So, I argue that the journal may not be a "reliable source" but certain articles within it -- including this one -- are. You may feel that the unreliability of the journal is enough to trigger a WP policy violation resulting in an automatic axing of both the statement and the reference. Or you may feel you wish to form your own opinion of the referenced article; I'd be happy to email you a copy. The choice is yours: do you want to be a WP bureaucrat or do you want to be a rebel and exercise your own powers of judgement? --Chris Bennett (talk) 02:40, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Leaving aside the reliability of that particular paper for now, my concern is that WP:WEIGHT has not been followed. In other words, is it due weight to include material on this DfA conjecture (and perhaps others) with reference only to the primary source (that might be considered non-reliable)? Unless a reliable secondary source discusses this conjecture, it shouldn't really be in the article, as it is very difficult to gauge its impact and reception in the field. --92.4.177.142 (talk) 18:39, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

A single sentence of 25 words is giving the point undue weight!? Give me a break. If you really need a letter-of-the-law policy-based response, the relevant general guideline in WP:WEIGHT is that an aspect of the subject should be given a weight "appropriate to its significance to the subject". That's the weight that this sentence gives this particular proposal, which only concerns an ancillary question: how far back might it be possible to go into antiquity. --Chris Bennett (talk) 21:10, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Significance in that quote refers to how a work is received in reliable secondary and tertiary sources, not your own assessment of significance, especially if the primary source might not be considered reliable. Moving on, have all the conjectured DfAs in the article been discussed in reliable secondary sources? --92.4.177.142 (talk) 22:43, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

If we are going to be policy geeks, we can't choose the interpretation that suits us, we have to stick to the wording that's given. The wording here is "significance to its subject", not "how a work is received in reliable secondary and tertiary sources" -- a rare instance of a WP policy that allows content to be considered on its merits instead of only by its place in the echo chamber of "reliable sources". The section in which the policy is stated assumes that there are "majority" and "minority" viewpoints -- presumably, the source of your point about how the work is received -- and spends many words on how to assess weight in such a context. But, the actual guideline mentions neither the notion of controversy nor reception in reliable secondary and tertiary sources, it only mentions "the subject". To the extent that "majority" and "minority" viewpoints are relevant to the guideline as stated, it obviously only applies where there are at least two viewpoints in the literature. In this case there is, so far as I know, only one, so one must actually consider the significance of the item in relation to its subject.

Again, we are only talking about a single sentence of 25 words for god's sake. Its actual weight in its actual context is hardly inappropriate, whatever WP:WEIGHT may say.

As to your next question I can only vouch for the proposals I included or (mostly) expanded myself, and IMO they do. I do not know whether the others do or not, since I haven't followed this topic at all closely for several years. You could try asking the people who inserted them, they should be traceable through the history log. --Chris Bennett (talk) 00:51, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

To be clear, the issue of you inserting the sentence on your own work is not a big issue for me. I just noted that it probably wasn't a good idea for you to do so, as it very likely doesn't meet policy requirements and especially as people have complained about ownership. As to weight, read more of the policy. In the first sentence you will see significance refers to reliable sources. Also note, "Once it has been presented and discussed in reliable sources, it may be appropriately included", which is why I refer to secondary and tertiary sources. Your conjecture has been presented (maybe not in a reliable source), but has not been discussed. Essentially your conjecture is in a minority of one in reliable sources, and likely not even that because of reliability issues with the primary source. Per Wales' third bullet point in the weight policy it should not appear in the article. --92.4.177.142 (talk) 16:35, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Nor is it a big issue for me, in itself. My larger issue, as should be clear by now, is the blind and mechanical application of "policy" with no consideration of actual content. I know something about this topic because I have personally read and researched many of the key items in the literature, researched some others relevant issues, and have participated in various debates on it in soc.genealogy.medieval which included input from well-respected historians and genealogists -- though I haven't really kept up with it for several years now. Six years ago, based on that knowledge and expertise, which I thought (correctly or otherwise) was likely to be rare amongst WP editors, I added some material to this article, in the underlying belief that the purpose of WP, like print encyclopedias, was to impart knowledge.

Whatever may have been the case then, it seems pretty clear that the purpose of WP now is not to impart knowledge of a subject but to aggregate the so-called "wisdom of the crowd" about that subject. If that aggregation happens to be true and reasonably comprehensive (which it is much of the time) so much the better, since that is where actual value lies, but, in principle, knowledge and expertise are irrelevant to WP: all that matters is "verifiability not truth". That being so, actual knowledge and expertise in a corner subject such as this one, where the crowd is very small, is of no interest or value. To my mind, there is something very wrong with that.

In Talk:Descent from antiquity#Proposed deletion August 2008, an IP editor (whose identity I do know and whose expertise I respect) made a similar point more generally ("This is one of the reasons I remain ambivalent about the whole WP experiment. Consensus among experts (which approximates 'truth') is not to be arrived at by producing consensus among non-expert editors restricted to published sources.") At the time, when WP policy statements were not quite so restrictive as they are now (and most WP editors seemed less dogmatic), I was still fairly sanguine about the prospects of coming to a sensible result case by case; I'm much less so now. But the problem is still something which could be easily fixed, by being just a little intelligently lenient in the application of "policy" when appropriate, which is why I am trying to push that point. You seem to disagree, the crowd certainly does. --Chris Bennett (talk) 01:05, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, your argument here seems to point in the direction of agitating to change WP policy so that we can prevent obvious improvements from being edited away. Anticipating your own counter-argument, obviously there is no policy that can work for all circumstances if the people executing the policy do not act responsibly in assessing the consequences of following policy to slavishly. However, there is surely room for making the policies themselves clearer about the degree of looseness and careful judgement with which they should be employed. Not that I am a fan of the US Constitution in all ways, but the elasticity of the Necessary and Sufficient Clause is what has made it possible for the US to function as a nation. No less should WP take care that its policies are loose enough to allow what is good. Mellsworthy (talk) 22:07, 2 March 2013 (UTC

   A couple of minor points re the above ^:
   1. The reason that "Necessary and Sufficient Clause" link goes nowhere is because there is no such part of the U. S. Constitution. There is a part often called the "Necessary and Proper Clause". The distinction between the 2 concepts is sufficient that I think it is proper to point that out. It is NOT a blanket "the government can do anything" power like Commons has in the UK, and doesn't really grant powers to the federal government so much as make explicit the powers clearly implied by the "enumerated powers" and subsidiary to them.
   2. Using "to" to mean "too" is an error too. Even I make mistakes sometime. Et tu, too, apparently. ;-)

Expert requested

Experts are requested to address the discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Descent from antiquity, Can an expert please clarrify if the subject matter presented meet WP:NOT and WP:VERIFY? -Wikishagnik (talk) 04:40, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Hope it is not deleted - problems aside, i was looking for the answer to a question and it gave me a basic summary of the answer - that there's no proven connection, though there is some creative guesswork. Searching around I did not find anything that contradicted it, and it was useful information not generally kept in the same place, which *to me* is part of the value of Wikipedia.96.246.247.53 (talk) 10:12, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Doria's Maia proposal

Looking over the references, I don't see anything that covers this proposal. Perhaps I've missed something? --92.4.177.142 (talk) 23:28, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

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Clarification request

"Another such case for descent" is the way the section on the New World starts. This is unclear to me. Such as the African case, I suppose -- but in what respect? Kdammers (talk) 01:54, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

It just means 'another opportunity for a claim to descent from antiquity'. Yes, it is poorly written, but that is the least of the problems with this article (e.g. Original Research, arbitrary selection of lines, poor referencing, balance . . . ). Agricolae (talk) 02:11, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

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New additions

To whom it may concern:

Hello. I was just wondering whether it would be alright if I added two new potential routes to the page.

One, a reference to Americans descended from the colonist Christopher Branch and his own descent from Charlemagne, Henry I of England, Edward I of England and Edward III of England, can be referenced using a pedigree for the athlete Rick Arrington that's already been used as a reference on his own page (the pedigree is actually his granddaughter Dakota Fanning's). There is also an alternative Ancestry.com. pedigree that links Dakota's sister Elle to Edward III and, by way of him, to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

The second one, a route back to semi-mythical kings of New Zealand through membership of contemporary Maori tribes, would be a lot like the two African routes and the Aaronic sub-route that are described elsewhere on the page. I know that the weight of verifiability rests on documentation, and I wouldn't have a problem with qualifying the Maori claims as is done with the other potential routes here, but I think that it's kind of odd that they haven't been mentioned considering how important Maori genealogy is to Kiwi culture.

I would ordinarily have simply added these potential routes without asking first, but seeing as how this topic has already led to quite a bit of bloodshed here on the talk page, I thought that it would be disrespectful to unilaterally do so. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.112.20.217 (talk) 15:18, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

There must be millions of persons with proven descent from Charlemagne, and the Christopher Branch route of which you speak is neither particularly notable nor relevant to this article, which is about postulated routes from Charlemagne (or other historical figures with proven descent to today) to antiquity. For these reasons, I don't think that it would be appropriate to add a reference to Christopher Branch or any other additional descendants of Charlemagne.

With respect to your other query, regarding semi-legendary kings of New Zealand and descent to Maoris of today, I think that it will depend on exactly how legendary such "semi-legendary" kings are and whether you can cite reliable sources for your conclusions. Could you share with us what you were thinking of adding to the article? AuH2ORepublican (talk) 15:52, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Regarding the Charlemagne descent, definitely not. As AuH2ORepublican pointed out, there is nothing special about descent from Charlemagne. As to the Maori one, I have to say, I think this page needs fewer descents, not more. Seeing how it has become a dumping ground for everyone's pet theory, I am seriously regretting arguing not to delete it when it was up for AfD. I would much prefer if this page was limited to the genealogical concept in general, rather than trying to show all the different specific claims from all the different continents. Agricolae (talk) 16:22, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm basically in agreement with User:Agricolae. I've removed the Arrington source as it was based on a defunct persona blog and a defunct website, which might have belonged to a Fanning or a Fanning fan. (sorry). Doug Weller talk 16:33, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough concerning the source on Arrington. For argument's sake, though, would an Ancestry.com. reference to a Christopher Branch line as a sample of American claims (which are admittedly numerous) in general meet with everyone's approval, or is there a definite aversion to Branch and the colonial Americans specifically?

As to the Maoris, I was just going to speak about them in the same way that the Chinese and the Japanese have already been spoken about. Maybe I can go and do some research in preparation, then later include any proposed Maori routes here on the talk page as a preliminary action?

As far as the "semi-legendary" qualifier goes, the further back in history that you go, the greater the chance that the accounts about certain people tend to become significantly more mythopoetic in nature. Thus, Charlemagne could supposedly heal the sick and Muhammad (peace be upon him) allegedly climbed up to Heaven on a golden chain. Due to this, I'm of the opinion that "semi-legendary" is therefore a relative term, and we should treat all claims in the same manner on this page.

Finally, in reference to whether or not the page should be deleted, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to disagree. The page has merit in my opinion, in so much as it shows that different cultures claim DfAs and all of their claims are equally difficult to verify. You look at the Muslims, the Jews, the Welsh, everybody... Even my fellow Yorubas. Supposed DfAs exist everywhere. There already is a genealogy page, and that one is great, but claims to DfAs deserve to be spoken of on a page of their own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.112.26.228 (talk) 21:40, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

The problem with this is that the concept of a DfA was coined and is predominantly used in the genealogical community to refer to a specific context, Europe, where it is precisely because reliably-sourced descents from antiquity don't exist there that it is such a topic for discussion. And it is that discussion that makes the argument for retention of the page (the argument I made at the time - genealogists use the term, in this context). This is the usage that justifies there being a page, but it is a very specific usage. There have been legends and traditional pedigrees and invented pedigrees that purport to trace to antiquity bouncing around since biblical times, but that is not what a DfA is. It is specifically a genealogical descent that is based on reliable contemporary or near-contemporary sources. A semi-legendary descent is by definition not a DfA, as the term is used. This page is just misusing an arguably-notable term as a coatrack to talk about global genealogical legends of deep ancestry. Agricolae (talk) 19:32, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Ancestry.com should not be used as a source for anything. It is a chimera, which includes, 1) user-submitted information, which is to be viewed as self-published and hence not reliable; 2) primary records, the use of which would constitute Original Research, and 3) published genealogical sources which (for those not themselves self-published) should be directly cited rather than citing the host.

Mention of anyone's descent from Charlemagne is again missing the point. It is the frustration of the millions of people who can trace descent from the Carolingians over their inability to go any further (with reliable records) that gave rise to the DfA, which is referring to being able to bridge or bypass the genealogical hurdle represented by the Dark Ages. The descent of any specific person from Charlemagne is non-noteworthy in this context. Naming a specific descendant of Charlemagne here, just as an example, is equivalent to naming one arbitrarily-selected Parisian in our article on the European Union. Agricolae (talk) 19:32, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

All acknowledged, and I suppose that I see the point, but this then throws up two other problems:

If the page is going to remain as it now is, why make it about Charlemagne and nobody else? Why is the sample route the one given, especially when the page as it previously stood made it clear that even here there are problems?

Secondly, I don't think that we agree where it comes to the ownership of words. DfA was developed in relation to Europe, and that is how it MUST remain, so let's cut out the Chinese - who have one of the best documented individual pedigrees in the whole world. If we're saying that we don't like the fact that some of their forebears are semi-legendary, they're not the only ones guilty of that. As I've pointed out previously, so is Charlemagne.

No, Charlemagne is not semi-legendary, he is fully historical - you are misusing the term to apply it to anyone about whom legends have arisen. As to ownership of words, words only become notable Wikipedia topics when they have a specific meaning, not based on generic usage. 'Yellow Submarine' is a notable Beatles song, while 'yellow submarine' just describes anything underwater that reflects light of particular wavelengths, none of which are appropriate to describe on the page about the Beatles record. The term 'Descent from Antiquity' is a notable term of art that describes a generation-by-generation pedigree, fully documented by contemporary or near-contemporary records, coined in the context of medieval Europe where no such descents can actually be constructed - it has a rather specific meaning as it is used in the community that coined it. The phrase 'descent from antiquity' is just a set of consecutive words describing a very old lineage that has no specific meaning, and hence is not notable any more than 'really long pedigree', or 'ancestry to the mists of time'. It can't both be notable because it is a specific term of art, and also be generic to encompass all of the other things that string of words could be used to describe. Agricolae (talk) 23:02, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Why is the Charlemagne the one that remains? Because of the three European ones listed, the Welsh one isn't a Descent from Antiquity at all, just an old genealogical legend. The Iberian one has never, as far as I am aware, been published as a Descent from Antiquity - separately, people have published trying to connect the Visigoths back to antiquity, and someone (not part of the scholarly community pursuing DfAs) published the line of the Maia back to the Visigoths, but I have never seen it published as a single DfA route. It appears that an editor was aware of some personal communications between two scholars and put this in the article - that does not pass muster with WP:V. That leaves the Charlemagne speculation, which falls into one of the two general routes DfAs usually follow. However, I would be just as happy to remove it too. Finally, you say that with this line 'even here are problems' - there are problems with every DfA. The whole search for DfAs is aspirational - there are none that do not, at some point, depend on hand-waving and speculation. (And I didn't change the description of the Charlemagne line at all, so if it was clear before that it had problems it should be just as clear now.) Agricolae (talk) 23:16, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Alright then. If we say that Charlemagne is fully historical, and simply has a body of legends attached to his person, wouldn't the same be true of Confucius? Or Ojin? I've let the Maori thing go, and I'm not even bringing up my own ancestor here, but it seems like a shame to leave the Asian lines out simply because of where they originated. That's all that I'm saying.

Thanks for replying, though.

The Asian lines are not being excluded because they are Asian, they are being excluded because they are not typically discussed as Descents from Antiquity by those who use the term. The term means what it means, in the context in which it was coined and in which it is used. It is not for us as editors to look somewhere else and decide that though the researchers who use the term do so referring to something different, this other thing in a different context really means the same thing. Once you allow that, then any editor can decide that anything is 'really the same thing' and you end up with the mess that this page had turned into. Find for me someone who published a review of Descents from Antiquity who included that elaborate list of descents from other parts of the world and we will have something to talk about. Agricolae (talk) 14:34, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Agricolae is absolutely correct here, that's our policy. Doug Weller talk 16:49, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I'll take you up on that offer. If I come across a reference such as the one that you've spoken about, I'll bring it to your attention.

Not an offer. Just a statement of how Wikipedia works (or at least is supposed work) - content is driven by sources, not by editors reaching their own conclusions. Agricolae (talk) 21:16, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Major change to the Japanese cadet line shortly before the literate period

Bob Page wrote:

According to the article " However, contemporary Japanese records do not commence until several centuries after Ōjin's time, and the tradition reports a major change to a cadet line shortly before the start of the literate period." What is the major change to the cadet line? I can't find the source for it or what change they are talking about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bob Page (talk • contribs) 05:26, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

• The Japanese imperial line that's currently ruling is descended from an usurper who overthrew his relative, the genealogical head of their dynasty. I forget which emperor exactly it was that did this, but I think that that case is what this excerpt is referring to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.112.11.215 (talk) 08:13, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• • I went to go check. The cadet line referred to is the Northern Court. The rival Southern Court was supplanted in the medieval period, and a descendant of the Southerners actually asserted that he - and not the Northerner Hirohito - was the rightful emperor after World War II. His claim eventually came to nothing more than a sad footnote to the war as a whole. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.112.20.72 (talk) 02:08, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Article Comment

I was going to add specific DFA lines referenced by Settipani and others, but upon reading it the article sums up very succinctly where it all stands, what progress there has been, and the limitations that exist, particularly with the likely DFAs through the Roman/Byzantine-Northern European connections (mostly Frankish/French, some Spanish Visigoths and others). I really hope that section in particular doesn't get altered and I will patrol it to try to keep that form intact. A side note: it must be unique how the line of Confucius was so officially recorded even through the various "Dark Ages" that arise in any given place in the course of 2,500 years. --JLavigne508 (talk) 12:39, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Old content

This article is substantially smaller than it used to be due to a lot of unreliable content being removed. I took the liberty of creating a separate article with the content not removed in userspace User:MaitreyaVaruna/Descent from antiquity. I think it might be worth somehow including this content on Wikipedia as it is useful to see at least all of these ideas compiled together regardless of their truth. Maybe an article on list of pseudogenealogical theories or something like that? MaitreyaVaruna (changing name to Immanuelle) please tag me (talk) 00:44, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

This is unworkable. There are hundreds of thousands of pseudogenealogical theories out there. Hell, a single book by Settipani has several hundred such theoretical connections, and though more focussed, much of Jackman's genealogical work consists of one house of cards built on another, on another . . . . That doesn't even count all of the earlier material, developed before genealogy became a more scholarly pursuit. Wikipedia cannot be a collection of every pet theory, impractical to compile and maintain and unencyclopedic. Agricolae (talk) 03:02, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@Agricolae who is Jackman? Can you link their page? I would like to look more into them to see how scattershot these theories really are. My impression was that most of the theories present in the article were with the exception of the Mughals one were notable enough to gain mainstream media attention. I plan on looking more into Christian Settipani too. MaitreyaVaruna (changing name to Immanuelle) please tag me (talk) 03:36, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@User:MaitreyaVaruna Jackman is Donald C. Jackman. He doesn't specifically do DFAs but his genealogy work in one of the problematic periods has been heavily drawn upon by DFA enthusiasts. As to gaining mainstream media attention, unfortunately this is more a consequence of a combination of ignorance and sensationalism, the 'Queen Elizabeth descends from the Prophet Muhammed' news stories being a prime example - the descent this oft-reported claim entails is demonstrably false, even amateurish, but it makes for good headlines on a slow news day. Agricolae (talk) 14:24, 20 April 2022 (UTC)