How do you find the pedigrees of all these ancient peoples?

As a follow up. Here is an example. St. Lucius Lleuver Mawr, King of the Silures. Not a well know figure exactly and from two thousand years ago.
Where would such ancestry be written down. They did not have printing presses then. Is this inscribed in some tablets somewhere? Maybe a museum?

Can you post a link to the profile? That let's me look at the "history" of the profile - who added it to Geni, and therefore, where they might have gotten their source data.

Looks like St. Lucius Lleuver Mawr, King of the Silures

(Vicki, for starters click the Sources tab on that profile)

Mike at Geni

Vicki, the short answer is that these pedigrees were written down by monks in the middle ages. Some of them were compiled from earlier manuscripts, now lost. Others were probably medieval forgeries. The ones for Wales, such as Lucius Lleuver Mawr, are now mostly in the Harleian manuscript collection at the British Library.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harleian_Collection

Some of the curators are currently working on putting together a Descents From Antiquities project. We plan to use it to show the sources, and talk about some of the problems.

I hope this helps.

Wow very helpful and interesting. I wonder why the monks did this. Maybe it was a precursor to the "church registry" although it seems they only might have recorded prominent people. That project sounds very interesting.

Great question Vicki and I was very impressed by Justin's answer!

And great point Mike Stangel about the Sources Tab.

It's just a pity the Monks don't have a Sources Tab :)

Yes I will click on the sources tab from now on to see. So for Wales, its the Harleian collection, for Norsemen, its sagas? I wonder where these are....
for English and Scots is it also the monks again? Oh maybe I will just have to wait until the project is completed. Thanks everyone for your answers!

Vicki Thomas

Vicki, you mean the physical, original manuscripts (or earliest copies) of Pedigrees? I hope they are all in museums and libraries under lock and key, don't you?. Actually I hope they come on out for exhibitions!

But I think to know "where" a specific manuscript is held is a different question.

Vicki,

For the English, many of the oldest pedigrees come from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_Chronicle

Nine surviving manuscripts in three libraries.

Those old monks did history differently than we do today. They compiled chronicles, essentially year-by-year lists, as complete as they could make them, for the history of the world. They didn't explain, didn't interpret. And, they shamelessly copied from one another. Limited, of course, by geography and the rarity of handwritten manuscripts. If you don't have an entry for 691 and someone else does, well then ... now you do ;)

Thanks all. I think my questions relate to my previous post on the accuracy of GENI and where did the info come from. There are many such trees on the internet but obviously someone had to get them from some document or record somewhere. And are they really accurate or mostly accurate. When you start looking at GENI and going back as far as you can and see you can go back to Abraham then Adam.......some questions naturally arise in your mind.

If you see that a profile has an MP designation it means that a curator has at least attempted to collate and source - often as a work in progress. Then you can review the overview and the sources tab. There are of course profiles that are difficult than others. :) It always helps to be specific.

Vicki, you're asking good questions.

Yes, those genealogies come from someplace. And that place is mostly the invention of medieval monks who sanitized their local gods making them into historic kings and inventing a pedigree that goes back to Adam.

But, sometimes the local gods were (arguably) originally historic kings, and (depending on your religious beliefs) they must have been descended from Adam somehow, if not exactly the way the monks said.

Geni is still relatively new. There are still a lot of kinks to iron out, and a lot of very bad information. It's sad when people take them on faith alone. Better to look at each of the links, ask questions, and try to get a discussion going about specific generations. That's what we hope to do with the Descents from Antiquity project.

My own view is that sources start getting very dubious in the early Middle Ages, so I don't look at my own ancestry further back than around 900 in al-Andalus. And realistically, most of the time I only consider the late Middle Ages onward. And on my Jewish side, I'm lucky if I can go back to the mid 18th century for the most part.

I am not Jewish and never have thought of myself as such but through GENI I have traced back to Abraham. Seems as though from my readings some people went from what is now Israel to England and married into British tribes there around the time of Jesus. Hence the connection to David, Solomon and Abraham. Bathsheba is a distant great grandmother, as is Lady Godiva and Boudicca. What a mix. I do not know what to think.

And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time...

Vicki,

We have a start to the Descents from Antiquity project.

http://www.geni.com/projects/Descents-from-Antiquity/12283

It's not yet at a point where it answers all of your questions, but we're working on it.

Vicki, you are asking really important questions (critical thinking--yay!) about how all of this "history" is validated and authenticated. As you can see, Justin Durand is one of our wisest curators when it comes to the medieval and antiquity sources.

Every period of history has its own body of specialized knowledge and source material that scholars and expert amateur historians use to negotiate these various "truths"--but in reality, as Justin notes, it is impossible to confirm totally definite truths about what exactly and precisely happened in the distant past. Historians (professional and amateur) have to use their sharpest critical thinking skills to make judgments about which sources are more reliable, and there are often many gaps and black holes in the story--e.g. missing generations, or a lack of information about all of the children of a particular person--that leave us with gaps in knowledge.

Actually, these issues are not exclusively about the ancient past--they are still true today when dealing with families that are not well documented. And we know from even modern sources that all documented "facts" are not trues--many are assumptions, errors, or official versions that cover up unofficial folk knowledge. (I think about all the errors I have found in census records, death certificates, and other modern forms of documentation).

One of the wonderful things about Geni (and especially our curated Master Profile program) is that we try to make it clear when there is a controversy about questionable information--for example, when someone may have been the child of either person A or person B, and we have conflicting information. We need to document the conflicting information, and if both sources are equally valid, then we need to acknowledge that perhaps the case is not resolvable, but at least leave ties and links to both possibilities.

Thanks for your insights and thanks to all who have responded to this thread.

I think we can blame everything on the Romans. Seems like every path I trace its them that have been the link from the eastern Mediterreanean to places such as France then skipping on to Britian or Scotland. Its always Egyptians married a Babylonian who married a Roman who married someone in the south of France to then married into Scottish nobililty. Or somebody from what is now Israel came to Britian and married someone there, linking me to the tribes of Israel for posterity. It just takes one link, one person for a connection to be made.

These guys are blaming it on the Germans:
http://www.geni.com/discussions/103887?msg=804969

I'll try and find a thread blaming the Japanesse and we'll have resurrected the original Axis of evil!

nah, its the Romans. Italians are great lovers and did so apparently on many continents. They were in Britain, and in southern France. Germans and Japanese not so much but they do make some great cars.

Okay I have another question. How did people posting these profiles find out about the concumbines and "other partners" that are listed on here? Were they also documented in these great works or has more sleuthing been done over the ages to find out this information?

Vicki can you post one or two profiles to investigate and help answer the question?

Henry I Beauclerc, King of England i. He had two wives and many concubines or partners. There may be other examples.

Vicky sorry please also tag the profile and the curator of the profile so shell join in. Theres a good concubine story if I remember right.

Henry I "Beauclerc", King of England

Terry Jackson (Switzer)