A news article that circulated the news networks on March 26th proved that Democratic candidates are related to some of America’s favorite celebrities and political figures. The article released by the AP, stated that Barack Obama is a distant cousin of Brad Pitt, and that Hilary Clinton is a relative of Angelina Jolie. These claims have been researched by researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society. After three years of tracing Obama’s geneology, one researcher showed that Obama has family ties to President George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman and James Madison Vice President Dick Cheney, British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and Civil War General Robert E. Lee. The list for Hilary Clinton is much shorter with Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette.

So should we be surprised by these long lost family ties? As we learned in class, the median degree of separation for acquaintances is about six. But the article talks about actual family ties rather than simple acquaintances. However, just as weak ties in social networks can hop large distances, so can marriages for genealogy. In Stanly Milgram’s experiment, the chains were limited to participation rates. The limitations in genealogy lie in the absence of some documented family ties. If we had omnipotent knowledge, we could effectively trace all humans back to the group of Homo sapiens that evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago. If that were possibly, then almost any two people would be related if we traced far back enough. It is this lack of well documented lineages that accounts for our inability to do so. Even the family ties stated in the article had to trace back to ninth cousins for Obama and Pitt, and tenth cousins, once removed, for Obama and George W. Bush. These ties are much more likely today than, say, a hundred years ago. With the advancement of global travel, families of different ethnic groups are able to form ties that never would have been possible.

Maybe you and I are related. Given the ability to go back far enough, it is very likely. Then, once we become famous, they’ll write an article about it.

The original article can be found here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23797072/