From - Thu Apr 25 20:50:46 1996 Path: lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk!uknet!uknet!psinntp!psinntp!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.campus.mci.net!not-for-mail From: sbald@auburn.campus.mci.net (Stewart Baldwin) Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval Subject: Re: The Augustan Society's "Descents from Antiquity" Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 02:57:57 GMT Organization: auburn.campus.mci.net Lines: 128 Message-ID: <4lh9vl$kc9@news.campus.mci.net> References: <133A9A871EC5@iona.sms.ed.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: s08-pm02.auburn.campus.mci.net X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82 9407990@IONA.SMS.ED.AC.UK wrote: >On Thu, 18 Apr 1996 Stewart Baldwin wrote: >[snip] >>I would be much more inclined to take the project seriously if there were >>more emphasis on trying to find a well documented line which went back to, >>say, someone born before the beginning of the Christain era. (I know of no >>example that even comes close to that.) Of course, the other part is >>interesting too, but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and if >>you can't get back to 1 B.C., you certainly can't get back to 1500 B.C. >A question directed to Stewart and others in this newsgroup with a broader >knowledge of genealogy than me. (Gee - thats pretty much everyone!) >How far back does the earliest documented genealogical line (with modern-day >descendants) go? Can we get any better than the early sixth century and >Fergus mac Erc of Dal Riata? (To use an example I know something about. I do >suppose that there are a number of other document Irish lines which go back >to about this time.) This was a subject of discussion in this group a while back, and I posted a long discussion of this once, which I no longer have a complete copy of (due to a mistake I made on inadequately understood new software). If someone could find a well documented descent back to the Merovingian kings, then you would probably have to give "first place" to that line (by a little bit), but I know of no such descent that is widely accepted (but early Frankish genealogy is not my strong suit, so experts on those lines please correct me if I am wrong). Other early dyansties such as the Ostrogoths and Visigoths have the same problem that no known well documented line can be traced back to them. Even if a link were available to a Roman family, it is relatively rare for an ancient Roman to have a well documented genealogy more than a three or four generations long. It looks like the Irish and Scottish lines are the earliest documented ones, but it is hard to assign "first place" status to any one of the families, because there are differing opinions as to exactly what generation the Irish genealogies become reliable, and the early chronology is not clear. (For example, if Niall of the Nine Hostages existed at all (which he probably did), then his activities were almost certainly a half century later than the traditional Irish chronology.) Three good candidates for "first place" would be the following. 1 Niall of the Nine Hostages (mid fifth century), ancestor of the Ui Neill. Most historians consider him to be historical, although there are doubters. The official pedigrees, which make Niall the brother of three men who just happen to be ancestor of the main Connacht dynasties, are extremely artificial (and chronologically suspect), and it is likely that the pedigree is not historical prior to Niall. Of Niall's claimed descendants. the pedigree of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565), ancestor of the kings of Meath and Brega, and supposedly great-grandson of Niall, has been questioned as suspicious [see the discussion in Byrne's "Irish Kings and High Kings"], and possibly fabricated, but there seems to be no such problem with the Cenel nEogain pedigree of the kings of Ailech (descended from Eogan, son of Niall), and ancestors of the O'Neills. I am assuming that there are well documented modern day descents from Niall Glundub (d. 919), ancestor of the O'Neills, but I am not familiar enough with the later medieval Irish material to be sure about this. Because the survival of Irish records has not been good, the number of currently living individuals who could trace a well documented descent back to these early O'Neills is probably relatively small. 2. Dunlang (fifth century), ancestor of the Ui Dunlainge. Gilbert "Strongbow", earl of Pembroke, married Eve, daughter of the king of Leinster, thus bringing the royal Irish blood into many of the early prominent Norman families, from which a very large number of English families can document a line of descent. The marriage of Cynan of Gwynedd to the granddaughter of the Norse king Sitric of Dublin (whose mother was a sister of the king of Leinster) did the same thing for many Welsh families. The "Ban Shenchus" gives the parentage of quite a few of Eve's female ancestors, but it is interesting that no well documented Ui Neill descents seem to be available by this route. (The one such claimed descent I have found is virtually impossible on chronological grounds.) Eve's descent from the Ui Dunlainge kings of Leinster give the best early descent, for there seems to be little doubt that the pedigree is reliable at least back to the obscure fifth century figure after whom the Ui Dunlainge were named. 3. Fergus of Dal Riata (ca. 500?). This is a good candidate, but I am concerned about a "weak link" between Domangart (son of Domnall Brec) and Aed Finn, for the following reasons. (a) The sources do not all agree on the exact line of descent for these generations. (b) The Eochaid son of Eochaid who appears in the standard account looks suspicious, because it was extremely rare for a son to be named after the father during this period (the only other example I know of being Cathal Cu cen mathair, son of Cathal, king of Munster). Although the usually stated line could be correct, I think the matter deserves more serious study, because no study of this genealogy which I am aware of makes any mention of Promlem (b). **************************************************************** * * * CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST * * * * (no prizes - no official judges - no official winners) * * (i.e., just for fun) * * * * Does anyone else out there want to put forward some other * * challengers for the status of "first place". * * * **************************************************************** It is unlikely that these Irish and Scottish lines will ever be reliably extended in a significant way, and the most promising looking candidates for a line to antiquity go through several Armenian families. However, all of these families still have "weak links" at a later date than the above Irish lines (and even worse weak links if one wants to connect them to the early Western European nobility). When I posted on this matter a couple of months ago, I mentioned a couple of families giving possibly earlier lines whose status I was unsure of, but got no responses (at least none that reached my news server), so I will try again: 1. Is there any modern day descent from the Sassanid kings of Persia (who have a continuous well documented genealogy from the third to the seventh centuries)? (Perhaps through some Moslem lines?) 2. How far back is the traditional genealogy of the current emperor of Japan considered to be reliable by modern historians? Stewart Baldwin