Family Tree Template: Ancestors

Friday, September 14, 2012

Ancestors

This article is about the concept of ancestry. For the website, see Ancestry.com. For the Scott Sigler novel, see Ancestor (novel). For the Masayuki Nagare art work, see Ancestor (sculpture). For the band, see Ancestors (band).

An ancestor or forebear is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an ancestor (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, and so forth). Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited."[1]

Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other, or if they share a common ancestor. In evolutionary theory, species which share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent. However, this concept of ancestry does not apply to some bacteria and other organisms capable of horizontal gene transfer.