The Daily Mail today (2nd March 2018) in an article by Victor Allen (science correspondent) reported a study that the 'baby boomer' generation of post WW2 typically married someone who lived six miles away. This was compared to Europe where they married 18 miles from home and in America it is 60 miles from home. The study published in the journal 'Science' co-authored by Dr Yaniv Erlich from Columbia University whose researchers trawled genealogy web sites to create a large scientific family tree of data. The family tree is 11 generations deep covering the period 1650 to 1950.
Why the British travel less is put down to better local economic opportunities, social norms and being a small island country with closer towns and hamlets than in Europe and America.
The article mentions that before 1850 marrying into the family was common to someone who on average was a fourth cousin.
The advent of rail travel; 1820-1875; enabled people to marry partners from further afield. As did other forms of transport such as the bicycle and motor car. The study also found that women in Europe and America have migrated more than men, but men travelled further on average.
Think only of your ancestors that went to the British colonies or hunted diamonds in South Africa or gold in Australia and America.
This report can also be seen the Science web site http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/thirteen-million-degrees-kevin-bacon-world-s-largest-family-tree-shines-light-life-span
ReplyDeleteThe family tree includes 13 million persons and was formed by 'crowdsourcing' data and largely uses American data. The 13 million people are mostly of European descent
ReplyDelete