Our Charlemagne

OUR CHARLEMAGNE

What is Charlemagne doing here? Nearly everyone in the Abendland (the western world) has blood coarsing through their veins of this bully and at the same time Father of Europe. As such, he also has a place in the pedigree of Goasse Goasses Offringa, as the umpteenth person, namely number 570,270,302,208. What does that say of ‘high’ descent? If you calculate that the number of ancestors per generation is doubled, then in the time of great-grandfather Charlemagne, theoretically you’d have 570 billion ancestors, and at around 800 AD, Europe had a population of only about 35 million.

So relative, and at the same time so close. For instance, if you are interested, click number 8,701,634 in this pedigree: Floris V count of Holland and Zeeland, ‘Der keerlen god’ (God of the peasants) and ‘‘Hear’ fan Fryslân’ (‘Lord’ of Frisia), at least, so he calls himself; or Mathilde Plantagenet and all of her ancestors, number 139,226,153. And if you have gotten a taste for it, there is also number 17,820,946,945 Gorm den Gamle, the Old, the first king of Denmark. Well, anyway. Others will do research up to Adam: Offringa: From Adam To Esther