Same eyes, nose and mouth as our cousin ?

Don't take me seriously. I'm joking, while cynically evoking suggestions that might be made harmlessly by members of my family. Some people place a lot of emphasis upon the presence of comparable physical traits that I'm generally incapable, personally, of detecting to any recognizable extent whatsoever. A late aunt was even convinced that the sinuous form of certain hands in our family (her own hands in particular) was a clear proof that we descended from the Vikings. Although I never dared to tell her so, I found that belief utter hogwash.

Bodily and indeed psychological resemblances do in fact flow down from parents to their biological offspring, and are often displayed most strikingly in sporting achievements. But an observer needs to be wary of drawing conclusions. Two complementary questions spring into mind as soon as a researcher becomes interested in his/her genealogical origins:

• When we've assembled more-or-less factual data concerning interesting characteristics of one of our eight great-grandparents (who are often the most ancient ancestors about whom we've obtained relatively in-depth information), can we then assume that some living members of the researcher's present-day generations might be likely to express those same ancestral characteristics?

• Inversely, when we've found exceptional physical or psychological characteristics in a particular living member of the researcher's present-day generations, is it thinkable that our family-history research might enable us to identify a particular great-grandparent who could be looked upon as the biological source of those characteristics?

Questions of this kind arise, of course, when a family-history researcher happens to run into various disturbing ancestors. In my maternal-oriented book A Little Bit of Irish, I ran into ancestors in the bushranger domain, and I was tempted to wonder whether some of that behavior might have "rubbed off" onto members of recent generations. In the accompanying paternal-oriented book, They Sought the Last of Lands, I was particularly troubled by the crazy case of my English great-grandfather William Skyvington [1868-1959], and I couldn't help but wonder if I might have inherited a dangerous dose of his nutty fruitcake genes.

Let me drag into the picture my most-admired source of scientific wisdom: Richard Dawkins.

I would like to evoke his literary masterpiece of 2004, The Ancestor's Tale, which might be described as a time-reversed variation of The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678).

Richard Dawkins is not at all the sort of person who makes a point of rambling on (like me) about his personal ancestors. It's not for want of expert knowledge about genealogical research that Dawkins remains underspoken about his ancestors; it's surely because he realizes (as I'm certain to realize sooner or later, if I become a little wiser) that we're likely to make silly blunders as soon as we dare to describe our personal ancestors as if we knew all about them. Here's how Dawkins speaks politely about his recent ancestors:

I remember my four grandparents clearly, but of my eight great-grandparents I know a handful of fragmentary anecdotes. One great-grandfather habitually sang a certain nonsense rhyme (which I can sing), but only while lacing his boots. Another was greedy for cream, and would knock the chess board over when losing. A third was a country doctor. That is about my limit. How have eight entire lives been so reduced? How, when the chain of informants connecting us back to the eyewitness seems so short, and human conversation so rich, could all those thousands of personal details that made up the lifetimes of eight human individuals be so fast forgotten?

Dawkins talks a little of a group of distinguished human beings: our Tasmanians. I referred to these exceptional people, who played a rather special role in the history of human beings, in an earlier blog post: http://skyvington.blogspot.fr/2010/03/tasmanians.html

I strongly recommend this Dawkins tale to readers who would be interested in discovering the great writer in a pleasant readable context that is relatively free of difficult scientific technicalities, while steering totally clear of religious themes.