Basic Unit of Society

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Village, Generated with Bing ImageCreator AI 5 October 2024

What is the "basic unit of society"? It is often said to be the family. However, even in so-called Western societies, where families are often defined as a husband, wife and their children, about half the families I find in records do not meet the monogamy standard. Often one of the partners has died or divorced, and there are other family members living with them—parents or other relatives of one or more of the partners, former neighbors or their children, "fictive kin," such as a close neighbor or relative of an in-law or former spouse.

FAN Principle

The more we follow the FAN principle [1], and research all the people in and around the family, the more strongly we find that the basic unit is the village or neighborhood. While people do occasionally move somewhere new all by themselves, that is often impelled by personal danger of some sort, such as a crime or other threat. Mostly, people moved with others whom they knew; family, other kin, friends, those in their clubs and congregations, schools, guilds, unions and other shared groups. 

This explains pedigree collapse for the most part, especially for early pioneers to a distant place. Pedigree collapse is the term genealogists use when one or more ancestors are in the tree more than once, because you are descended from them from more than one line. Demographers call this "background relatedness" created by a small founding population. This is why AncestryDNA, 23andMe and MyHeritage can calculate our biogeographical ancestry; many people matching on the same few small DNA segments. These bits of DNA are too small to be useful for proving or even suggesting more recent relationships, but can be powerful tools for looking into the past. 

According to Demographic history of the United States, the population of the British colonies in 1700 was just 250,000 people. No wonder so many SKCGS Members are related! We descend from this relatively small group, mostly from the British Isles. They came here together, and lived together in colonial America for generations, intermarrying as the population slowly grew and eventually began to migrate south and west. 

Some say that this has changed, and that we have divided ourselves into rural versus city, North and South, coasts and "middle America." In general, even though we are more mobile than ever, we still "hang together" in communities where we attend church together, join the same genealogical societies, educate our children in common schools, go out to eat at the same restaurants, and attend the same civic and sports events together. This is why carpools work and how we care for one another when disasters strike. 


We are Founders

We are all pioneers, in a way. We're all exploring the future, the new millennium together. We are confronting climate change and other common threats together. We have voluntarily created insurance pools which protect us from natural (and unnatural) disaster. We have created a body of law which changes to meet new realities. We are even changing our language together. 

If you have not yet embraced the FAN principle and some pedigree collapse, I predict you will. Your research will prove, over and over again, that we each descend from some ancestors in multiple ways, and that we share them with others too. According to a 2013 [2] article, all Europeans (which would include many Americans) share one or more ancestors within the past 2500 years, most much more recently. 

Sometimes it seems like a huge lift to research the tree of a DNA match. But think of it this way: you probably have already done part of the research! In that way, pedigree collapse is a blessing in disguise. 

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1. "QuickLesson 11: Identity Problems & the FAN Principle:" https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/quicklesson-11-identity-problems-fan-principle

2. Callaway, E. Most Europeans share recent ancestors. Nature (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2013.12950

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Share your story with us! send to m.strickland@skcgs.org

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Valorie Zimmerman

I was born in King County Washington, grew up in Issaquah and now live close to Black Diamond. My dad, Ted Cowan, used to bring me to SKCGS meetings, and I eventually served as editor of SoKing News for a bit. To honor my mother, Lola McBee Cowan, after her death, I became an SKCGS Life Member. I later served with the Resources, Publicity, Outreach, Bylaws, Education and Board teams.



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