Interesting facts about our ancestors

Your ancestors didn’t have a last name 1000 years ago

Last names for people of Britain only became common after the invasion of William the Conqueror in 1066 who brought with him new forms of governing and documentation methods. Before this, people in Britain only had a first name unless they were of the ruling class where the last name was used to describe the family as if it were more of an organization. When the medieval period started in 1066 it soon became compulsory to choose a last name for your family but people didn’t really know how to choose a family name, leading to people calling themselves after their trade.

If your last name is any of the following then it’s likely that your medieval ancestors worked that job and simply didn’t know what else to call themselves: Smith (blacksmith), Taylor (Clothesmaker), Cooper (Barrel maker), Jones (meaning Johns son, with John being a very popular first name during the age), Johnston and Johnson (both variations of Johns son), Clark (a variation of clerk, a type of scribe), Potter (Pottery maker), Porter (Household servant), Fisher (Fisherman), Wilson (meaning son of William), Walker (any job that involved travel by foot).

Many other last names that end with the word “son” come from the father’s name with son at the end, so the name Johnson means son of John. This can be found in a huge variation of last names across many languages.

We didn’t evolve from Apes

One of the most interesting facts about our ancestors was that we didn’t come from apes. The commonly believed theory is that we evolved from an ape-like ancestor species who left Africa around 2 million years ago. The reason that scientists haven’t found the missing evolution link between humans and apes is that there isn’t one. Even though we share over 90% of our DNA with chimpanzees, we didn’t evolve from the same ancestor on two different paths but instead came from a Neanderthal-type species that has ape-like features, leading to the misunderstanding.

There was no single cradle of Humanity

It’s believed homo-sapiens came from somewhere in East or Central Africa, but there is another theory that suggests they could have come from far East Asia. Homo-erectus is thought to have left Africa around 2 million years ago, but they didn’t evolve into homo sapiens until around 50,000 years ago, giving them plenty of time to change their genetics by breeding with the numerous other Neanderthal species that evolved outside of Africa. This genetic mixing led to homo-erectus evolving into homo-sapiens in numerous locations and in different ways.

Your ancestors were much shorter than you

The average Neanderthal man averaged between 62 and 65 inches tall, with their women averaging between 59 and 62 inches tall. As the human race progressed, the average height increased to an average of 68 inches for men during the medieval period, but this trend of getting bigger seemed to take a downturn during the 17th and 18th centuries. For some unknown reason, the average height of an adult male went down to just under 66 inches during these two periods, but again changed around and today gives us an average height for an adult European male of 69 inches tall.

The first metal age was the copper age, but it wasn’t the first metal discovered

Copper was discovered around 9000 BCE and marked the start of the first metal age for the human race, but it wasn’t the first metal they found. The problem with melting metal is reaching a high enough temperature to extract it from the ore, something they did by making large fires and primitive smelters. Iron has a temperature too high for any bonfire to melt it, but copper can be melted in a regular fire, especially if coal is added. Before people started to make smelters to mass produce copper, there were two other metals they discovered beforehand that could easily be melted in the smallest of fires, and they were tin and lead. The problem with these two metals is they are both very soft and useless to make anything out of on their own, leaving the copper age to be the first official metal age because it was the first metal that was actually useful.

In the Iron Age you would be considered an elder

The average life expectancy through the ages only had major changes over the last few hundred years and living past 60 is a relatively new concept. The average life span during the Stone Age was between 20 and 33 years, and it didn’t get much better over the centuries to come. The bronze and iron ages had an average life span of 26 years, and it wasn’t much better around the globe for other countries. In 1700s Britain a male could expect to live for an average of 34 years, and they were the lucky ones. Prussia averaged just under 25 years for men, and France averaged between 27.5 and 30 years. Today the average life expectancy in Britain is just over 81 years, which is up to four times longer than your Stone Age ancestor.

They weren’t as dirty as people think

(Medieval soap, made my mixing wood ash with watered down animal fat)

In an age when no one had running water and central heating didn’t exist, you could be forgiven for thinking that people of earlier ages weren’t as clean as we are now and went for long periods of time without washing. This is far from true and inventions like soap have been produced since at least the Iron Age. An unpleasant smell is the same to everyone and people of the earlier ages simply had river baths with homemade soap instead of the hot shower we know today. There is a document from the 10th century when the Vikings settled parts of Britain that talks about how they would bathe at least once a week which is a long way off from a daily shower but far from being the unwashed brutes they are thought of. Body soap, cloth cleaning soap, and teeth cleaning methods have been around for much longer than we think, with soap being especially popular in ancient Rome and Greece.

Your heritage is probably made up of over a dozen countries

This one would depend greatly on where you are in the world, but for someone living in Britain, you can count on your lineage coming from at least 10 different countries. The first occupants of the British Isles are known as the Celts and are believed to have crossed the land bridge between France and England before it flooded over 10,000 years ago. After this, the Romans invaded in 43AD and sent troops from all over Europe to occupy the lands, who spread their genetics to the native people. A long time after the Romans left, the Saxon invasion made up of people from modern-day Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands invaded and mixed with the native Celtic/Roman bloodlines.

Then the Vikings came from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland and mixed with the population, followed by France and a ton of other minor invasions that all left traces of their genetics within the population. Before this huge mixing pot of mostly European genetics formed the people of the British Isles, the origin of our race is believed to have come out of Africa before moving into the Middle East and Asia before it reached the British Isles. Looking back far enough could see an ancestor you descended from living in a jungle in what we now call Somalia.