Talk:Charlemagne (747-814)

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[edit] Number-crunching

See http://genealogyofpresidents.blogspot.com/ :

Genealogists have mathematically demonstrated how all Americans of European descent must be related to Charlemagne. In this regard, genealogists have established the exact lines of descent from Charlemagne for 14 U.S. Presidents. Two of these are President George W. Bush and his father President George H.W. Bush. Other Presidents whose descent from Charlemagne have been traced include: George Washington, Ulysses Grant, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and Gerald Ford. To demonstrate how we are all related, the New England Historical Society has researched the genealogy of Barack Obama and determined that on his mother's side he is related to six other previous presidents: George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, and James Madison...."

How do our numbers compare? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

"Related to" is not the same as "descended from". Here's another assessment, in extracts from RootsWeb's GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives, a 1996 statement by D. Spencer Hines: "the number of Living Descendants of Charlemagne is more than 100 million folks and less than 1 billion." ... "Knowledgable Europeans have recently told me that half [50%] of the entire European population is descended from Charlemagne." ... "... the 100 million that Gary Boyd Roberts appears to be saying are in the United States ..." ... "The tentative benchmark figure of 600 million descendants would mean that approximately one person in 10 alive today is a Descendant of Charlemagne."

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:43, 30 May 2009 (UTC)