The Descent of a Man

On this day in 1066, William the Bastard crossed the English channel. Among his army was a direct genetic ancestor of mine, father’s father’s father, etc…

A shock when I learned this as genealogically, I’m Irish. Turns out, however, that the Irish peasant who fled to the American shores at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was genetically, if not legally, the son of a son of a son, etc of a powerful landowning family the next county over, the son of a son of a son etc of that retainer in William’s army…

I’m moderately sure there’s a lesson in here about something…