edit: The reason I find it an odd term is because human ancestry literally doesn’t follow a line. It always branches off, even if only to just include two parents. It’s a tree like structure, a line would misrepresent it
edit: The reason I find it an odd term is because human ancestry literally doesn’t follow a line. It always branches off, even if only to just include two parents. It’s a tree like structure, a line would misrepresent it
Does the line go directly from mom or dad?
Whichever path it takes. It will only go in a single path unless you have some incestuous relationships. And if that happens and multiple routes work, it doesn’t matter which one you take.
So does the line go towards grandpa at mom’s side, or dad’s side?
It would generally be between a person and a specific ancestors of theirs, so that depends on who is is tracking towards. Often it will be qualified with something like “Paternal Bloodline” or such, in which case it would follow the father, the father’s father, the father’s father’s father, etc. Or for royalty, it would track from some historical sovereign figure and follow their legitimate heirs down to the individual being examined.
It’s a weird old concept is what I guess
I suppose it is in a fashion, but not necessarily. Let’s say you know you have a ancestor that was part of the first expedition to the arctic. The line of ancestor to descendent between that person and you would be the bloodline. Everyone you are related to would be your family tree, but that could be hundreds of people depending on how far back you go, and could be thousands of people if you start looking at everyone descended from that person. But you are only concerned with the direct line of lineage between them and you, and that would be your bloodline.
I would call that weird, but I get the idea!
It’s just different use cases. A tree would show relations to the individual, a line just proves they descended from a particular person. Applications of it might be a bit outdated, but I don’t think there is any more reason to show relations in a tree than “oh, that’s neat”.
That tree actually provides quick and easy insight into who you’re related to. Which is quite helpful especially in smaller isolated communities