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
I personally see “bloodline” as a specific, direct line of descendants through a certain genetic-based family, title, position, etc. Whereas a family tree is literally everybody you’re related to, directly or not.
EDIT: As an example, I have an uncle on my mom’s side of the family. He’s not genetically related to me; he married into our family. He also brought a daughter from a previous marriage, so she’s legally my cousin, but we’re not genetically related at all. They married into my bloodline, but they aren’tof my bloodline, if that makes sense. They’re part of my family tree.
So if you look at a family tree, the bloodline is the direct order from person a to person b, with everyone in the middle. It doesn’t include everyone else that isn’t in that direct path.
It doesn’t include brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, marriage or anything like that.
Bloodline is a subset of the data in a family tree.
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!
They’re different things.
A family tree is a representation of your ancestry by tracing backwards (usually, some people use the term for anything related to family ties). It’s backwards in time, almost always.
Your bloodline is forwards in time from ancestor. The idea is that there is a clear line of descent from one person, or a small group (depending on how it’s being applied in context).
Think of it in terms of race horses.
Secretariat had a family tree of horses before he came along. He had a dam and sire. They had dams and sires, and so forth. The tree, when laid out, may include siblings of secretariat, but wouldn’t include “nieces and nephews” under normal circumstances because that’s not really the point of the family tree as a term/idea. That steps into general genealogy.
However, from secretariat, you can trace records of horses descended from him, and that’s literally his bloodline. That’s his genetic line where his semen was used to make other horses.
Unlike horses, you couldn’t guarantee paternity for humans until genetic testing came along. At best, you could exclude someone via blood typing, or some inherited features (like a cleft chin).
The term bloodline itself started before knowledge of genetics was a thing to any serious degree. Mendel didn’t do his thing until the 1800s, and bloodline is a compound word that goes back 200 more years. But it is related as an idea. Related being the key word to that.
To reframe it, I have a family tree that includes a wide range of ancestors going back to Europe before we can’t find anything on either my matrilineal, or patrilineal side. Both my father’s surname and my mother’s maiden name have been traced back at least as far as the 1700s. However, my “bloodline” descends from the oldest known ancestor, a man that had a different name because it was in German instead of being anglicized. It also descends from multiple other people, but you could trace each of those and determine who else shares that bloodline.
Me and my sister are the only living people that have the exact same family tree, but we share any given bloodline with thousands (at least) of known individuals.
That was a pleasure to read.
Thanks :)
And royals, like race horses, are not bred for intelligence.
Blood line is a literal line of blood between the family. In-laws don’t count. It’s important when talking about royalty and you trace back whether someone has actual “royal blood” or is just an in law that married into the family.
When your family tree looks like a christmas wreath you understand why some of the lights are flickering.
Yeah, it only matters for old-school animal breeders and royal genealogists. It’s a pre-scientific notion.
Ahh, so it’s a side of a tree with some made up attribute?
I mean, the people of a bloodline are literal descendents of a specific person, while a family tree shows people who marry in as well.
The fact that you dont place value on knowing exactly how generically related you are to the person you wanna bang is fine, but to say its “made up” is stupid. Its made up in exactly the same way every part of human culture is made up.
Genetics isn’t made up, and I’m not talking about incest either. Royalty however, is made up. Tracking that, especially after a couple generations is cool, but that’s about it
I get you’re trying to do, but it’s almost disrespectful to say royalty is made up. Whether their grounds for ruling is still or not. Monarchies have had very, very lasting impacts on the world around us, almost never for the better. Going “Oh hahaha, look at them and their silliness” when many monarchs actively ruined countries, feels a little dismissive.
They definitely do have a massive impact! So did cyberpunk 2077 on gaming, which definitely was made and didn’t occur naturally either.
Just because something was impactful doesn’t mean it’s a naturally occurring thing. Royalty is made up, but no silly. (well, some royals are)
We can start using BloodTree universally in place of either…
I like it
Because trees are made of wood and without blood, your wood isn’t doing anything.
I should go.
Imagine a line running only down the tree connecting two individuals - that’s a bloodline
If you can draw a bloodline from one person to the other, they are of the first’s bloodline. Your full blood siblings are not in your bloodline, though you share all of each other’s bloodlines
Thank you!
Glad to help.
It’s a weird concept outside of inheritance - for example, a royal bloodline could end because the regent dies without children. Because the upstream follows the ruler, you might have to backtrack up the bloodline to find the next heritor, which you’d call a branch bloodline
But in modern life? It’s kinda pointless as a concept. We care about heredity and family, not bloodlines
… Not bloodlines.
That’s what someone from a weak bloodline would say.
Who is actually using this term? I’ve only heard it in like medieval period fiction.
If I heard anyone start rambling about their bloodline I would immediately start to wonder if they were a fascist.
It’s like “female”. Nothing wrong with it per se, especially in a biological conversation, but it’s more used with animals.
I think it’s a bit different. Female at least refers to a real biological trait (or at least collection of traits). As a scientist I use the word female in my work all of the time, and frankly I’m not sure what alternatives to it even exist.
Bloodline is like… weird racist antiquated European ideas about ancestry that are more or less completely unscientific and wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever once heard it used in a scientific context.
Maybe it’s used in animal breeding but that’s because animal breeding has uncomfortable connections with outdated race “science”. It doesn’t come from the real scientific community.
I don’t like making presumptions but I’ve heard it from all sorts of people
Maybe a cultural or regional thing? Or is it related to a hobby or something? I can’t think of a single time I’ve heard this phrase in normal conversation.
I found it on this very lemmy community a couple days back. It’s why I posed this question
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It’s huge in wrestling at the moment because it’s been a faction for like 3-4 years involving the actual bloodline descendents of chief Peter Maivia, which includes The Rock, Roman Reigns, the Wild Samoans, and pretty much any samoan in wrestling excluding Samoa Joe.
Could be to heighten the importance, but they are not exactly the same thing, as one is directly genetic. You may see the term used when talking about kings and queens.
Because theirs isn’t actually a tree.
It sounds cooler. I don’t think it gets more complicated than that.
That it does!
When I hear “bloodline”
Tap for spoiler
A tree is a terrible representation since people will appear in more than one place on it. brother sisters marriages (which did happen) tend to produce deformed kids, but first cousins have good odds for normal kids. By third cousin odds of genetic issues was close enough to zero, but those kids will have six great great grand parents not the mathematical eight. I didn’t mention half siblings but that happens too and a couple generations below could marry safely.
the above isn’t just theoretical. Before modern transport you often lived and married in the same village for many generations. It would often be impossible to find anyone to have kids with that wasn’t at least sixth cousins from more than one path.
Hmm, so we’re looking more at some other sort of node graph
I sort of feel that this has to be a concept born from eugenics to talk about how some lines are superior to others.
That would not surprise me
Due to increased narcissism within the population
Well, that is one explanation
