Original scientific paper

Usage of Ascendents’ Tables in Historic Demography

Nenad Vekarić ; Institute for Historical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Abstract

The author tries to point out benefits of ascendants’ tables in investigating different problems connected with population. As a sample it has been taken 91 children, boom in 1880 from three districts of Pelješac peninsula and the ascendant- tables have been made for them up to the fifth generation. This sample has been used to consider three problems:
(1) Considering possible migrant influences it is analyzed the place of birth of the ancestors and it helps with conclusion of group-s openness or isolation, of possible migration channels and carriers of migrant influences. It is stated that migrant influence of women was much higher than influence of men which is the result of specific social relations more favorable for men.
(2) Problem of establishing the generation with the highest number of ancestors Theoretically speaking, in each older generation the number of ancestors is duplicated, but if reality was like that the number of inhabitants would be the higher the deeper we were going in the past. It is, therefore necessary to have a generation when for a reason of inevitable related relations the number of ancestors becomes smaller according to the previous younger generation. On the sample this phenomenon has been hardly visible because the number of predecessors is growing to the fifth generation due to forbidding the sexual relations between close relatives.
(3) Establishing the average generation distance it is noticed that generation distance depends on ancestors- chains i.e. on women or men-s number of ancestors in the chain. The average generation distance of man-s chain is 38.2 years and woman-s chain 32,5 years which means that male parents were more than five years in average older than female parents. At the end it is concluded that nowadays the usage of ascendants- tables has been limited with insufficient archival sources and rather modest financial means to hasten and improve elaboration of these sources.
In the future when these obstacles are subdued it will most probably be possible to comprehend different and important phenomenon by these tables, especially in the sphere of genetics and demography for the favor of many other different sciences.

Keywords

demography; ascendents

Hrčak ID:

241408

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/241408

Publication date:

20.6.1988.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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