Without knowledge of the past, there is no way to the future. The well-known and common term that is used in modern literature - genealogy - is the compilation of a family tree and the search for their ancestors. In fact, everything is not so simple. Genealogy is a doctrine with its own laws and postulates, which are quite complicated for the consciousness of the layman.
Some terminology
Genealogy is an auxiliary historical discipline that sets the goal of studying the origin of genera and the mutual relations between them. Compiling the family history of your family is also one of the tasks of genealogy. The word comes from the Greek genealogia, which is formed by the words "birth", "gender" and "word". Genealogy is not only a narrowly focused compilation of the family tree, but also an analysis of the historical and cultural development of any group.
Tasks and subject
The tasks of genealogy as a science are the analysis of the place and significance of one kind or another in history, the determination of the cultural environment of groups of people in the historical period, the identification of genetically fixed patterns, the solution of other anthropological, demographic and ethnographic tasks. The subject of the study of the science of genealogy is the history of individual families and clans (including princely and boyar).
A bit of history
The history of practical genealogy in Russia begins in the XI century with genealogies preserved in the chronicles. These genealogies contained mainly information about the families of boyars and servants that many generations served with them. From the sixteenth century, the management of pedigrees has become systematic, while only descendants of the masculine gender are being recorded. Later, wives are introduced into the pedigrees as heirs of allotments and property along with children. Peter the Great established the Geroldmeister Office, which recorded and kept genealogical documents of the origin of the families of the nobility. It is from this time that the genealogy gains value as an indicator of the privilege of the genus.
Genealogy science of the 19th-20th centuries
If we consider the topic of the article as a scientific discipline, it is worth recalling the scientists to whom it owes its development. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, genealogy is a chronicle presented by the works of Feofan Prokopovich “The genealogy of the Great Princes and Kings of Russia” (1719), books by M. M. Shcherbatov, A. E. Knyazev and others. The General Herbovnik has been published since 1797, and in 1855 the publication of Prince P. V. Dolgoruky's “Russian Genealogy Book” was published, and the books of A. B. Lobanov – Rostovsky and V. V. Rummel supplement this publication with information. After the 1917 revolution, genealogy in Russia was forgotten, and only at the end of the 90s of the last century did interest in pedigrees begin to grow.
DNA genealogy
Molecular genetics, as genealogical studies based on the analysis of DNA structure are also called today, is widely understood to study and analyze the dynamics of the accumulation of mutations in human DNA. The term "DNA genealogy" was widely used in 1992 during an active study of mitochondrial DNA by molecular geneticists. It is this DNA that is transmitted from mother to child in an unchanged form, and analysis of the dynamics of mutations in combination with structural features can provide information about the relationship of all the inhabitants of the planet and the common origin of humans as a biological species. The theory of a single “mother Eve” has received wide resonance in the last decade, and it is based on the study of the structure of mitochondrial DNA of inhabitants of different parts of the world.
An interest in one's roots and origins has always been inherent in man. In certain periods, it was the origin of the genus, the annals of its heroes that determined the social status of a person and his belonging to a particular class group. Today, an increasing number of Russians are interested in the origins of their clans and the stories of distant ancestors. And although this knowledge is not decisive for an individual in society, but they provide an understanding of the origins and serve as a matter of pride.