Obama and Brad Pitt related, and so are Clinton and Angelina Jolie?
by Angelina on Mar.08, 2008, under Media & Journalism
The Matrix has you… asked:
I had just got on the internet and I saw this article saying that Brad Pitt and Obama and like distant cousins or something like that, and Angelina Jolie and Clinton are related. I don’t believe it, not at all. They could have pick any celebrity couple like Tom and Katie. I think it’s all for publicity. What a bunch of BS.
7 comments for this entry:
March 11th, 2008 on 11:47 am
i thinks it’s definitely possible. either way it doesn’t matter. people will always focus on differences.
March 13th, 2008 on 5:16 pm
If you could trace both of our families back far enough, you would discover that you and I are related.
Now, if being my cousin doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what will.
March 16th, 2008 on 2:08 am
I think Hillary is related to Catherine the Great. She comes from the same bloodline or something.
March 18th, 2008 on 12:31 pm
Yea, the paper I read said that bush and obama are linked to eachother through a Samuel Hinkley of Cape Cod Massachusetts in 1662. OMG, Im related to that same historical hinkleys on Cape Cod in mutiple directions. YAY im related to everyone mentioned as well. But i think everyone especially those primarily of English descent are related to eachother in some way like we have seen with these politicians
March 19th, 2008 on 9:02 pm
I know! I read it on the newspaper too yesterday…what are the chances? I don’t think it’s true though.
March 21st, 2008 on 1:10 am
I am watching Obama on The View right now, and he just addressed it, saying that in fact, its true. Cant speak for Hilary, but he did admit it.
March 23rd, 2008 on 8:38 am
You must understand one thing: The few give birth to the many.
OF MITES AND MEN
Let’s put this into perspective:
If you believe in evolution and a monophyletic [1] tree of life, then you believe that every living thing on earth came from a single little bug about a billion years ago. So really, you could say that Obama and Pitt are related to *you*, and everything is related to everything. However …
OUT OF FEW, MANY
… We can’t trace all the way back to that first little bug. But we can do some things with science. For example, by examining mitochondrial DNA (only passed on by mothers), scientists have determined that the native Americans had 6 founding mothers [2].
FAME MAKES GAIN
Knowing that some patriarch of old begat many modern descendants is rather unremarkable, as it really is just common sense.
But now, imagine that this patriarch was Leonardo DaVinci or George Washington. Your lineage suddenly becomes a whole lot more interesting. In fact, a fairly recent study actually shows that nearly 100 percent of people have royalty in their bloodline [3].
QUEENS AND KINGS: UNREMARKABLE THINGS
One explanation for the prevelance of royal blood is natural selection: Perhaps royalty possessed selective advantages – wealth, cleanliness, etc – that enabled those lines to endure while the commoners died off. And voila: They’ve made kings and queens of us all.
It may seem remarkable to us, but it makes no difference to the genetic and selection processes that are doing the same things they always have.