Latest posts

Genealogical Tree, What is it and What is it for?

Have you ever thought about everything you had to go through for you and your family to become what you are today? Have you ever wondered what exactly a family tree is? Or even what is a family tree for? If you have come this far, it is clear that you have. 

Learn with us all the enigmas that your family genealogical tree hides. I personally would like to tell you a little about it because for me it is really exciting, I am sure it will be for you too, once we understand what it represents.

Perhaps they will see it as a tool to get to know their direct descendants, but by doing a little research, we will realize that we can learn and even predict a lot from history, our history.

Clearly, a family tree has endless uses, from medical to graphically seeing how a population or even a language has evolved.

Ever since I started exploring the world of genealogy and getting curious about who I was and where I came from, I just couldn’t stop. Today I want to share this knowledge with you, so that you also have the tools that allow you to build and understand the world around you.

. 

What is a family tree?

qué es un árbol genealógico
Family Tree

A family tree is a graphic way of representing the descendants or ancestors that make up a family. It is related to a tree because in this way it is much easier to establish a relationship or order: Trunk (origin of the house/family) and ramifications (descendants).

They enclose in an image the roots and many times the legacy that a group has left in the world. There are things that can only be achieved through the efforts of a generation and this is how we can see it.

Knowing what a family tree is can be simple if you break down the words that make up its name, “genealogical” is a word with Latin origins, more specifically, it comes from the word “genealogy” whose origin is ancient Greek.

The fragment “geneá” means family and “logy or logo” refers to a science or knowledge. This means that a family tree is nothing more than a representation of family data to know or study each family.

The best way to get to know a family is through its history and relationships. For this, it is necessary to have various relevant data that can be verified.

.

To better understand what a family tree is, it is necessary to understand people’s need to know their origin, their oldest relatives and their roots. For this, it is necessary to have a family genealogical tree, which can serve as a historical document of family registration.

At a graphic level, a family tree is a representation, while at a psychological level, it is an important document, containing decades of family history, which directly influences the way each person is.

A family tree allows people to understand where they come from, visualize the physical resemblance between relatives and even understand the relationship that exists between each of the members.

A family tree contains the most relevant information of a family through several generations and can be as wide as you want. Your own family tree can contain 1 or more generations according to your needs and the data it contains can also be variable.

Some family trees typically include only each family member’s name and relationship, while others include much more specific information such as dates of birth and death, a short biography, photographs, and more.

What is a family tree used for?

Most people know what it is and how to recognize it, but not everyone really knows how useful it can be.

This is a tool that belongs to genealogy, since it provides valuable information about the history that surrounds a person. Researchers and historians use it very frequently to find and study commonalities between descendants.

In medicine, knowing a person’s family tree allows us to understand someone’s genetic profile very quickly (and cheaply). Applying it well, you can know how likely it is that you or your children suffer from a hereditary disease, what traits they can inherit and develop or diagnose diseases without the need for genetic tests.

Also in psychology, knowing the psychological panorama of a family group can create a genosociogram (a type of family tree) and in this way understand the key moments that a family has gone through, good and bad. Thanks to this, it is possible to solve complex emotional conflicts that are the product of intricate family interactions.

Within the educational industry, the implementation of these family trees serves to establish time lines, so that children connect with the passage of time and history in a didactic and fun way.

In a simple way, complex cultural, linguistic, biological and social (political) evolutions can be understood. And within all these general uses, as if that were not enough, depending on what you want to highlight, they can have endless variations.

Understanding what a family tree is for can help you get the most out of your own family tree, however, its usefulness may vary from person to person.

For a child, a family tree serves as a tool to understand the family relationships between each member of his close circle, understand family dynamics in terms of coexistence and kinship aspects, and even meet family members who are no longer with us. either because they are deceased or because they are physically far away, understand their legacy, their history and their role in the family circle.

For many adults, the family tree serves as a document or guarantee of their origin, especially for carrying out legal procedures such as obtaining nationality or passports. It is also usually an emblem or insignia that represents your family legacy and its history in a summarized way.

Another aspect that is linked to this is that a family tree also serves to avoid inappropriate relationships with certain relatives, for example, marrying cousins or other relatives, which is currently a practice abolished, since these relationships can generate hereditary conditions or diseases that must be avoided.

Although it may seem strange to you, not only human beings can have a family tree, animals and plants can also have this tool, even characters in fiction usually have it, especially when it comes to representations for cinema, theater or television. , where the actors must know the history of the character and his relationship with other members of the cast.

para qué sirve árbol genealógico

In the case of plants or animals, having a family tree avoids inappropriately crossing species and diagnosing hereditary diseases that may appear on the timeline for different reasons.

Types of family tree

This is undoubtedly one of the most exciting sections as it involves the creative part of this scheme that seems so systematic and square. As we already know, depending on what you want to highlight, a tree can have different shades, shapes, orientations, and uses. These are the most recognized:

kinship trees

These are the most social and well-rounded trees of all. What characterizes these trees is the inclusion of individuals with political kinship, adoption and inclusions of third parties in a family, together with blood relatives in case of being personal.

Descending Trees

árbol descendente

These reflect the information of the individuals who follow a particular union, they usually start with father and mother (or the origin of the study) and continue with the children, grandchildren… They show the entire chronology after an event.

Ascending Trees

árbol ascendente

They start at one point and show all the previous chronology, they go backwards. Suppose it is your personal case, it would start with you and show your parents and uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents on the next level… They represent the past of an event.

Family tree

These trees are the best known and are a description and representation of a family. At this point we understand its usefulness, but there are a couple of things about this particular graph that you probably don’t know.

In many countries, being able to legitimately verify a family tree allows descendants to enjoy hereditary benefits such as nationality or constitutive guarantees.

árbol genealógico familiar
Familia

Ways to make a family tree

Currently there are various ways to make a family genealogical tree, from the most rudimentary to the most technological, using a variety of tools at your fingertips.

Classic shape

As you might expect, the most classic way to draw up a family tree is with pencil and paper. The first thing you should do is collect the information you need, verify it, and organize it.

Subsequently, you must record all this information in a systematic way on a sheet of paper. If you are an excellent cartoonist you can make the design you want yourself and use a blank sheet to test your skills as an artist, but if you are not a lover of drawing, you can use any tree silhouette and add your information there.

Modern shape

It is a technological way of drawing up your family tree, for which you must use the digital tools available on the internet. The first thing, as in the classic way, is to collect the information and verify it.

Then, you must enter all the data, through a computer, tablet or other device, to the program or application of your choice to create your family tree.

With these programs and applications available on the web, you will be able to design a family tree to your liking, modify it, store it and even print it if you wish.

There are dozens of programs and applications that are available for this purpose, so you will have no problem finding one that suits your needs.

Combined form

Another valid alternative is to combine the use of classic tools with modern technology to get the best of both worlds. To do this, you can collect the information in the classic way and make a sketch of what you want to do, enter the information digitally or print a template and fill it out by hand.

It all depends on your tastes and needs, since creating a family tree is not a process that has rigid established parameters, but rather can vary according to your particular needs.

Blood line and navel line

Some elements or terms that are defined through family trees, old but that are still important from a historical perspective: The lineage and the navel line. 

Bloodline or lineage was the implemented term for the descent of a caste and was followed or continued solely through the barons of each generation.

Family trees such as these were important to historical figures such as monarchies and former feudal governments of the Middle Ages in Europe, where the term lineage is still used in a nobiliary manner today.

The navel line, on the other hand, is the opposite case and reflects a birth line where only women are included, this tends to be much more discontinuous and has jumps in a few generations.

For women in the feminist movement, the genealogy of a navel line has an especially deep and spiritual meaning, since it is often related to more sensitive issues of identity and belonging than for men, who tend to see more rights in personal genealogy. and legacies.

Philosophical reflections on family trees

Let’s think of a brother who plays together with his family in a backyard, one of these brothers is about to fall, but a family member takes him by the hand at the last minute and nothing happens, what could he have seen happen if he wasn’t there?

The answer to that last question has followed me for years, thinking that it could not have existed if some name was missing from my immense family tree. In fact, we have a huge tree drawn as a decoration in my house, every time I look at it it makes me feel connected to all my generations, with a family legacy that is much bigger than me.

Each of the names in that great scheme represents a story, a character that my grandfather used to portray in those stories that he told my children and that he came to tell me at the time. To keep in mind a family genealogy tree is to feel that my mere existence is part of a legacy that will continue to live through time itself.

On our website you can find everything you need to create your family tree, from information, step-by-step processes and ideas to create them, to examples of the most historically important family trees in the world and much more.

Here you will be able to learn about the most curious and interesting family trees that exist, such as those of series and movies that have caused a sensation in the world of fiction, to those of famous books, history, and mythologies.

At ancestrosgroup.com you can enjoy templates to create your own family tree, applications for family trees, a special section for children, and even our interesting blog. Come in and find out everything we have for you at the reach of a click.

Awin