I ran across a book about Sufism the other day (written by Indries Shah) which in the description of its author stated that he had a direct genealogy going back to 120 B.C.E. First off, this is quite a remarkable and impressive family connection, and secondly, it got me thinking about whom (a living person) has the longest (real) genealogical line…
This didn’t take me very long to find some worthy aspirants to this title. For instance, the Imperial family of Japan can claim to be in direct descendants going back to…660 B.C.E., the Malay Royal Family claims to have direct descent from Alexander the Great (approximately 330 B.C.E.), but the reigning champion of this ‘contest’ may be Kung Te-cheng (the 77th direct descendant of Confucius) but since he died in 2009, his grandson Kung Tsui-chang has been named as his direct successor (i.e. the 79th direct descendant of Confucius)…
The interesting thing is that Kung Tsui-chang has a son (the presumptive 80th descendant?) …
The oldest continuous active and believable genealogy?
http://ask.metafilter.com/74592/The-oldest-continuous-active-and-believable-genealogy
Kung Te-cheng
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Te-cheng
Kung Tsui-chang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Tsui-chang
