Warren's family gave an exalted position to one of its 256 ancestors in the eighth generation. Other families, perhaps Trump's, actively forget and fabulate ancestors in just past generations. Genealogies conflate biological with non-biological kin, e.g. paters replace genitors.
Humans forget how recent their common ancestors were, imagine themselves to be from deeply deeply different ancestral lines, & become racists. Human genealogy is fabricated, shot through with myth & elision, & rewritten all the time. See Eviatar Zerubavel's Ancestors & Relatives
Here's a review of this most stimulating book blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofboo…
