What is Genealogy?

Genealogy is a science dedicated to the study of the ancestors and descendants of a family. As an auxiliary discipline of history, it deals with investigating the relationships between individuals taking into account family origins.

The genealogy comes from the Greek "genos" which means descent or birth and "logos" which means science. Said study provides knowledge of the participation of an individual in a large family group, related to blood.

This science demonstrates through studies the essence or identity of a person, the root of it and its origins.

The concern for their origins was present in man from the first communities. In ancient times, the Greeks, members of aristocratic families, explain their noble origins in the most remote times where their ancestors were heroes or descendants of gods. In ancient Rome, the patricians emblazoned their illustrious ancestors, bearing with pride the severe exclusivity with which each one of them preserved their "hereditates gentiliciae", to such an extent that in the last years of the republican period in Rome, there were no more of fifty families who considered themselves "legitimately" patrician.

For a long time, history was interpreted and presented from the genealogical point of view, and until advanced stages of the Middle Ages, genealogy predominantly pursues only practical purposes that contribute to the solution of legal problems.

Its deepening was not systematized until the 15th century, when family books and tables began to be published and it continued to grow throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

In more recent times, genealogical studies have been used on a scientific basis as an important factor to determine the causes and details of a series of historical, social, legal and political facts of feudal society, as well as for the knowledge of certain family situations in modern times.