Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 May 27

= May 27 =

Public domain year for "The Fox and the Hound"
The article Public domain in the United States says that as long as it's not 2073, works will enter the public domain at the start of the year of their 96th birthday. But starting that year, a different rule will be followed. Using this rule, what will be the public domain year of the 1981 movie The Fox and the Hound?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:40, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * As a work of corporate authorship, it should still be 95 years after publication (so 2076 in that case). If the "creators" retained their copyrights it would be 70 years after the death of the last surviving creator. Handy chart: Rmhermen (talk) 03:26, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Actually 2077, per careful reading of the rule on when copyright expires. Georgia guy (talk) 10:57, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

descendants of Caesar or other aristocrats
Is there anyone living today who can accurately trace their lineage to any of the Ceasars or other notable Roman aristocrats? If so, are they still part of the cultural elite or just "commoners?"142.46.150.122 (talk) 17:07, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Not accurately; see Descent from antiquity. Alansplodge (talk) 17:40, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * 142.46.150.122 -- With anybody who lived 1,500 years or more ago, if they have any living descendants at all, then they're likely to have many millions of descendants. Things like the most recent common ancestor of humans, the identical ancestors point etc. are more recent than most people would expect.  And of course, there have been too many discontinuities between ancient Rome and the present for cultural status to transfer (the Roman emperorship rarely stayed in the same family for more than a few generations, anyway)... AnonMoos (talk) 19:38, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Indeed:
 * "The most recent common ancestor of every European today (except for recent immigrants to the Continent) was someone who lived in Europe in the surprisingly recent past—only about 600 years ago. In other words, all Europeans alive today have among their ancestors the same man or woman who lived around 1400. Before that date, according to Chang’s model, the number of ancestors common to all Europeans today increased, until, about a thousand years ago, a peculiar situation prevailed: 20 percent of the adult Europeans alive in 1000 would turn out to be the ancestors of no one living today (that is, they had no children or all their descendants eventually died childless); each of the remaining 80 percent would turn out to be a direct ancestor of every European living today".
 * Journalist Steve Olson on the work of statistician Prof Joseph Chang, quoted in Charlemagne’s DNA and Our Universal Royalty.
 * Alansplodge (talk) 21:28, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * For thinking intuitively about this, in a family tree rooted at one person, the number of ancestors usually doubles every generation "up" the tree. This means the total number of ancestors grows exponentially. If this went on indefinitely, one person would eventually have more ancestors than there are humans who have ever existed. In reality, of course, "branches" of the tree start to merge back together: one shares ancestors with one's own ancestors. And obviously, mergers also occur with other individuals' family trees: said point is the most recent common ancestor of those individuals. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 04:50, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * That phenomenon is called Pedigree collapse. And you don't have to go back very far, not just in royalty but in any family tree where cousins have married, which was fairly common before the 20th century. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:37, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah-ha, thanks for finding that. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 22:55, 28 May 2019 (UTC)


 * It also depends on what the OP means by Roman. The last Roman emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, died in 1453, and reliable pedigrees do go that far back.  The major dynasties of the late empire, including the Komnenos, Angelos and Palaiologos dynasty intermarried into other European royal houses (see, for example Irene Angelina, through which just about all European houses can trace lineage).  People tend to forget that the fall of the western portion of the Roman Empire did not represent the end of the empire.  The bulk of the empire, as ruled from Constantinople, continued on for another 1000 years more or less.  There's a certain historiographical chauvinism that treats anything west of Germany and Italy as exotic and different, but there was no discernible change to the Roman Empire after the loss of the Italian territories in the fifth century.  It's administration did evolve over time, as many countries do, but what we now call the Byzantine Empire would have been correctly known in its time as the Roman Empire. -- Jayron 32 18:27, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, it should be noted that if the OP is asking about descent from the Julio-Claudian dynasty, I don't know that any of them had surviving lines. They all pretty much all married each other and/or killed each other during the first century; Nero eventually had all of Claudius's descendants (including his own wife Claudia Octavia) killed, making him the last Emperor who was a descendant of Augustus, IIRC.  He only had one daughter who died in infancy.  The last descendant of Augustus that I can find is the 2nd century pretender Avidius Cassius, who I believe had legitimate descent from Julia the Younger, a granddaughter of Augustus.-- Jayron 32 18:53, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * There was a chance that there could have been imperial continuation of Augustus's line, Domitian married one of his great-grand-daughters, but that union produced no living heirs, other than a son that died in infancy. -- Jayron 32 18:58, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Ramsay Muir Memorial Lectures
The Ramsay Muir Memorial Lectures began in 1946 and seem to have continued at least into the early 60s. I have been unable to find either a complete list of the lectures and lecturers, or any explanation of why they ceased. I would be grateful for any information. DuncanHill (talk) 22:26, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I've found all except 1960, 66 & 67. The last one that I've found is 1969.  It's a sizeable list (too big for the ref desk) - do you want to see what I've got, and how?--Phil Holmes (talk) 11:19, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I would very much - is it ok if I email you via Wikipedia and you email your list back to me? DuncanHill (talk) 11:20, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks Phil, your list is very helpful and much more complete than anything I've been able to find. DuncanHill (talk) 11:58, 28 May 2019 (UTC)