The " recollective menage tree " claim is plain a prestigious one , and many clans — mostly of the royal variety , because they ’re the most obsessively document — have laid call to it over the years . But only one kinship group has been able-bodied to make it pose , and its members have gone to gravid distance to do so . In 2005 , the Guinness Book of World Records recognized the Confucius genealogic air as the longest family tree diagram in history , with 86 record generation over 2,500 years . The Chinese philosopher ( 551 to 479 BCE ) is imagine to have 3 million descendants all over the world [ source : Zhou ] .
In 2009 the kinfolk - run Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee ( CGCC ) release the 5th version of the " Confucius Genealogy , " a X - recollective effort of staggering proportions . It ’s an 80 - loudness stage set that contains the gens of more than 2 million of these descendants . The Confucius line is so well - documented because of the prestige ( and honorary titles and positions ) historically associated with being a Confucius descendant .
The first " Confucius Genealogy " was published in 1080 . The fourth edition , printed in 1937 , contained 600,000 name [ source : Zhou ] . For the latest project , the CGCC localize up 450 branches all over the world and signed up more than 1.3 million new descendants . The citizens committee also made the game - changing decision to includewomen , pagan minorities and overseas descendants for the first fourth dimension , which apparently increased the enrolment number exponentially [ source : Zhou ] .
time have changed , but the family ’s documentation methods — fairly amazingly — have not . The CGCC administered no desoxyribonucleic acid tests to any of the newest register descendants . All that was needed was a paper track and 70 cents for inclusion body into the registry . The DNA engineering is pronto uncommitted , but expert contend that the Chinese people are still more interested in the traditional system . The CGCC also plausibly balk at the disbursement of examine each one of those 1.3 million people . And if any of the descendant were found to be incorrectly included , the likely damage to the family name — not to bring up the paperwork — would have been annihilating .
The Confucius kinship group survived the contention of another group to the folk - tree diagram crown in 2008 . Two German humans made international intelligence when it was discover that they were the descendants of a genealogical business line that spanned 120 generations . But the " longest family Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree " title splashed across the headlines was n’t quite accurate . They had been found to be directly descended from 3,000 - year - older Bronze Age bones find in a local cave , which did make theircavemanancestor more ancient than Confucius . But the actual family tree is n’t completely filled out — there are many blank generations .
