The longest lineage I can think of right now would be that of Confucius. Following father-to-son descent from Confucius, we currently have his 79th generation descendant Kung Tsui-chang (孔垂長 pinyin: Kong Chuichang). He was appointed Senior Advisor to President Ma Ying-jeou of the Republic of China, but I'm not sure if he still holds that position, since a new president recently assumed office and will hold that position until at least 20 May this year. He also supposedly has a son and a daughter, the 80th generation, and has not studied most of his venerable ancestor's great works

For fun, I used Wikipedia to trace the ancestry of Confucius. If the information is true, than his lineage traces all the way back to the Yellow Emperor (黃帝), who is seen as the ancestor of all Chinese, who proudly carry the title "Descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors" (炎黃子孫). He would be the 47th generation ancestor and supposedly ruled from 2698 BC until 2598 BC. As a result, the Kong family can be traced 128 generations for 4714 years or so, from the Yellow Emperor all the way to the children of Kung Tsui-chang. Of course, the existence of many of the earliest ancestors have not yet been proven, so we should probably only consider 80 generations (2567 years or so) if we start with Confucius

If we include the ancestors of Confucius, the earliest we can verify up to is 商王武丁 (King Wu Ding of the Shang Dynasty), based on oracle script inscriptions written on bones discovered at the ruins of his capital. This ancestor is the 20th generation ancestor of Confucius and ruled from 1250 BC until 1192 BC, so that gives us 101 dalmatians generations (3266 years or so) if we exclude Kung Tsui-chang's son

Also, when the Republic of China overthrew the last emperor, they abolished all nobility except for the Duke of Yansheng (衍聖公), which translates to "Duke Overflowing with Sagacity". This was later changed to the Sacrificial Official to Confucius (大成至聖先師奉祀官), which is currently held by Kung Tsui-chang, but it is notable that the noble rank existed for some time after 1911

EDIT 1: President Ma is in office until 20 May, 2016. Kong Tsui-chang's political position as the Senior Advisor will extend until that date, at the least. His hereditary position as the Sacrificial Official to Confucius will continue until his passing

EDIT 2: /u/Spax_ reminded me to include information on King Wu Ding of the Shang Dynasty. He was the 20th generation ancestor of Confucius and the earliest verifiable ancestor

EDIT 3: /u/hariseldon2 pointed out the fact that most people might not be aware of the ROC/PRC distinction. The Republic of China is now in Taiwan. The People's Republic of China is on the mainland. Considering the importance of Confucius to the Chinese people, regardless of citizenship, I had instinctively highlighted the status of his lineage without even thinking of politics and names. Apologies for any confusion

Source

• "至聖先師奉祀官 喝洋墨水型男." 自由時報電子報. 28 Sept. 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2016. http://news.ltn.com.tw/news/life/paper/430959.

Not my area of expertise by any means except that my father is a life-long amateur genealogist so I'm familiar with some of these problems. That he's an amateur is typical because, aside from, say, the people responsible for maintaining Burke's Peerage, genealogy isn't really a field of historical inquiry.

Few reasons for that. One is that, just as a matter of statistics, once you go back about 1000 years every European is related to every other European. So beyond that point, if the figure in question left descendants at all then all people of European descent will be a "direct descendant" of that person. I'm not as familiar with the situation with non-Europeans but I imagine it would be broadly similar within a given region.

But that's not what most people are thinking about when they ask this this kind of question. They want to know about genealogically traceable lines. This is actually a lot easier to do than you might think, which makes the question less interesting. Certain genealogical lines are better known or better studied than others. Mayflower families, for instance, or European lines of nobility. Once you tap into that it can become trivial to go back to ancient times, at least in theory. So even if, hypothetically, some contemporary member of the house of Habsburg claimed the "longest known human lineage" all I need to do to claim the same would be to prove descent from someone in that line.

Which brings us to the third problem, which is that lines of claimed genealogical descent are, from the historian's perspective, bullshit. They are completely un-falsifiable and we have no way of knowing whether the claimed ancestor is, in fact, real. This could be because the child in question was secretly fathered by someone else, or was adopted but that wasn't mentioned in the historical record, or that they fabricated their lineage entirely. You could in theory do DNA testing at ever stage of descent, in some cases of historically disputed paternity this has, in fact, been done, but it's very rarely feasible to do so. Europeans also privilege patrilineal descent so tracking mothers can be really difficult, which is perhaps ironic because it's much harder to "fake" a mother than a father.

As for who has the "best" genealogical records? Given their practice of baptizing the dead, as far as I'm aware the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) maintains the most extensive genealogical archives in the world.

The more interesting questions for genealogists are actually the ones that are harder to trace and are therefore shorter. Because the Irish civic records were largely destroyed in the Battle of Dublin in 1922, Irish ancestry is notoriously difficult to trace. From what I understand if you want the Parish records you basically have to physically visit the Parish in question which requires A. travelling to Ireland, B. Knowing which Parish your ancestors were members of which can be tricky because C. they might well have very common names and D. Anytime cousins with the same last name get married (which is common) it gets confusing as all hell.

The same is true for, say, African-Americans, where it may or may not be possible to trace a slave lineage back to a port in Africa, potentially with a tribal lineage, but after that there are unlikely to be written records.

You might find more on this of interest at a sub like https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/

There are many genealogies that go back very very far. However, at some point, they become mythological. In other words, they stop being accurate. For example, the Japanese Imperial family can trace itself back to the Goddess Amaterasu Omikami around 700 B.C. Is it true? No.

Jews and Christians have traced genealogy back through King David and all the way back to Adam and Eve. Strangely enough, I was able to do this for my own family. It was 127 generations from Adam and Eve to me. Seems like it should be longer, but some of those earlier folks lived hundreds of years so the generations were long. Is it true? No. Adam and Eve had as much chance of existing as Japan's progenitor, Amaterasu Omikami, did. Some of the genealogy is true--traced back on gravestones and town documents for centuries. But eventually it becomes mythological.

So who can trace their genealogy back the furthest in a verifiable way? That's a much tougher question. And then there's the issue of illegitimacy. When King Richard III's skeleton was found underneath a parking lot in the United Kingdom in 2013, genetic tests were done that showed that somewhere or other, there was an infidelity and someone was a bastard and the lineage didn't proceed genetically as expected.

Coming from a background in biology this question is a bit a funny. I know you are asking about "historically traceable" lineages but in a certain sense we can all trace our lineage back a very long way.

The oldest known lineage in the world is yours, or likely close to it. There is going to be some variation in the number of generations between you and the first human couple to have surviving offspring but generally that averages out over time.

As I am sure you learned in school we are all related to our first common ancestor, and going back further than that we are all descendents from the first single cellular organism that had offspring that survived.

One of the most interesting developments in modern genetics is the use of mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA to trace lineages on very long time scales. The reason you use mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is that because every single person on the planet only gets their mitochondrial DNA from their mother. It makes a nice, and easily traceable bit of DNA to track in comparison to almost all of your other DNA which is mixed between mom and dad at every generation and has recombination which is a process that further mixes up the chromosomes at every generation. Normally you get half your DNA from mom and half from dad but the exact mixture of what half you get isn't straightforward. With mtDNA it is, you get mom's mtDNA and unless there is some mutation you have mom's exact mtDNA.

MtDNA is a little ring of DNA found within the "powerhouse of the cell." Sperm has no mitochondria in it, it is just too small. Your mitochondria is from the egg, everyone's is. That means you have mom's mitochondria. So if you look at that little ring of DNA you know it comes from your mom, who got it from her mom, who got it from her mom, etc., etc. Mutations in mtDNA happen at a pretty regular interval over the generations so you can use the number of mutations as a "clock." If a mutation happens once every 5 generations and you compare two mtDNA sequences and see they have 100 differences then you can be fairly certain those two people with those two mtDNA sequences had a common ancestor (the mom who way back when gave them the same copy of her mtDNA) about 20 generations ago.

The same is true for Y-chromosomal DNA. If you have one you got it from your father. He got it from his father and on down the line.

The long and short of it is that we can determine that there was a "Mitochondrial Eve." It is a pretty amazing thought. All human beings alive today can trace back through their mother's line to one woman who likely lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Of course we can't know exactly who she was and this only accounts for the last common ancestor we had with shared mtDNA, there may have been a more recent shared ancestor that just happened to have the same mtDNA.

You can do the same analysis on the Y-chromosome. There are a few wrinkles in the Y-chromosome analysis and recently some new groups of Y-chromosomes were found, meaning that the time since the last current male relative had to be adjusted a bit to make sure those people were included in the tree.

If you want a decent popular science book on the subject try The Seven Daughter's of Eve. It gives a good pop-sci explanation of everything and is entertaining. There has been a whole heap of criticism of it from the scientific community but I don't think it was ever meant as a scientific treatise, more like a TED talk. The general gist is true even if the specifics aren't 100% in line with today's research.

To get answers from a slightly different perspective, you might want to ask this question in one of the following subreddits:

• /r/anthropology

• /r/evolution

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