Can I Trace Genealogy Back to Adam and Eve?

Though each living person's life evidences the reality of 'connecting' back to Adam, as canonized in the Bible, there is no proven pedigree documenting lineage back to Adam and Eve. During the Middle Ages, it was popular for royalty and nobility to authorize pedigrees showing their descendancy from Adam and Eve. Many fraudulent pedigrees were created and beautifully displayed. The Internet has some compiled charts showing ancestry back to Adam and Eve and links to articles about lineages.

You may want to look at several sites to see if they have what you want.

Keep in mind the following points:
 * Lineages are often tied to the names that appear in the Bible. Many of Adam and Eve’s descendants are not mentioned in the Bible.
 * Most charts contain gaps of hundreds of years.
 * Connections between your ancestors and the Biblical names are usually assumed instead of being based in fact.
 * Connections cannot be documented by contemporary documents.

An article in the February 1984 issue of the Ensign magazine talks about this subject. Go to the second question on the "I Have a Question" page after clicking here to open the Ensign.

Here is a brief excerpt from that article: Robert C. Gunderson, Senior Royalty Research Specialist, Church Genealogical Department. "In thirty-five years of genealogical research, I have yet to see a pedigree back to Adam that can be documented. By assignment, I have reviewed hundreds of pedigrees over the years. I have not found one where each connection on the pedigree can be justified by evidence from contemporary documents. In my opinion it is not even possible to verify historically a connected European pedigree earlier than the time of the Merovingian Kings (c. A.D. 450–A.D. 752). Every pedigree I have seen which attempts to bridge the gap between that time and the biblical pedigree appears to be based on questionable tradition, or at worst, plain fabrication. Generally these pedigrees offer no evidence as to the origin of the information, or they cite a vague source."