Do we have to give Mr Sarkozy a history lesson? Yes, there are Gauls among our ancestors. But there are also Romans, Normans, Celts, Nicois, Corsicans, Arabs, Italians, Spanish. That's France.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I've turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I'm still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

It was through cooking food and sharing it with each other that our ancestors learned how to become social animals.

I'm one hundred percent Irish, and I'm very proud that I'm Irish American, though I don't know exactly where my ancestors came from. I just know County Cork.

When the ancestors of the cheetah first began pursuing the ancestors of the gazelle, neither of them could run as fast as they can today.

It is fashionable in some quarters to say our ancestors were all evil. I reject that notion. I also reject the elitist worldview that these United States are anything but the greatest nation in the history of mankind.

You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations.

I, too, am convinced that our ancestors came from Africa.

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had.

Most of us do more than subsist. From the vantage point of our ancestors, we live lives of almost unimaginable ease. Here again, we have innovation to thank.

To understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors, is to build our identities.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I've turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I'm still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

My ancestors are Rajputs from Jaipur, a lineage of the royal family.

Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton.

Jesus is an example. We have other examples, including many of our ancestors as role models who understood the inner meaning of our orientation.

In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.

To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.

Almost certainly, my ancestors had travelled by sea from Sweden to England in search of prosperity, and the evidence suggests they left Sweden around the ninth or 10th centuries.

There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors.