About

"My Ancestor :)" refers to a series of exploitable images image macros depicting a character of a designated ethnicity, species, time period or group looking up towards another character (usually a bust, a sarcophagus or a statue) that does not resemble him/her/it at all, and proudly thinking "My Ancestor :)." Though initially used for race-related and racist jokes, the format evolved to include more parody and nonsensical edits.

Origin

On January 15th, 2014 the website knotofstone.com,^[1] dedicated to the exploration of African history, published several images on researchers analyzing the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Among those images, there was one in which a woman of Sub-Saharan African origins was photographed from the side, while facing the sarcophagus (shown below).

The Facebook page Unapologetically Black captioned the image with "That moment You realize That Royalty is In your DNA" (shown below). While the post is lost, it was reposted to Imgur^[2] on March 29th, 2016 with a WE WUZ KINGS title.

Spread

On April 4th, 2016, an anonymous poster on the 4chan board /pol/ ^[3] posted a MS Paint drawing of the template, captioning it "My ancestor" (shown below, left). Months later, on December 17th, 2016, an anonymous user drew it using the Nordic / Mediterranean style, depicting a modern man looking at a Neanderthal^[4] (shown below, right).

The template saw use on other 4chan boards and Reddit. Some Mediterranean users of /pol/ turned the meme around, mocking Nordic and Finnish people who believed to be ancestors of Rome, Greece or Mongolians (examples shown below).

On May 29th, 2017 an anonymous user who claimed to be the one who drew the original template, expressed his dislike for Nordics being depicted with the same skull shape as blacks, and in the post, he drew a brand new one depicting a blonde and blue-eyed person doing the same look and expression (shown below). However, his complaint fell on deaf ears, as users kept using the meme as they pleased.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References