The history of human's faking their genealogies to make themselves and their ancestors more illustrious than they really are/were - probably to hide some scandals - goes way back. The Bible for instance.
EXCERPT : The language of trees as been used to describe human bloodlines for millennia. The ancient Romans called the scrolls that listed their genealogical history, stemmata ("garlands"). Similarly Rome's historians used the growth and fall of trees to mark the rise and fall of imperial dynasties. Tacitus wrote of Claudius's son Britannicus as being the "True and genuine stock: and of suffering a "too-green" death. Pliny often used the arboreal terms "gracting," Splicing: and "pruning: to allude to the abortions, adulteries and child murder taking place around him.
