The method of genealogical research.
Data collected in the course of genealogical research, documented in the form genealogy. It includes the genealogy of a legend - legend of the origin of the family and the enumeration of all the members of the genus by their tribes.
In its most general form of the genealogy can be divided into ascending and descending. The first type indicates that all ancestors of a person who is the subject of genealogical research. The second is based on the principle of common ancestor to its descendants.
Graphic design of genealogical data can be quite varied. Early genealogy sometimes depicted as a human body: the names of father and mother were placed on its "head", the children likened to the shoulders, near and distant relatives - hands, fingers, and so widespread in the Middle Ages were in the form of genealogical family tree. The emergence and sustained popularity of this form of pedigrees are not random.
Genealogical tree - a modification of the image, the so-called "world tree", or "tree of life" characteristic of the cosmological ideas of the ancient world and medieval times. The universal idea of ​​a "world tree" reflects the idea of ​​universal interconnection of the world: the unity of the natural elements, the divine powers, animal and human origins. In the symbolism of the "world tree" clearly discernible motive vitality, fertility. He is refracted in its mythology and rituals of the ancient Celts and Germans (victims of the trees in the name of fertility, bringing about the crucifixion of Odin on the "world tree"). The idea of ​​«arbor mundi» was accepted and Christianity (biblical "tree of life" in heaven, the repeated image of Christ crucified on a symbolic tree of the world).
As a variation «arbor mundi» there is an image "tree of life", which combines past, present and future, as embodied in human generations (ancestors, the living generation descendants), and the triumphant idea of ​​immortality and eternal life to continue. The same symbolic meaning was given to the family tree and kind of family: the leaves die and fall, but the kind of tree lives on.