ancestor
n. countablen. a person in your family who lived a long time ago, such as a great-grandparent. It can also mean an early animal or plant that a modern one developed from.
n. a person from whom one is descended, typically more remote than a grandparent. In biological contexts, it refers to an early form of an organism from which later species evolved.
My ancestors came from a small village in the mountains.
The scientist explained that this small mammal is the common ancestor of all modern primates.
While the legal documents trace his ancestors back to the seventeenth century, the linguistic evidence suggests his family name originated much earlier in a different region.
From Middle English ancestre, auncestre, ancessour; the first forms from Old French ancestre (modern French ancêtre), from the Latin nominative antecessor (“one who goes before”); the last form from Old French ancessor, from Latin antecessōrem, accusative of antecessor, from antecēdō (“to go before”) + -tor (“-er”), from ante- (“before”) + cēdō (“to go”). See cede, and compare with antecessor.
Often used with the preposition 'of' when describing biological or historical relationships.