How would Joseph Smith have guessed the importance of tracing one’s genealogy to a prominent ancestor (in democratic frontier America in the early 1800s)?

Dr Michael Coe in his book “The Maya” remarks:

to be able to trace one’s genealogy in both lines to an ancient ancestry was an important matter, for there were strongly demarcated classes (p. 235).
– Bruce E. Dale and Brian Dale – Joseph Smith: The World’s Greatest Guesser (A Bayesian Statistical Analysis of Positive and Negative Correspondences between the Book of Mormon and The Maya)

Bruce E. Dale and Brian Dale comment:

Coe describes this practice clearly and in some detail. The Book of Mormon also describes it clearly and in great detail. Why would this idea occur to Joseph Smith in democratic frontier America in the early 1800s? America had recently thrown off the rule of a class-based society, the British. So the correspondence also seems unusual. Specific, detailed and unusual.
– Bruce E. Dale and Brian Dale – Joseph Smith: The World’s Greatest Guesser (A Bayesian Statistical Analysis of Positive and Negative Correspondences between the Book of Mormon and The Maya)

Where would Joseph Smith have learned about this?

See:

Bruce E. Dale and Brian Dale – Joseph Smith: The World’s Greatest Guesser (A Bayesian Statistical Analysis of Positive and Negative Correspondences between the Book of Mormon and The Maya)

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