Quote:
Originally Posted by Retlaw
Originally Posted by garinda
Ok, I can't sleep, so I thought I'd share my thoughts with anyone who may be remotely interested.
We all have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, sixteen great great grandparents, thirty two great great great grandparents, and so on, and so on.... the numbers doubling each generation.
If we average that there are four generations per century, in a thousand year period we will all have 1,009,511,627,776 direct ancestors.
Who decided it was 4 generations per century, my greatgrandfather was born in 1820.
I hope my maths isn't wrong. I think it's 2 to the power of 40, and I had to get Google to do it, because my calculator didn't have enough digits. Any way it's a huge number.
Since the population of the UK in 1000 AD was roughly 1,420,000 that means we all must be related in some way, and I suppose we should count ourselves lucky not to have eleven fingers or webbed toes.
Any comments, or corrections to my mathematics, will be appreciated.
Then the gene pool got polluted by the frogs, led by William the conk.
The god botherers would have it that we are all descended from Adam & Eve, so if they had children, who was bonking who, every ones genes would be the same, the same could be said of the so called seven, who fathered them, who fathered their children.
There are supposed to be several distinct races on this earth. Just might be we've had a visit from outer space. Beam me up Scotty. |
Yes but when the Normans came here, who weren't incidentally Gauls, but from Scandinavia, hence Nor(se)man, Britain had already been colonised by the Angles, and the Saxons, who of course came from what we today call Germany.
Since when I can't sleep I make up my own rules, when doing loopy mind tricks.
I think over the last thousand years the average age of 25 to reproduce is probably a bit on the high side, given the life expectancy was much lower in past centuries, and people had children earlier than we do today.
Plus having 4 generations per century made the maths a whole lot easier.
Especially when we're talking in billions, give or take the odd year, if we adjust the figures for your grandfather.
