Ye are all so insignificant

GhostInTheRuins · 21-04-2012 10:58PM #1

I wanted to work out how many descendants I have since the year 0 (as you do).

Let's say that on average each generation is about 25 years (which I think is probably generous because people had children much younger in the past) and lets just say 2000 years ago for simplicity's sake.

So 2000years/25 = 80 generations.

So two parents, each having two parents, each having two parents etc all the way back 80 generations:

2^80 = 1208925819614629174706176 :eek:

So every person on earth has about 1208925819614629174706176 direct descendants (not including brothers, sisters, aunts uncles and cousins) since just the year 0.

Correct me if I'm wrong please, just because.

im invisible · 21-04-2012 11:01PM

you've been busy

kylith · 21-04-2012 11:03PM

Antecedents or ancestors.

Descendents are people descended from you, not people you're descended from.

Redzer7 · 21-04-2012 11:03PM

Get a job you hippy!

Captain Havoc · 21-04-2012 11:04PM

No that's wrong. There hasn't been that number of people alive throughout the history of man kind.

yuppies · 21-04-2012 11:04PM

the further back you go, the more often you find ancestors "doubling up"... eg. a great^10 grandfather on you fathers side could be a great^9 grandfather on your mothers side...

what's more, I think i read that the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive today lived between about 2,000 and 5,000 years ago, and the most recent time when every human alive was either the ancestor of everyone alive today, or left no descendants, was about 13,000 years ago (and would be less were it not for people who lived in isolated parts of the world for thousands of years)

GhostInTheRuins · 21-04-2012 11:08PM

Captain Havoc wrote: »

No that's wrong. There hasn't been that number of people alive throughout the history of man kind.

Yeah, that's what I thought myself, but I can't think of anything that's wrong with the numbers. How else can you work it out?

Fromthetrees · 21-04-2012 11:08PM

Roughly 6% of every human who has ever lived is alive today.

Might be obvious but I found it interesting

yuppies · 21-04-2012 11:08PM

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

Yeah, that's what I thought myself, but I can't think of anything that's wrong with the numbers. How else can you work it out?

criss-crossing lines of ancestry!

Rhys Essien · 21-04-2012 11:10PM

OP,you are wrong.

According to this,the total amount of people that have lived on Earth is 107 Billion.

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

Temptamperu · 21-04-2012 11:11PM

Yes we are insignificant, look at the size of the universe, then look at the size of you.

GhostInTheRuins · 21-04-2012 11:11PM

yuppies wrote: »

the further back you go, the more often you find ancestors "doubling up"... eg. a great^10 grandfather on you fathers side could be a great^9 grandfather on your mothers side...

Even so, that wouldn't affect the numbers any significant amount!

Kylo Ren · 21-04-2012 11:11PM

You forgot to carry the 7. Always carry the 7.

Phill Ewinn · 21-04-2012 11:13PM

We're all related bro

Sunnyisland · 21-04-2012 11:15PM

Where,s me calculator ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Are you counting twins to.

Chuck Stone · 21-04-2012 11:18PM

We came from monkeys actually... chimpanzees to be precise.

Chimpanzees are our ancestors.

Trollface.

yuppies · 21-04-2012 11:18PM

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

Even so, that wouldn't affect the numbers any significant amount!

Somebody alive 200 years ago who had 5 or 6 children who survived to adulthood could easily be the ancestor of hundreds of the individuals who live today. That same individuals' brother could have a similar number of descendants if they had 5 or 6 kids also. so there could be say 1000 people alive today, most of whom go about their days not knowing they are distantly related to each other. If each of those 1000 people followed the same exercise as in your op, their family trees would all include the father of those two guys from 200 years ago ie. nobody has a unique family tree to themselves going back through history.. everybody is sharing the same relatively small number of ancestors.

Temptamperu · 21-04-2012 11:20PM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

We came from monkeys actually... chimpanzees to be precise.

Chimpanzees are our ancestors.

Trollface.

You nearly got me there :pac:

galwayrush · 21-04-2012 11:26PM

Did you factor in any possible incest in your family line OP?

Chuck Stone · 21-04-2012 11:26PM

Temptamperu wrote: »

You nearly got me there :pac:

Did you know that our ancestors, the Chimpanzee, have the strength of about 40 men?

Yep. A really angry Chimpanzee escaped from a zoo in the US, picked up a bus full of screaming school children and threw it about 100 meters down the highway.

Amazing but completely true.

galwayrush · 21-04-2012 11:27PM

Captain Havoc wrote: »

No that's wrong. There hasn't been that number of people alive throughout the history of man kind.

That proves my incest post.....:pac:

daddydick · 21-04-2012 11:27PM

I always said it, there is a bit of a traveller in us all

Pherekydes · 21-04-2012 11:28PM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

We came from monkeys actually... chimpanzees to be precise.

Chimpanzees are not monkeys.

Now go and post in the "Most incorrect thing I was taught" thread.

bnt · 21-04-2012 11:29PM

I'm guessing the OP hasn't read 2001: A Space Odyssey (by Arthur C Clarke), which has the following as the very first line in the book:

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.

The book (and film) came out in 1968: the BBC podcast More Or Less looked in to that claim a couple of months ago. The consensus: at that time, Clarke had it very close to spot-on, but the ratio is now more like 15:1 (107:7 billion)

arse..biscuits · 21-04-2012 11:30PM

Ha ha, you're inbred

Chuck Stone · 21-04-2012 11:39PM

Pherekydes wrote: »

Chimpanzees are not monkeys.

Here's what this chimpanzee thinks.

:pac:

Victor · 22-04-2012 01:41AM

Fromthetrees wrote: »

Roughly 6% of every human who has ever lived is alive today.

Might be obvious but I found it interesting

You mean there are zombies that are just arms or maybe lower legs? :eek:

Logical Fallacy · 22-04-2012 01:57AM

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

I wanted to work out how many descendants I have since the year 0 (as you do).

Let's say that on average each generation is about 25 years (which I think is probably generous because people had children much younger in the past) and lets just say 2000 years ago for simplicity's sake.

So 2000years/25 = 80 generations.

So two parents, each having two parents, each having two parents etc all the way back 80 generations:

2^80 = 1208925819614629174706176 :eek:

So every person on earth has about 1208925819614629174706176 direct descendants (not including brothers, sisters, aunts uncles and cousins) since just the year 0.

Correct me if I'm wrong please, just because.

Not sure how that makes you feel insignificant.

If 1208925819614629174706176 people had to exist throughout history just to get to me that makes me feel pretty damn ball-tinglingly epic.

Duiske · 22-04-2012 02:00AM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Here's what this chimpanzee thinks.

:pac:

That's no Panzee. That's an Orangutan. Oh, and is that guy stroking his lad with his foot ?

Odelay · 22-04-2012 02:12AM

And there was me feeling lonely......

kincsem · 22-04-2012 02:18AM

yuppies wrote: »

the further back you go, the more often you find ancestors "doubling up"... eg. a great^10 grandfather on you fathers side could be a great^9 grandfather on your mothers side...

what's more, I think i read that the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive today lived between about 2,000 and 5,000 years ago, and the most recent time when every human alive was either the ancestor of everyone alive today, or left no descendants, was about 13,000 years ago (and would be less were it not for people who lived in isolated parts of the world for thousands of years)

Correct.

When you go back a few generations you find inbreeding i.e. common ancestors on male and female sides of your family tree. Prince Charles is a good example. Afaik there is an ancestor in Prince Phillip's tree that is a full sibling of an ancestor in Elizabeth Windsor's tree about three generations back.

My 140,000 thoroughbred horse pedigree database can give you the family tree to twenty generations plus for all horses running today. The OP thinks you need a database of 2^20 = 1,048,576 to give the pedigree of one horse -140,000 horses is more than enough. I find that for horses about 70% of ancestors are duplicates at about 12 generations, and the further back you go the higher the percentage.

Think of it this way. Before cars were invented, and only rich people owned horses, who did you marry? Probably someone within walking distance.

Ye are all so insignificant

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